You may have felt a sense of déjà vu when Elise Stefanik, the House’s fourth-ranking Republican, recently declared: “There can be no negotiations with self-proclaimed Hamas terrorists and their sympathizers.” Her words echoed George W. Bush’s dictum during the Second Intifada that “no nation can negotiate with terrorists.” Except the “terrorists” to which Stefanik referred are 18-year-old college students protesting the murder of aid workers and the starvation of children in Gaza.
This rhetorical drift demonstrates how desperately Republicans have turned gotcha melodrama into a campaign strategy. First, they forced Columbia University’s president to testify before a performative hearing. Next, in a form of political entrapment, that testimony helped spark student protests, which GOP politicos have since blamed, ever so predictably, on President Biden. Now, they’re passing dangerous, virtue-signaling legislation—like a so-called antisemitism awareness bill that would, in effect, enable the government to rescind federal funding from universities that permit student criticism of Israel—all so they can squeeze out a few histrionic attack ads.
This right-wing fearmongering about peaceful protests at home has, of course, served as a distraction from the actual atrocities happening abroad. And it’s also happened to overshadow several major domestic achievements that the Biden administration has rolled out in recent weeks.
