Will Bunch: The only freedom that matters to today's Republicans is the right to lie
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/gop-disinformation-trump-vance-20241006.html
No paywall link
https://archive.li/yXnb8
If you watched last weeks vice presidential debate between the GOPs Sen. JD Vance and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and tuned out the candidates attempts at Midwestern Nice and the side trips to Hong Kong and all the other distractions, you could actually hear and begin to understand what todays conservative movement is all about.
Again and again sometimes in subtle dog whistles to his right-wing base, sometimes openly and testily and in different ways, Vance kept returning to his essential, core belief. Its that the self-proclaimed experts are not only leading America down the wrong path but engaged in a campaign of censorship, including fact-checking by a biased liberal media, against the everyday people who are trying to share what they consider to be the truth.
And yet over the course of 90-plus minutes, the Ohio senator also revealed that so much of the information that Republicans demand the right to freely share that legal Haitian Americans in Springfield, Ohio, are illegal, that Donald Trump was the savior of Obamacare, that burning more fossil fuels will fight climate change, and finally that theres no answer to whether Trump lost the 2020 election is complete and utter baloney.
This is the essence of the 2024 Republican Party. After spending the last few years waging fierce culture wars against so many fundamental freedoms that matter to Americans from the rights of women to control their bodies to book banning to crackdowns on free speech and voting rights the far-right is advocating for the only freedom that seems to matter to them.
The right to lie.
*snip*