With his focus on Baltimore, President Trump has refocused the nation’s attention on the rising crime rates in cities. Could 2020’s election be a rerun of those in the 1960s that focused on reducing crime and reinstating law and order? Pat Buchanan writes in The American Conservative (abridged):
We seem to be drifting back to the 1960s, when crime began to soar and “law and order” began to surge as a national issue.
That issue helped Barry Goldwater capture the nomination from a Republican establishment that had controlled his party for decades.
In 1966, Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan ran as a law and order candidate for governor of California and routed the liberal incumbent by a million votes.
In 1968, Richard Nixon ran as the law and order presidential candidate, which helped him stave off George Wallace and defeat Hubert Humphrey, whose Democratic Party was almost twice the size of the GOP.
In 1988, Democratic nominee Governor Michael Dukakis’s prospects for the presidency vanished when he indicated he would not impose capital punishment even on a criminal who had raped and murdered his wife.
Calling out the liberals who run most of America’s cities for their failure to make urban areas more livable and safe might be a winning issue for Trump in 2020.
Is this where Trump is headed? Is it a coincidence that Attorney General Bill Barr just said he will begin imposing the death penalty?
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