The Republican Party’s official response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew criticism for one moment in which the party’s message appeared to clash directly with reality.
Iowa Gov Kim Reynolds delivered the GOP response moments after Mr Biden’s address on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress ended. In her remarks, she directed attacks against “many prominent Democrats” who she argued “still want to defund the police”.
Those remarks would ring true against state-level progressive lawmakers who have pushed for funding for law enforcement agencies to be cut and redirected to community service organisations, but rang hollow on Tuesday against the president who moments earlier had made headlines by taking on the left wing of his own party and forcefully made his own case against such policies.
“We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police, [it] is to fund the police” and provide them with better training and hold them to greater accountability, Mr Biden had argued during his address.
His remarks earned him the ire of progressives like Rep Cori Bush, who fired back on Twitter.
“With all due respect, Mr President. You didn’t mention saving Black lives once in this speech. All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result? 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings,” noted the St Louis-area congresswoman.
Republicans have long sought to hang the rhetoric of progressives around the neck of the president as the issue of funding for law enforcement remains one of the most divisive issues in America and has led to both parties feeling similar political pressures.
Mr Biden has largely escaped that criticism which progressives have faced from conservatives as his administration has remained on-message with support for law enforcement as well as accountability for misconduct.
The president has even sought to return fire against Republicans on the issue by tying funding for law enforcement to the Covid-19 relief bill that passed on party lines last year, giving him the opportunity to claim that the GOP voted against increasing funding for local law enforcement simply for political gain.
Other Republicans like Rep Lauren Boebert tried to make the criticism stick on Tuesday as well, despite Mr Biden’s words.
“Is the entire Democrat Party going to act like they didn’t just defund and demonize the police for the last 2 years?” she tweeted, though few municipalities have actually gone through with such efforts and no effort to cut federal funding for law enforcement has made any serious traction.
Calls from progressives to defund the police come in response to shocking stories and images of police shootings of Black persons, including children, that have sparked widespread anger and demands for reform of America’s law enforcement agencies.
The shooting of a 22-year-old Black man in Minneapolis at night on a no-knock warrant has reignited some of those calls, as did the chilling video of the killing of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that led to Mr Chauvin’s murder conviction last year.
