One hundred and sixty-one years ago, in retaliation for a blistering speech against slavery, Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a gold-tipped cane on the Senate floor until he was unconscious. The unapologetic Brooks (“Every lick went where I intended”) audaciously resigned his seat, and then was promptly re-elected in the subsequent special election, proving his constituents had his back.
Northerners were appalled, but Southern newspapers leapt to Brooks’ defense. The Richmond Whig hailed the caning as “a most glorious deed”; the Examiner said Sumner “ought to have nine-and-thirty [lashes] every morning.” The shocking attack, and the South’s fulsome embrace of it, became a rallying point for the abolitionist movement and fueled the rise of the nascent Republican Party.
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck has long warned that a polarized America would eventually suffer another violent and divisive “Charles Sumner moment.” Last June he said, “Mark my words. It will be someone like Ted Cruz or Louie Gohmert that gets the cane to the head. It will be a self-righteous progressive that will beat a liberty person almost to death.”
.. And he earned the approbation of President Donald Trump, who interrupted his trip to Italy to hail the “great victory in Montana.”
.. America’s already destabilizing political polarization has only gotten worse since November.
.. Gianforte’s solid win makes Trump’s election seem like less of a fluke. Trump encouraged beatings of protesters and was caught on tape bragging about groping women. .. But maybe we should be contemplating the awful possibility that perhaps he won because of it.
.. Gianforte didn’t win in spite of his violent outburst. He channeled a rage against the media that Trump routinely stokes. “You’re lucky someone doesn’t pop one of you” one Gianforte voter told a CNN reporter on Election Day. A caller to Rush Limbaugh’s show from Billings insisted, “If every Republican candidate in the country picked up a reporter and threw him to the ground, it would increase my chances exponentially of voting for them.”
.. It’s about time that people started sticking up for our side. If enough of this happens, those reporters are gonna learn to back off a little bit.” Keep in mind that the question the Guardian’s exceedingly polite Ben Jacobs asked was about Gianforte’s reaction to a CBO report.
.. The largely college-educated scribes are treated, fairly or not, as representatives of a cultural elite that sneers at working-class whites who lack bachelors degrees.
.. Those who thought some economic populism and down-home folksiness would bridge the cultural divide got a rude awakening on Thursday night.
.. Republicans still yoked him to coastal liberalism.
- After a report that Quist had once performed at a nudist colony, one super PAC ad snarked, “He’s not interested in Montana values. He’s more interested in Hollywood values.”
- He was also hit hard for not always paying his taxes, which Quist futilely tried to explain was a result of financial troubles following a botched surgery. But even that was treated as evidence of his ties to national Democrats: “Can you trust Quist and Pelosi with your money?” charged another super PAC ad.