Just when you think Kentucky Republican bigwigs couldn’t get any more classless, one takes a gratuitous swipe at a top Democrat, and another cusses out a liberal on national TV.
No sooner did Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman toss her hat in the ring for the 2027 gubernatorial primary than GOP AG Russell Coleman snarked on X, “A respectful reminder: Jacqueline Coleman isn’t my sister. She’s not my ex-wife. And she will never be Kentucky’s Governor.”
Recently, CNN all-MAGA-all-the-time commentator Scott Jennings proved he can be just as publicly profane as the prez he so admires. Adam Mockler from Meidas Touch was on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip. When Mockler pressed Jennings on a question about Trump’s Iran war, he snarled, “Get your f---ing hand out of my face.” (Mockler was gesturing with his hands but nowhere near Jennings’s mug.)
Jennings, a founding partner of a Louisville PR firm, grew up in Dawson Springs, also the hometown of Gov. Steve Beshear, Andy’s daddy. Say what you will about our current gov named Beshear, he practices what he preaches about the need for more civil discourse, declaring in his 2023 inaugural address, “Together, we will not meet hate with hate, or anger with anger, or even frustration with frustration. Instead, we will continue with the same love, empathy, and compassion that has guided us through so much.” Yet, all such bread he has cast on the water toward Republicans has gotten soggy and has sunk.
Kentucky politics has always been a contact sport. Hard hits — but clean hits — were expected on the stump. Politicians who trafficked in venom, vitriol, and pointedly personal attacks usually didn’t get very far.
These days, boorishness and bullying are the rule, not the exception, in Republican ranks, and not just in Kentucky.
“You can call it the Trump effect,” said Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer Bill Straub. “He says all these nasty things, and they feel entitled to do it thereafter.”
It’s worked so far,” said Murray State University historian Brian Clardy. Trump won his second term going on two years ago, and the GOP still rules the roost in the Lege. The bulge is 80-20 in the House and 32-6 in the Senate.
Trump practices “the art of the smear,” according to author Steve Almond. He pegged Trump six years ago in a post on Cognoscenti, the “essays and ideas” part of WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio station: “Trump’s only real ‘strategy’ as a political actor is to smear his opponents. This was obvious before he even announced his candidacy, with his racist birther claims against Obama, and it only grew more flagrant during the primaries. Rather than coherent policies, Trump specialized in unhinged attacks on his rivals and juvenile nicknames (you’ll recall, ‘Lyin Ted,’ ‘Little Marco’ et al.).
He’s turned up the wick since, and the MAGA faithful in Congress and statehouses are gleefully following. “Presidents set the tone for the country,” Clardy said. “They come into our homes every day on TV or in print.”
Trump’s tone, he added, is loud. “It’s crass, and it’s boorish. He is obnoxious and unapologetic.”
So are Stivers, Coleman, and thousands of other Republican office-holders nationwide and TV talking head toadies like Jennings, he said. “They take their cue from Trump. They feel that a lack of decency and decorum is a winning strategy. Their base feels the same as they do. They are as unhinged as Trump on social media and in the public square. They are a cult, and cults have never ended well in history.”
Clardy figures the attorney general cheap-shotted the lieutenant governor “because she’s a woman, and he feels he can disrespect a woman.”
Straub, an online Northern Kentucky Tribune columnist, said Trump has set the course for MAGA Republicans to follow, on both his policy and “how he acts and carries on. It’s a cult, and they are following their cult leader.”
A veteran journalist in Kentucky and Washington, he conceded that society has become coarser, ruder, and cruder. “But Trump broke the dam. Now people feel they can get away with saying anything about anybody. Certain segments of society will be repelled by it, but to others it is an everyday thing.”
Almond also wrote that “elections are supposed to be contests of ideas. The candidates are supposed to set out a coherent vision of what they hope to accomplish. How are Americans struggling, and what might the federal government do to alleviate that struggling?
“This may sound self-evident. But I defy you to find a single speech in which Trump has offered a coherent and sustained policy solution to any of the many problems facing our nation. His speeches amount to a laundry list of grievances, smears, and fear tactics meant to whip up his super fans.”
Since Almond had his say, Trump’s cruelty and crassness has worsened exponentially. So has the copycatting from MAGA media stars like Jennings all the way down to minor league MAGA pols like Stivers and Russell Coleman.
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