Phony Conservative on Charlottesville: “This is the Republican Party on Display”

Kurt Bardella appeared on MSNBC Saturday to smear the entire Republican Party with the white nationalists protesting in Charlottesville, Virginia. Bardella spoke with host Joy Reid before the violence at the rally surged to another level with the tragic car crash that took place later in the day, but similar sentiments echoed throughout the liberal think-o-sphere even after that horrific murder. So we can assume safely that Bardella feels that, even when a jackass like James Alex Fields decides to run his car through a crowd of people, he is still in some way representing the Republican Party and conservatism in general.

What’s (slightly) insane about this is that Bardella is himself a Republican. Hold on – not just a Republican, but a Republican who used to be employed by Breitbart News, which is one of the most popular right-wing outlets on the internet. Bardella has split from the party and the site with the rise of Trump, and he now makes his living (apparently) by regularly bashing both the president and his former employer whenever one of the left-wing cable news outlets give him space to do so.

On Saturday, Berdella said of the protests: “This is the Republican Party right now that’s on display. Donald Trump’s Republican Party. And if they don’t want to be tied to it, if they don’t want to be associated to it, then people like Mitch McConnell, Speaker Paul Ryan, John Thune, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz – anyone who proclaims to be a leader who doesn’t want to be associated with this type of hatred and racism, bigotry and ignorance – they need to speak out right now loud and clear.”

Of course, before the day was out, everyone named had spoken out against the violence, including the president Bardella hates so dearly.

“Frankly,” he continued later, “the Republican Party needs to change its philosophy on a lot of things to prevent this type of stuff from happening. A lot of their policies are racist. When they talk about incarceration over drug treatment, that targets minorities pure and simple.”

Wow. Because minorities, what? Just can’t help themselves when it comes to taking drugs? Who’s the racist again?

We’re not going to condone anything that happened in Charlottesville this weekend (including, quite frankly, the removal of the statue), but we’re no more excited about seeing the Republican Party become the vehicle for leftist policies than we would be in seeing it become the vehicle for white supremacism. Hopefully, no matter what thinly-disguised liberals like Bardella thinks, they can find a way forward that promotes neither.