Are Democrat Midterm Ambitions the Real Reason Parkland Is Still in the News?
Unlike after other mass school shootings, the movement from Parkland to propaganda has had tremendous lasting power. The tragedy's wake has seen sustained news coverage and energized anti-Second Amendment protests, ostensibly due to organic "student activism." Yet post-shooting leftist anti-gun appeals and young students willing to facilitate them are nothing new. What is new is that the Democrats just recently suffered a devastating political one-two punch.
Not long-ago Democrats were licking their chops at the prospect of a November midterm sweep. Since then, however, two momentous things have occurred: Both the Trump-Russia-collusion narrative and the Democrats' generic congressional poll numbers have collapsed. To right this sinking ship, leftists need a new issue and fast, and they may think they've got it: gun control.
As U.S. News & World Report informed on Feb. 14, "The new Morning Consult/Politico poll released Wednesday showed respondents rewarding Republicans for passing the tax cut bill in December, with 39 percent saying they would vote Republican if the election were held today compared to 38 percent who would vote for Democrats — down from a 10-point Democrat advantage in mid-December." The same poll showed President Trump's approval rating drawing even with his disapproval number; in fact, Trump's approval figure is three points better than Barack Obama's was at the same time in his presidency. This was wholly unanticipated.
On Feb. 16, the Friday before a three-day weekend, Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced the vanity indictments of 13 nationals and three entities of the Russian persuasion. A Project Veritas sting operation had already captured CNN figures on video last summer admitting there was nothing to the Trump-Russia-collusion story and that they were pushing it for ratings (and if CNN knew it was nonsense, so did the rest of the mainstream media), but this didn't stop Fourth Estate Russia fakery.
But with these nonsense indictments — of men who can never be extradited and tried — the writing is on the wall: "The Trump-Russia collusion narrative is dead," as Fox News put it.
How bad is it for the Dems? The party for months was talking about impeaching President Trump as if it were only a matter of time. Now some leftists claim that collusion was never even the focus of the Mueller investigation! They just wanted to learn more about Russian meddling, you see. The people who gave us revisionist history now have graduated to revisionist current events.
But it gets worse still. Mueller's latest indictment, of lawyer and son-in-law of Russian oligarch Alex Van Der Zwaan, may lead to the implication of prominent Democrats. The Dems and media may want Mueller's investigation off the front pages posthaste, and they need an issue to replace it and hopefully buoy their flagging poll numbers. Ergo Parkland, Parkland and more Parkland, 24-7.
The Democrats, mind you, have played this game before. Remember how "contraception" suddenly became a big issue during the 2012 campaign? This was no accident. As former Clinton insider Dick Morris explained at the time, the Democrats needed to replace prenatal infanticide — which is no longer a winning issue for them — with something else. As he put it, "It used to be 10 points more pro-choice than pro-Life[;] now it's ten points more pro-Life than pro-choice.... So, what they're trying to do now is replace it with contraception."
So prenatal infanticide became contraception and Russia control becomes gun control — as the demagogues transition from defending the killing of unborn children to bemoaning the killing of older children — whatever it takes to win. The reality is that the Left's focus isn't on stopping school shootings, but on stopping GOP momentum. And the Parkland kids are a very handy means to that end.
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