Op-Ed: After a bad showing in the midterms, what story are Republicans telling themselves now?
The first time I met my son, he was a toddler in an inflatable plastic bouncer with a bright red face and a pink nose.
In a year or two, he would be in a yellow one, and his skin would be the colour of lemon meringue pie. Then there would be a purple one — for Halloween.
Every time I see him play with his children, I am saddened by this constant juxtaposition of children with adults.
I am not the only one. In 2014, Pew Research Center revealed that 70 percent of adults felt children should be separated from teenagers.
The social justice warriors on Twitter and Facebook (and every other social media outlet) have a field day with these adults who think children are worth the same as adults.
I’m not going to sit here and judge anyone who disagrees.
What I will say, however, is that if this is the message Republicans are sending to the voters in their districts, they need to rethink it.
Republicans have found a much better way to tell their voters what to think.
In the age of social media, it is far easier to send a message than to keep on messaging your core base without them knowing you’re sending it.
In the past, Republican politicians could hold the line on these divisive issues without alienating their base.
But thanks to social media, that ability to communicate to their base is no longer there.
A couple of weeks ago, a Republican congressman from South Carolina tweeted that he was happy that he was ‘free from the fear of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack’.
‘Facing an attack on my life is not something that I’m afraid of,’ he tweeted. ‘I will do everything in my power to defend my life.’
In an hour later, he was out of office.
The message in social media is simple: ‘Go to hell, you crazy people, because