In its never-ending efforts to portray anything Republican or conservative as extremist, marginal, or even just in a negative light, The New York Times uses the most juvenile devices, on top of rank distortions and a deliberate ignorance of American history.
Its recent piece, The Arizona Republican Party’s Anti-Democracy Experiment, even before copy begins, is preceded by an awkward photo showing part of former Trump administration official Ric Grenell – and goes downhill from there.
(Other childishly selected photographs include one of an unnamed Precinct Committeeman outside his home, complete with an American flag and holding an AR-15 rifle, and another, purportedly of Republican US Senate nominee Blake Masters, but where he’s almost entirely upstaged and blocked out by a heavily bearded man with a scowling expression. Masters also was the subject of a pre-primary Times error-filled hit piece, The Strident Writings of a Young Blake Masters Dog His Senate Run.)
The opening line of this diatribe is a quote from octogenarian GOP state committeewoman Rose Sperry, who was asked to name the first Republican leader she admired. Writer Robert Draper hits paydirt when the answer is “Joe McCarthy,” who he says "in the 1950s infamously claimed Communists had infiltrated the federal government." Claimed? To write that, Draper has to be willfully ignorant of the history of Soviet spying, the compromising of our Departments of State, Agriculture and Treasury by the 1930s, and the stealing of our atomic bomb designs from the top-secret Manhattan Project in the 1940s.
Consistent with his cherry-picking of Sperry’s remarks, Draper is on a fishing expedition throughout, looking for comments to take out of context, using quotes from unnamed former Republican “operatives” who are willing to speak negatively of their fellow party members, and even mining Sperry’s Facebook page from months earlier for a line the whole piece is based on.
The foundation of this 7000+ word screed is Draper’s semantic misuse of the word ‘democracy,’ apparently deliberately unaware, despite being told by multiple interviewees, and reading on Sperry’s Facebook page, that the United States of America has a constitutional republic form of government. He quickly proceeds to then accuse Republicans of “openly espousing hostility to democratic principles” and blames the party for “repudiating the very idea of democracy in America.”
Quite a stretch. Civics is apparently not his strong suit.
Coming from anyone on the Left, which is actively undermining our country as we speak, it's laughable to hear the pettiness and the projection of their actions onto conservatives and Republicans.
Comments from Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee, are the next target. Launching on Lake, the piece takes issue with her Twitter quote, “They kicked God out of our schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” calling it hyperbolic. No, it’s a picture perfect indictment of our current education system. Lake also said the Left seeks “to disarm Americans and militarize our enemies.” There's not a patriotic and informed American, or a parent of school-age kids, that could legitimately take exception to such statements. But Draper, typical of the Left, just doesn't get it.
The article also objects to expressing the fact that the invasion across our Southern border is changing the demographics of our country. Even beyond demographics, it’s adding to lawlessness on multiple levels. Additionally cited as “factually unsupported” is that “old-fashioned 19th century ballot stuffing” occurred in the 2020 election.
Draper does mention Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2000 Mules, which he said “claimed ballot stuffing was a frequent tactic.” But again with the modifier, “claimed," despite repeated video proof. You have to take great pains to keep yourself so in the dark. But the current major media has been doing just that since the movie’s release.
Draper even invokes Timothy McVeigh to disparage Arizona Republicans by noting that McVeigh spent several months in Kingman, a town in Mohave County Arizona, quoting the unnamed and so-called Republican operative as saying, “This is the part of the country where they believe Timothy McVeigh was right.”
Trying to portray Arizona Republicans as crazy rather than informed and patriotic is part of a non-stop effort by the Left to sway the outcome of the 2022 voting which is set to begin soon. Will that strategy succeed? Not if Arizona Republican voters, and others nationwide, make every effort to put their nominees into office this November.
For the sake of Arizona and country, let’s hope, pray, and work to make it so.