They Just Can't Help Themselves

Republican keep insulting women and people of color and every time they do it decreases the chances they win the White House in November. Also Veepstakes!

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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I’m still on vacation this week in the Pacific Northwest, but, of course, the news never stops.

Don’t Say Something Stupid. Don’t Say Something Stupid

Ladies and Gentlemen … the modern Republican Party:

House Republican leaders told lawmakers to focus on criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ record without reference to her race and gender, following caustic remarks from some Republicans attacking her on the basis of identity.

During a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, chair of the House GOP campaign arm Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and others issued the warning after a series of comments by their members that focused on Harris’ race as well as claims she is a “DEI” pick, according to two people in the room.

….“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” Speaker Mike Johnson told POLITICO as he left the Tuesday meeting, saying Harris would have to answer for Biden’s record. “This has nothing to do with race.

ProTip: if you need to tell members of your political party to stop making racist and misogynistic comments, there’s something very wrong with your political party.

But of course, the bigger problem for Republicans is that they just can’t help themselves.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., blasted Kamala Harris in a social media post Monday, calling her a “DEI vice president,” using the initialism for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman said in a TV interview. “I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) predicted that Vice President Harris will be Democrats’ next presidential nominee, suggesting that after President Biden dropped out over the weekend, some members of the party feel pressure to select her due to her race.

“A lot of Democrats feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background,” Grothman said

Sebastian Gorka, a host on the conservative network Newsmax who served in the Trump administration, said Harris was going to be the nominee “because she’s female and her skin color is the correct DEI color.”

Fox News host Jesse Watters said Harris secured Hillary Clinton’s endorsement, “obviously, because she’s a woman.”

And Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany in the Trump administration, told NBC News that Harris was part of a “revolving door of DEI appointments from the straight white male governor, who hands out appointments to keep different groups happy and at bay,” referring to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. “Kamala Harris is a product of this whole system. She’s very far left, unvetted and untested.”

Harris has been the District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, Senator from California, and Vice President. She has 20 years of public sector experience, 18.5 years more than Trump’s running mate, JD Vance. She is more than qualified to be president, but for many Republicans, the only explanation for how a Black woman could rise to a position of political power is because of racial preferences.

“DEI” has become the GOP epithet for Black people because the “n” word is off-limits.

What is particularly gross about the DEI line of attack is that it presupposes that the “normal” demographic for a presidential candidate is a white male — and that picking someone of color is outside the norm or some special pleading. It also assumes that white males aren’t selected as running mates for political reasons, even though pretty clearly part of the reason Trump selected JD Vance as his running mate is because he’s a white man who appeals to other white men.

I don’t doubt that Joe Biden selected Harris as his running mate in 2020 in part because she’s a Black woman, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t eminently qualified for the job. Every vice presidential pick is a political choice. Selecting Harris, in part because she appeals to key Democratic constituencies, is no different than choosing a running mate from a crucial swing state or one that provides an ideological or regional balance.

To reduce her to nothing more than a “DEI” hire is to suggest that no Black woman can ever rise to political power because of the content of their character.

Let’s Be Sexist Too

The other explanation Republicans have hinted at for how a woman can achieve political power is that she must be a slut.

You can look up the precise etymology of “Hawk Tuah,” but it is a reference to oral sex.

One can easily chalk this up to pure misogyny, but it’s also a by-product of the political bubble in which Republicans reside. To partisan Republicans, this is an amusing line of attack. To normal Americans, particularly women, it’s vile sexism. It’s the kind of political attack that will only piss women off more … and more than two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there are already plenty of pissed-off American women.

Then there this is.

In 2021, Vance criticized Harris because she’s childless and suggested that women who don’t have children are “miserable” and have no stake in America’s future.

“We are effectively run in this country … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance answers. "It's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children."

Let’s put aside the fact that Harris is a stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s children. Let’s also put aside the fact that Pete Buttigieg has twins. Finally, let’s put aside the fact that a woman’s worth is not defined by whether she gets married and/or has children.

But how does any Republican think it’s a good idea to criticize millions of unmarried and childless women? We shouldn’t be surprised that former Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters endorsed Vance’s comments, but again, this is just idiotic politics.

(It’s also important to remember that not every woman or couple that doesn’t have children has made that choice. Millions of Americans want to have kids — and, for medical reasons, simply cannot. Treating them as objects of ridicule or lesser citizens is deeply hurtful).

These types of attacks are why I’m increasingly bullish on Harris’s chances of winning this election.

Republicans simply can’t stop themselves from insulting women and degrading people of color. The modern Republican Party is defined almost exclusively by not only its inhumanity toward those who are different but also by an overwhelming need to insult and denigrate their political opponents. And because so many Republicans live in a media and demographic bubble where the only people they interact with are like them, they don’t seem to appreciate how off-putting this is for those who reside outside their bubble.

I suspect that in November they will find out.

Who Will Harris Pick As Her Running Mate?