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HomeWRN VoicesThe Capitol Riots Were Horrific. Where We Go From Here

The Capitol Riots Were Horrific. Where We Go From Here

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We are going to call it like it is. That is our mission, expose the truth, regardless of the narrative. This time it hurts. It hurts bad.

The mob at the Capitol did not stand for all conservatives or Trump supporters. We must make that clear.

News flash to all Capitol rioters, conspiracy theorists, riot and cop killer enablers: You are destroying the Trump movement by stripping it of credibility, moral standing and followers. You are spitting in the eye of many who believed in him, including children, and making their lives a lot harder and putting people’s jobs in peril. You’ve played into the hand of elite media and anti Trump people by handing them the stereotype.

No. The Capitol mob did not stand for all conservatives or Trump supporters in America. Yes, we get that many in the media and left will attempt to make it so. Don’t let them. Stand against it. Pick a side, and do it now. As firmly as you can.

The rioters and their enablers, defenders, minimizers, conspiracy theorists, and justifiers are giving the left perceived justification to usher in an era of mass censorship. They are destroying the Republican Party, which they may be okay with, but they have no plan for anything to take its place, which means they are growing the power of the liberals. They are making it much less likely that conservatives will regain power, which means the Democratic Party is likely to change this country in ways they claim to abhor.

Many conservative pundits are pushing conspiracy theories suggesting that Capitol cops conspired with Antifa to set up Trump or to argue that, well, the election was stolen so good for them or to argue that maybe it’s time for violent revolution or to say the insane QAnon movement has a point. That’s not going to age well. Not us. We won’t advance those arguments.

Conspiracy theorists: If Antifa did this, there’s no evidence of it so far. People are being named, arrested, identified and charged who are Trump supporters or QAnon adherents. Watch the live streams. We will continue to review the evidence as it comes in and adjust our views accordingly.

We are going to call it like it is. That is our mission, to expose the truth, regardless of the narrative. This time it hurts. It hurts bad.

Losing the Senate was bad. We should have won it. But Republicans and conservatives were convinced their vote didn’t count because of the president’s quixotic voter fraud claims, so they didn’t vote. We could have recovered from that.

Will the conservative movement and the Trump movement recover from this? Are those the same thing? No, but they overlap.

Here’s the way out.

The conservative movement will recover because we have the necessary policies for prosperity, economic expansion and this country’s future. More than 70 million people preferred President Trump’s policy positions. Not enough people were OK with his personality, although the people who are would probably die for him. We liked a lot of Trump’s policy positions and certainly his Supreme Court picks, but the way he’s handled the last couple months post election has been appallingly counterproductive.

Trump lost despite a majority of Americans saying they were better off now than they were four years ago. He lost despite most Americans watching the left fall off the deep end.  He lost despite all the advantages of incumbency. He lost even as Republicans gained seats in the House and they should have held the Senate. He lost even with the “Defund the Police” narrative.

Trump could have conceded with grace, just found a little more Reagan inside of himself, and run again in four years against Harris and the excesses of the new administration. The GOP could have regained seats in the midterms with the same message. The way Trump has handled the election aftermath has been disastrous, not only for conservatives but for himself.

The way out of this is simple. Stay true to who we are, what our values are, focus on policy differences, and make it clear that we absolutely do not support a braying mob that killed a cop, injured 50 more, smashed windows, desecrated the sacred realm of Congress, and made off with senators’ laptops. If you’re still on the fence at all, go watch the horrific video showing the mob beating and attacking a fallen cop.

We need to better define what our current values are. We need to do a better job of communicating and welcoming minority communities. This means we have to reject violence, conspiracy theories, rioting, and talk of violent revolution. This rejection must be unequivocal.

We have to demonstrate to the black community that conservative values will lead to success and the pursuit of happiness. We must expand on the success Trump had in expanding that base. Go to the grassroots. We have to start with school boards, with local government, with state government, with our prosecutors. We need to circle back to the basics and craft a positive message. If we stay focused on who we are, what we stand for, and what we believe, we can look to the future.

That’s true, as well, of the conservative position on rioting and law enforcement. And we lost that high ground on Wednesday.

The moment the bullet went through Ashli Babbitt’s chest, the Trump movement changed forever. The moment a dedicated law enforcement officer named Brian Sicknick – a military veteran and Trump supporter no less – was smacked with a fire extinguisher and later collapsed and died, the movement changed forever. The Trump movement and its ideologies came to an instant halt.

We lost credibility.

The people who breached the Capitol embarrassed all of us.

We always credit ourselves with being on the high ground; as BLM and Antifa rioted in the streets, burning and killing, we always held the high ground while some on the left and in the media sanitized or even supported their behavior. We lost the high ground.

We understand and are extremely frustrated by the double standard. The media and left downplayed rioting all summer, called it unrest. Rioters got away without even a ticket, and overlooked the burning of a police precinct and small businesses.  We also understand why people are angry about the weaponizing of the FBI; a media that constantly attacked Trump and never gave him a chance even though he did good for the country while president when it comes to policy, such as the economy and job creation; the fears over the increasingly socialist talk on the left; the anger over defund the police, burning of cities, media enablers of that, and the hate directed toward police; the lying to the FISA court; the destruction of Gen. Flynn; the endless attacks on Trump’s children; the mistreatment of Judge Kavanaugh, the endless Russia nonsense that didn’t get its target; the unverified dossier peddled by the Clinton campaign; the insults for supporting Trump and constant attempts to say he didn’t really win in 2016.

However, rioting is wrong. We are better than that. We must be.

The radical extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol, do not represent the Trump voter, conservatives nor Republicans, anymore than rioting by Antifa or Black Lives Matter represent every Democrat. The average Trump voter is your community’s small business owner, local cop, or just a person who believes in law and order, lower taxes, smaller government, protecting unborn life, and less regulation, among other things.

We have not seen enough evidence to agree that the election was stolen by such large margins in so many states. We look for facts. We believe that Joe Biden won the election. Yet saying otherwise did over and over again may have cost the GOP Georgia, and the loss of the Senate will change America.

They’re going to open the borders, let felons vote, let people out and not arrest people. All of that’s going to increase their base. They might make Guam and Puerto Rico states, and that will give them more senators. They will set it up so we can never win another election. There will be vote by mail expansions. If they pack the courts, they will have the courts.

Now it’s time to regroup. To do that, we must go back to the basics. Repudiate rioting and anarchy and violence. Stand for what conservatives have always said they believed in.

As sure as spring is around the corner, the left will overplay its hand now, and when it does, we must be ready.

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