Republicans Promise To Run On Fake Issues In Midterm Races

Republicans secured a major victory in Virginia this week by running on an issue that doesn't actually exist: The teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. And after the election, Republican strategists made it clear that they are going to use that same formula next year in the midterm elections across the country. They have nothing real to run on, so they make up fake problems and offer voters a reprieve from something that doesn't exist. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

So we got to talk a little bit about Tuesday's election specifically. What happened in the state of Virginia? When a Democrat, a former governor Terry McAuliffe lost his race by huge margins to a conservative Republican Glen Younkin, who was endorsed by Donald Trump. The Yuncken campaign made that gubernatorial race about education, about parents' rights, to specific issues, emerged mask mandates and school closures because of the pandemic. And more importantly, the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia, that was a huge, huge talking point for Younkin and other Republicans. They made people afraid that we were teaching our kids about racism in school. Oh God. Right? The audacity of us teaching actual American history and how racist things have been in the past. That's just a fact, that's not a theory. That's not a conspiracy. That's what happened. And if you're denying that you're denying the very history of the United States and parents were furious.

They don't want their kids taught these things they wanted out of the schools. The only problem is that these parents didn't recognize critical race theory is not taught in any schools in Virginia. The Republicans ran on a nonissue. They made you afraid of something that doesn't actually exist and you fell for it. You voted for it. White, suburban women overwhelmingly flipped to the Republican candidate because of this. And they did it because of their framing. They created this issue, critical race theory out of nowhere. And Republicans have been talking about it for months and months and months. It's again, it's a, non-issue, it's a thing that should be taught. But public schools here in the United States are not actually taught critical race theory. Okay. That is a collegiate level thing that you get into that has many different facets of it. It is a very complicated and complex theory that I'm sorry, K through 12 children simply cannot wrap their brains around most of them.

So it's not taught in public schools. It's taught at the university level. If you even go that route in your studies, but Republicans made parents afraid it was a total, total grift, but it's a Grif that worked. And now after seeing the success in Virginia, Republican strategists are coming out and saying, we're doing that nationwide for the midterms. And they've already laid the groundwork to do it nationwide. I mean, Fox news has covered critical race theory, uh, more than pretty much any other other issue. This year, they've run over a thousand segments on it. This year, a thousand frigging segments. I got two YouTube channels. I haven't even done a thousand videos on idiot Republicans this year. And that's what it is. They've laid the groundwork. They've made people afraid of a thing they don't even need to be afraid of. And of course that they can't even define.

They don't know what it is. How Tucker Carlson on the air last night admitted. He doesn't know what it is. He just doesn't want it taught. There were interviews. The group book called the good liars did interviews with Republican voters in Virginia, asked them what it was. Cause they said it was their most important issue. They couldn't even define it. In instances like that had been happening all year. People talking to voters, what is critical race theory? You're so concerned about it. Tell me what it is. Well, I don't really know. And that's the point. Republicans don't want people to know what it is. They don't even want them to know that it's not actually being taught. They tell people, be afraid of this thing because if my opponent wins, this thing is going to be a real thing. But if you vote for me, I will keep the fake thing fake. And the idiot voters in this country look at the Republicans as Joella, you know, I don't want the fake thing to be real. So I'm gonna vote to keep the fake thing fake. Even though the fake thing was not going to become real voters as a whole are stupid. And we have to understand that. And we have to accept that. You know, I hate to quote men and black here, but the movie men in black, Tommy Lee Jones character, one point says a person is smart.