Ever since the January 6 insurrection, says Bonnie Kristian in the Daily Beast, Democrats have made a big song and dance about safeguarding democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to the Republic, they tell us, and all right-thinking Americans should strive to keep him out of office. But one group doesn’t seem to have got the memo: Democrats themselves. After the insurrection, just 10 House Republicans were brave enough to vote to impeach Trump. One of them, Michigan congressman Peter Meijer, lost his GOP primary this week – in large part because the Democrats “dropped nearly half a million dollars” on ads boosting his Trump-backed opponent.
There’s a cold, hard logic to this. The victor, John Gibbs, is a much more “polarising” candidate, meaning the Democrats should in theory be better placed to win the seat in November’s midterm elections. But the hypocrisy beggars belief. Is their goal to “preserve American democracy”, as they never tire of claiming, or to “win at any cost”? Michigan isn’t the only place where the Democrats are backing Trumpist candidates in Republican primaries: they’ve pulled the same trick for gubernatorial races in Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Shame on them. “If Democrats believe democracy is in danger, they should act like it.”