There is no radical Right. And for Democratic Party voters, there is no mainstream Left, either.
Firebrand Tucker Carlson is the poster boy for the radical Right. His fans are far outside the mainstream. They’re the “deplorables”: the alt-right, white nationalists, and so on. Pragmatic politicians should pick positions halfway between Tucker Carlson’s and those of his counterpoise on the Left—say, Rachel Maddow. These middling positions—flowers across the land of the moderates; reeds across the still waters of the independents—will win elections.
That’s what many believe, anyway. But why? The mere existence of polar opposites does not, in fact, imply a virtuous mean. Some people murder a lot of people. Some people murder no people. Murdering some people is not, however, the good or pragmatic thing to do.
Are Tucker Carlson and his fans extremists? Look at his 2018 book, Ship of Fools, for an answer. Carlson’s first chapter addresses the Democratic Party. He argues that it is deeply out of touch with the middle-class American voter. Americans agree. “[T]he Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either [President] Trump or the [Republicans],” the Washington Post reported from a 2017 Washington Post/ABC News poll. “Two-thirds of Americans think the Democrats are out of touch—including nearly half of Democrats themselves,” the Post (no doubt grudgingly) went on to admit.
Just this year in Buffalo, New York, where voters are virtually all Democrats, the Democratic Party lost the mayor’s race. First, the incumbent mayor lost the Democratic Party primary to a leftist. But then, he won the backing of the Republican Party, sought write-in votes for the general election, and handily beat the leftist challenger, whom the Democratic Party leadership stood behind. What else might we call this but a demonstration of the accuracy of Carlson’s assessment of the Democratic Party?
Even on immigration, the issue over which Carlson raises the most ire from the Left, he is no extremist. He makes the case that there should be less immigration. American residents are split. A third think that there should be less, a third more, and a third think that it should stay the same. That’s according to the latest Gallup poll. Yet when asked in the latest Rasmussen poll how many “new immigrants the government should be adding” per year, 74 percent of American citizens likely to vote said a million or fewer, with the majority saying 750,000 or fewer. That’s a smaller number than the little over a million our country has been admitting legally almost every year since 2001, according to official statistics from the Department of Homeland Security.
ONLY Radical Anti-American LEFT !!!!! (DEMOCRAT )
Buffalo turned into a sh1th0le about 50 years ago, when big industry moved out, leaving thousands jobless and starting the endless multigenerational welfare trap it is now.
This reminds me of the days when Mike Dunn, Gary Comegys, Barrie Tilghman and those of their ilk dubbed well-informed city residents like James Trader, Kenneth Holland, Linda Kent, and others “the Dirty Dozen.” They did this to show their disdain for citizen engagement and the idea that elected officials work for the public. These great citizens read and researched and raised critical questions that ultimately exposed the real situation at Salisbury’s waste water treatment plant, misrepresentation of crime statistics, Illegal and questionable contracts, and much more. I wish we had more of them. There is less accountability these days than ever.