The terrible Republican response to a shooting — and the Democrats who helped it along

On Monday, a mass shooter opened fire at an Independence Day parade in the affluent northern suburb of Highland Park. Six people were killed; dozens more were injured. Other celebrations in suburbs like Evanston were cancelled.

I live in Chicago, some 30 miles away, but inevitably we know people who were there and had to run from gunfire. Other acquaintances dutifully marked themselves safe on Facebook. We spent the day, as the search for the gunman went on (the suspect is now in custody), wondering if he would strike again, and how close. The constant bang of explosions in our (generally quite safe) Polish/Hispanic northside neighborhood felt less and less celebratory, and more like a weary comment on a nation that seems to love guns more than life itself.

In response to the shooting, the Republican candidate for Illinois government went out of his way to make it clear that he does in fact hold life cheap. Only two hours after the attack, with the shooter still at large, State Senator Darren Bailey said, “Let’s move on and celebrate the independence of this nation.” He added, apparently at random, “We have got to get corruption and evil out of our government.”

Bailey’s comments are almost a parody of GOP insensitivity and cruelty. They also showed why Illinois’ Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker put millions into making sure Bailey would win the Republican primary.

Boosting Bailey to a position where he can add to the grief and horror of shooting victims doesn’t seem like a great choice. But given the radicalization of the Republican party, it’s also understandable that Democrats try to highlight opponents like Bailey, who don’t try to hide what the GOP has become.

Bailey is a downstate farmer from a town called Xenia who became a state senator in 2018. He gained notoriety for his opposition to Covid mitigation measures when he sued Pritzker (unsuccessfully) to end a state-wide lockdown order. Later, he was ushered off the floor of the legislature for refusing to wear a mask.

Bailey’s opponent in the primary, Richard Irvin, positioned himself as a moderate. He refused to say whether he voted for Trump and avoided anti-abortion rhetoric. Bailey, in contrast, has received Trump’s endorsement. He also benefited from Democratic ads characterizing him as “100% pro-life” and “too conservative for Illinois”. Those messages were designed to lift his profile among Republican primary voters.

Elevating radical, unpredictable candidates like Bailey — or like election-denying GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania — carries a risk. Their irresponsible rhetoric can cause pain in itself, as Bailey’s did following the shooting.

Worse, if they win, radical candidates are in a position to do great harm. The Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 talked about plans to help Donald Trump win the Republican nomination. It’s not clear how much the Clinton campaign actually did or whether their efforts affected the Republican primary outcome. But in retrospect, helping Trump get within striking distance of the presidency looks like a very bad idea, to put it mildly.

The problem in a post-Trump world is that “serious” Republicans may speak in more reasonable tones, but with a very few exceptions, they don’t actually behave much differently than hardcore MAGA.

As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein says, the mainstream Republican party refuses to distance itself from extreme positions. With the exception of a handful of politicians like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, Republican politicians won’t denounce Trump’s participation in a violent coup to overthrow the 2020 elections. And even those politicians embrace voter suppression laws. They also endorse a rogue Supreme Court that is tearing up precedent on abortion rights, federal environmental protections, and voting rights with little accountability or conscience.

On gun control, some Republicans in the Senate did compromise on a mild bill that closes a loophole allowing gun sales to abusive unmarried intimate partners and implements tougher background checks for people under 21. But no sooner did that bill pass than the Republican majority on the Supreme Court declared a sweeping expansion of gun rights, making it much more difficult for localities to regulate guns in public spaces. The court’s decision suggests that it may expand gun rights even further if given the opportunity.

The Supreme Court, helmed by supposedly respectable and responsible conservatives, has embraced maximalist gun rights extremism. The brutal toll of mass shootings — over 300 in 2022 so far — doesn’t appear to trouble them in the least. Based on a tendentious reading of the Second Amendment, they’ve decided that everyone should have guns, no matter the body count.

Callous gun extremism is the position of the Republican party as a whole and Republicans in power will promote it. Some, like those on the court, will do so with long-winded arguments. Some others will simply and clumsily make it clear that they don’t care when people are shot. Democrats understandably prefer to run against someone who alerts voters to the cruelty of his opinions openly, rather than against someone who is better at hiding it.

The thought of a Darren Bailey in the governor’s office in Illinois as abortion rights, voting rights, and LGBT rights are under threat nationally is nightmarish. But the thought of any Republican in office right now isn’t a lot better.

Pritzker elevated Bailey because Bailey accurately represents the radicalism, incompetence, and cruelty of the current GOP. The hope is that Illinois’ Democratic-leaning electorate will see that face and be repulsed. It’s a reasonable strategy in an environment where a rapidly radicalizing GOP has left Democrats with few good options. We’ll see if it worked in November.