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Karl Rove scolds GOP, Trump supporters in blistering Jan. 6 Op-ed: ‘What if the other side had done it?’

January 6, 2022 | | Print Article

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Longtime GOP operative Karl Rove has become the latest “hero of the resistance” thanks to a one-sided op-ed he wrote in which he pondered how Republicans would have acted had left-wing extremists rioted at the U.S. Capitol …

Published in The Wall Street Journal, the piece is titled “Republicans’ Jan. 6 Responsibility.” It centers on the alleged “apologists” on the right who refuse to condemn the Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol, though Rove tries to make it sound as if the vast majority of the GOP fits into this group.

“These apologists say those who stormed the Capitol were innocent patriots, tourists visiting the seat of the national government to petition their elected representatives peacefully. We’re told that these harmless, ordinary Americans are being persecuted as political prisoners,” Rove writes.

“[L]ast year there were several thousand protesters willing to use force to disrupt Congress in its constitutional duty to receive and certify the electoral vote. Some went to Washington with that purpose in mind. Others were swept up in the moment’s savagery, led astray by stronger wills with dangerous motives.”

Rove then goes into great detail about how many police officers were assaulted, what sort of tactical gear the rioters had been wearing, the sorts of criminal acts the rioters had committed and just exactly how many rioters have been charged.

“So, on this anniversary, here’s a simple thought experiment: What if the other side had done it? What if in early January 2017, Democrats similarly attired and armed had stormed the Capitol and attempted to keep Congress from receiving the Electoral College results for the 2016 presidential election?” he adds.

Rove then proceeds to describe how he believes Republicans would have acted before concluding with the following: “There can be no soft-pedaling what happened and no absolution for those who planned, encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy. Love of country demands nothing less. That’s true patriotism.”

This piece has gone viral among left-wing blue check marks for what seem like obvious reasons.

To be clear, the vast majority of Republicans have condemned the Jan. 6th riot, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who this week referred to it as a “terrorist attack.”

But unlike Democrats, Cruz was also willing to condemn the deadlier, more costly Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, particularly the “terrorist assault” on Lafayette Square that’d forced the Secret Service to take then-President Donald Trump to a bunker for safety.

Unlike Republicans, on the other hand, Democrats didn’t condemn the violent Inauguration Day riots that erupted across the country, including in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20th, 2017.

The Daily Caller notes that during the Inauguration Day riot in D.C., “police arrested more than 200 rioters,” “four businesses underwent ‘significant damage’ due to vandalism,” “six police officers sustained minor injuries” and “one limousine was torched.”

Yet to this day, it seems Democrats and their allies in the establishment press continue to whitewash the violent riots of that eventful day.

Just this past weekend, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos claimed that supporters of failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton never took “the same action” as the Jan. 6th rioters.

Dovetailing back to 2016, the day after Trump’s inauguration, singer Madonna made her infamous remark at the so-called Women’s March in D.C., about how she’d “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

This remark was also never condemned. In fact, during that same nationwide event, albeit this time in Boston, a sitting Democrat member of Congress urged the crowd to “fight back.”

“We can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back. Me, I’m here to fight back,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

These examples, among many more, likely explain why Rove’s column is being greeted by the GOP base with skepticism, hostility and even animus.

Case in point:

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

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