A Bunch of Hooey: Pat Toomey and the Politics of Hate & Fear

Pat Toomey (R-PA) is one of those arch-conservative U.S. Senators, like Rick Santorum, that Pennsylvania periodically elects when Democrats can’t get their act together. Six years ago he proudly wore the Tea Party label. Today, perhaps not so much. Then again, in the new Donald Trump Republican Party, what is the Tea Party? 

That being said, Toomey has proven a reliable vote for today’s Republicanism. In his only modest act of political courage, he partnered with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin in 2013 to require universal background checks for gun sales. This bill failed to pass the Senate in 2013 and again in 2015.

Right now Toomey seems to have placed his support for this legislation on hold. The cynic in me says he hopes to keep the goodwill of Pennsylvanians, who generally support background checks, and gave him an atta-boy for trying. At the same time, he wants to fly under the NRA radar, which organization typically punishes at election time any apostate from the 2^nd amendment orthodoxy.

Other than this brief flirtation with the political wild side, Toomey hasn’t ventured off the conservative straight & narrow. If he’s conceived an original idea about how to make these United States a better place to live, he’s kept it on the down-low.

Which brings me to the real reason for writing this post: Toomey’s recent TV ad, called “Support,” pisses me off, and I want you to know why. You can see the ad at /http://www.pagop.org/2016/03/watch-pat-toomeys-new-tv-ad-strong-support-law-enforcement/. It’s a 30-second ad. I suspect it plays in central Pennsylvania and other “safe” conservative markets.

An attractive woman introduces herself as the wife of a police officer. As such, she expresses her support for Pat Toomey, whom she describes as, “the voice of hard-working law enforcement families in Washington.” Then a stern male voice begins speaking over apocalyptic images of police in riot gear and buildings burning against a night sky, “When rioters destroyed American cities, Pat Toomey stood strong with police…and denounced the riots when others wouldn’t.” Then back again to the policeman’s wife, who explains that Pat Toomey is, “making a huge difference in keeping our community safe.”

Now, if this ad had only included the policeman’s wife and her earnest support for the Senator, I would judge it pretty harmless stuff. Personally I don’t think the Senator plays a large role in keeping my Pennsylvania community safe, however, he thinks saying so will win him votes in November. But there’s a dark side to this ad. Toomey carefully avoids naming or showing “the rioters,” most of whom, we know, so we fill in this blank ourselves, were African Americans. We know this because the well-publicized urban riots of the past two years took place in the poor African American communities of Ferguson, Missouri and West Baltimore, Maryland. Neither community, by the way, lies within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  

The ad’s message is simple: us versus them, good cops versus bad (black) rioters. And if we listen to the police officer’s wife carefully, there’s the subtle hint that without Toomey’s stalwart support these rioters would soon be at our doorstep. 

But context is everything. In both cases the riots grew out of community-wide protests against earlier actions of the police, which had caused the deaths of two young black men. 

While the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson was exonerated, the U.S. Justice Department found the Ferguson police and local courts had systematically violated the civil rights of its black residents through unconstitutional stops, searches, and seizures, the use of unreasonable force, and the use of law enforcement to generate income for city coffers.

In West Baltimore the police arrested Freddie Gray for no apparent reason other than running away from them, and he later died in the back of a police van. His death was determined to be a homicide and six police officers are charged with 2^nd degree murder.

But Senator Toomey’s cynical ad ignores all this and plays to our basest fears. In this he shares a lot with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who paint pictures of fanatical Muslims in our midst and depraved Mexicans crossing the southern border.

As my wife says, it’s all a bunch of hooey. 

In both cities we had examples of lousy policing. It’s not an either/or thing, where the cops are good, and the rioters are bad, or vice versa, it’s bad policing. Bad policing that caused or contributed to the death of two young black men. Bad policing that soured the relationship between police and the community, so that when something goes badly—such as the shooting of Michael Brown—the community doesn’t give the police the benefit of the doubt.

If we vote for politicians who preach hate and fear—even in Toomey’s gentrified form—it’s pretty much guaranteed we’ll end up hating and fearing each other. That’s not how we build a better America.