Against the Tennessee Lie

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

 

In the New York Times, Thomas Edsall follows much of the rest of the media and lies through his teeth about what happened in Tennessee last week. Then, for good measure, he lies about what happened in Florida last year, too:

 

At the same time, Republican leaders are showing a growing willingness to disempower both Democratic officials and cities run by Democrats if they defy Republican-endorsed policies on matters as diverse as immigration, abortion and gun control.

 

The expulsion of two Black state representatives by the Republican majority in Tennessee received widespread publicity this past week (one has already been reinstated by local officials and the other may be soon). But their expulsion, as spectacular as it was, is just the most recent development in a pattern of attempts by Republicans to fire or limit the powers of elected Democrats in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and elsewhere, including Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision in August 2022 to suspend Andrew H. Warren, the elected Democratic state attorney of Hillsborough County, who had signed a statement saying he would not prosecute those who seek or provide abortions.

 

This isn’t true. The two Democrats who were expelled in Tennessee were not expelled for choosing to “defy Republican-endorsed policies.” They do that every day as legislators and private citizens, as is their right. They were expelled because they broke the rules of the legislature and they ground all legislative business to a halt.

 

Edsall’s dishonesty is typical of what the press has done since the story broke. Politico described the move as “a boisterous protest.” NPR described it as “a raucous protest.” ABC reported that the issue was that the legislators were “participating in a gun control protest.” They weren’t. These are corrupt euphemisms, designed to lionize people who were engaged in the sort of anti-democratic mob behavior that, until about five minutes ago, we were all being encouraged to condemn. The expelled lawmakers were kicked out because they led a mob onto the floor of the House, disrupted regular order, and, in one case, shouted at their colleagues through a bullhorn. Those are the facts. One can think that their punishment was too harsh. One can think, as I do, that their punishment was appropriate. But one cannot wave away what happened by pretending that it was a mere “protest” of the sort one might expect to see in the streets of Nashville. There is a reason that Thomas Edsall wants you to believe that the Tennessee GOP kicked out the two lawmakers because they had chosen to “defy Republican-endorsed policies,” and that is that Thomas Edsall knows full well that to report what actually happened is to make those whom he is defending far, far less sympathetic. As a rule, people who have strong cases do not need to lie about them.

 

One can see the same trick in Edsall’s second lie, which is that “Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision in August 2022 to suspend Andrew H. Warren, the elected Democratic state attorney of Hillsborough County, who had signed a statement saying he would not prosecute those who seek or provide abortions” represents a desire to “fire or limit the powers of elected Democrats.” Andrew Warren was fired because he was a state attorney who had vowed that he would not enforce state law. In suspending Warren, DeSantis explained that “State Attorneys have a duty to prosecute crimes as defined in Florida law, not to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on his personal agenda.” This is not a controversial position for DeSantis to have taken. On the contrary: it is the foundation of our entire political order. The law is the law, and those who are entrusted with enforcing it are expected to do so without reference to their own preferences. The Florida Constitution empowers the governor to remove state officials who are guilty of “neglect of duty,” which Andrew Warren had promised to be. In any other context, what happened here would be obvious to Edsall. It would be obvious if we were discussing Kim Davis, a Kentucky clerk who, in 2015, stated that she would not abide by the Obergefell decision. It would be obvious if we were discussing any police officer in the United States. It would be obvious if we were talking about state officials in the 1960s who had announced that they would not enforce desegregation orders. There is no Thomas Edsall exception to the rule of law.

 

As a temporary political matter, I suspect that progressives are winning this cycle. Via sheer force of will, the press has managed to turn the anti-democratic actions of two disruptive lawmakers into a heroic tale of bravery, protest, and integrity, and to do so on such a scale as to have rendered that judgment as the conventional wisdom. I expect that, for the rest of my life, I will be told about the time that Republicans in Tennessee expelled two lawmakers for disagreeing with them. In the long term, however, I believe that the media’s decision was a poor one, if just because it has reminded many conservatives that progressives — and the press, but I repeat myself — do not actually believe in anything. For the last two years, Americans have been told — correctly — that storming into legislative chambers and interrupting their work is “undemocratic” per se, and that, if we do not want to see more of it, it must be punished wherever it happens. For the record, I agree — and have agreed — very strongly with this proposition. And yet, the moment — the very moment — that a couple of lawmakers whom the media likes chose to invite a mob into a legislative chamber and to deliberately interrupt its work, the moral poles were reversed and it was those who objected who were deemed to be “undemocratic.” This is Calvinball. It is cynicism. It is a nihilistic disgrace. And, in the long-run, it will prove to have been a tactical mistake.