Henry Olsen: The GOP must make it clear: Eric Greitens's ad is out of bounds

Source: Washington Post

Opinion ǀ The GOP must make it clear: Eric Greitens’s ad is out of bounds

By Henry Olsen
Columnist
June 21, 2022 at 1:28 p.m. EDT

The new campaign ad from Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens is beyond reprehensible. It’s a test for whether anything is out of bounds in today’s GOP.

Greitens’ spot is a tacit call to violence. In it, the disgraced former Missouri governor cocks a shotgun and says, “We’re going RINO hunting” (RINO, of course, refers to “Republicans in name only”). He then joins a group of men dressed in tactical gear storming a house, weapons ready to fire. Greitens enters the house and tells the viewer to “join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

This would be a disgusting, tasteless ad at any moment. Whatever you think of your political opponents, it is never acceptable to implicitly threaten violence against them. But in the current political environment, it’s positively vile.

Political tensions are rising on all sides. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot was at best a terrible protest gone wrong; at worst, it was a serious attempt to undo an election. Abortion rights fanatics are firebombing or disfiguring pregnancy clinics run by pro-life organizations. A man was recently arrested with a gun near Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s home and said he wanted to kill the justice. Throw in the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., and any reasonable person would see that it’s best to cool passions, not inflame them.

But Greitens is no reasonable man. ...

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/21/gop-republican-missouri-senate-race-eric-greitens-rino-hunting-ad-is-out-bounds/