After the Pelosi attack, Republicans have quit pretending they oppose political violence

There are ever so many ways Republicans can admit they were delighted by the attempted assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which resulted in severe injuries to her husband, who had the misfortune of being home when apparent right-wing nut David DePape broke into the couple's San Francisco home. They can pretend to condemn the attack while promoting conspiracy theories denying that it was right-wing political violence, as did Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk. They can make jokes about it in public appearances, the classy path pioneered by Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. They can do both at the same time, as Donald Trump Jr. did. They can share vicious memes mocking the victim, as a Facebook page did that is evidently owned by Pennsylania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. Or they can deflect blame by casting the villains as the victims, as Tucker Carlson did in a Fox News segment equating criticism of hate speech with censorship.

OK, it's true that so far no Republican leaders (to my knowledge) have directly congratulated the would-be assassin for his attempt on Pelosi's life, or openly expressed regret that he didn't succeed. Establishing plausible deniability is still a priority within the GOP ranks, although to a diminishing extent. But make no mistake: Any effort to minimize the violence or deflect blame for the attack on Pelosi or her husband is a tacit endorsement. It's certainly received that way by the Republican base, which has spent the past two years, ever since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, ramping themselves up to support a fascist — and therefore inherently violent — campaign to seize power against the will of a clear majority.

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How rapidly the GOP jokes and conspiracy theories began to emerge was especially alarming, as that represents a shift in attitudes toward fascist violence in the past couple of years. Contrast this with the aftermath of the insurrection of Jan. 6, when even the biggest jackasses among elected Republicans, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, took their time before starting to signal explicit approval of the riot. The PR stunt when those two declared that those arrested for the attack were "political prisoners," for example, came a full six months after the assault.

Paul Pelosi is still in the hospital, and the attack was so severe that DePape will be charged with attempted murder, among numerous other crimes. Cavalier Republican attitudes about this can't be chalked up to any legitimate sense that the event has been blown out of proportion. Rather, what has changed is that little to no political price was paid for increasingly supportive messaging about the Jan. 6 insurrection. If anything, those who most brazenly wink at the violence, like Greene, have become superstars in GOP politics. The only Republicans to feel real blowback from their voters are those who have criticized the Jan. 6 rioters — as well as the then-president who incited them — like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who lost to a Republican primary opponent largely because she served on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack. Even Ted Cruz, who has been cravenly supportive of anti-democratic forces overall, got into hot water after describing Jan. 6 a "terrorist attack." He ended up feeling compelled to apologize to the people who ransacked the Capitol and defecated in the hallways. So Republican leaders aren't wrong to conclude that they must implicitly sanction violence to avoid the rage of their own voters, even as they make disingenuous noises of denunciation.

Yes, there are a handful of Republicans still in office who condemned the violence immediately and without caveat, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But his claim to be "horrified and disgusted" rings hollow, since McConnell has done nothing to push back against the root causes of political violence, and in fact has gone out of his way to fund radical Republican candidates who are gleefully spreading the conspiracy theories that fuel the violence.

Those who most brazenly wink at violence, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, have become GOP superstars. Those who criticize it — well, the case of Liz Cheney is the most obvious example.

Basically, Republican voters and leaders have spiraled into a vicious cycle of apologia for fascist violence. GOP leaders feel they have no choice but to offer winking support for almost any heinous acts, because that's what their most hardcore voters demand of them. But by playing these games, they're encouraging more unhinged Trump supporters on the ground to perpetrate more violence, or at least to make excuses, no matter how nonsensical, for those willing to do so. There is no obvious way to hit the brakes in this cycle, either. Any Republican who sticks their head out to sincerely work against violence will be thrown out of the party, as happened to Cheney. The only plausible way this could change is if GOP leadership got together and collectively started pushing back against both actual violence and the inflammatory rhetoric that drives it, but at this point none are willing to risk a primary challenger to do so.

It's only through sheer luck that things haven't gotten worse. Capitol police held back the Jan. 6 crowd long enough that Mike Pence, Pelosi and other members of Congress were able to escape. There's little reason to doubt that the mob would have killed the two of them, as they threatened to do, or any other politicians they'd been trained to hate by Trump and Fox News. It is even more a matter of luck that Nancy Pelosi wasn't at her San Francisco home last Friday and that Paul Pelosi had the presence of mind to summon police and fend off his attacker. Unfortunately, there will come a time when that kind of luck runs out. Indeed, for ordinary civilians, that time has already passed, as shown by the mass shootings in Buffalo, El Paso and Pittsburgh.

As I noted in Tuesday's newsletter, violence does not even appear necessary to achieve the end goal of Trump and his Republican backers, which is to extinguish democracy. If current polls are to be trusted at all, Republicans are headed for major electoral wins in next week's midterms. There can be little doubt that the second they gain full power, they intend to rewrite the laws so voters can never remove them from power again. If anything, these tacit endorsements of violence are damaging Republican chances this November, alienating the small slice of the electorate that prefers Republicans but are still leery of supporting actual mayhem.

But "peaceful fascism" is of course an oxymoron. Once Republicans signed onto Trump's campaign to destroy democracy, they were well on their way to becoming the party of political violence. In that context, perhaps it is no surprise that Republicans range from utterly blasé about the attempt on Pelosi's life to openly enthusiastic about it. The only question is how much longer they will keep up the pretense that political violence bothers them in the slightest.