Republicans Think They Can Ride Moral Panic Nonsense To Midterm Success

Across the country, conservatives are freaking out about non-issues like Critical Race Theory, books that deal with LGBTQ issues, and transgender athletes. None of these issues actually have any impact on their lives, as most of them aren't even real things that are happening around them. But they managed to ride these issues to success in this year's elections, and the issues have only become more intense in the weeks that have followed. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening and why it is so effective for Republicans.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republicans have decided on a strategy for the 2022 midterms and it is to run on what is called, moral panic. And the moral panic that we're seeing emerge right now is panic over things that don't actually exist, at least not in the way that Republicans think they do. The panic is over books that depict homosexuality and abuse, critical race theory being taught to your child in elementary school and of course, transgender athletes coming in and having a competitive edge. These things aren't real problems here in the United States. I hope everyone watching this understands that. We are not and have not ever taught critical race theory to elementary school students. As far as I've seen, critical race theory is not a part of any curriculum anywhere here in the United States for K through 12 students. Even the ideas that come with critical race theory, those are college level ideas that it takes a more mature mind to fully wrap your head around. We're not teaching it to kids that are just learning to color their shapes.

But Republicans were able to convince parents that they were and they won in Virginia because of that issue. Sure, there's a couple other things that played some, some factors in that, but mostly it was the critical race theory thing. And then of course we have the new crusade that has emerged in the week since then, oh, these pornographic books, as Texas governor Greg Abbott calls them and they're not actually pornographic. They're books that talk about LGBTQ issues. Some fiction, some not. They deal with issues of abuse, issues of assault and they're available in some high school libraries. And some of them, the pornographic images they say they contain, are actually depictions of Greek vases, or vases, however you want to say that. But yeah, it's, it's ancient Greek vases, pictures of them, that depict sexual acts because apparently thousands of years ago, we weren't as prudish as we are today. We all know why that happened. But anyway, that's the pornographic image they're talking about. Hell, I took four years of Latin in high school.

Trust me, we saw a lot worse, not just on the vases, but anyway. These moral panics are completely fabricated. They're made up. But Republicans use these because this is their new culture war, this is how it has evolved over the years. They tell people you gotta be afraid of this thing. Democrats love the thing, but it's a bad thing. It's bad for your kids and we're just trying to protect your kids. Don't you want to protect your kids? That's how they sell this. And ironically, of course, this is coming from the same party that literally doesn't want to protect kids from things that would kill them, you know, they don't want to keep the guns out of the schools by enacting stricter gun control laws. And of course they don't want them to wear masks in school, actually banned that in several states. So when they have the opportunity to actually protect the lives of our children, they say, nope, screw it. Not going to touch it. But when it comes to protecting them from ideas that for the love of God may actually open their minds to other experiences, suddenly it's a moral panic and that's how the Republican party wins.