W Bush praised for reminding that Republicans like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley support terrorism
Former President George W. Bush was praised on Saturday after he "drew a straight line between the 9/11 terrorists and the 1/6 terrorists" during remarks in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
"We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within," Bush said. "There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit."
"It is our continuing duty to confront them," Bush said.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said the "wisdom" from Bush may be the "most important words spoken in his political career."
"Bush's words were an indictment not only of the violent MAGA insurrectionists but also, implicitly, of his party that coddles them and the leader whom the 1/6 terrorists wanted to install by force," Rubin wrote. "Both the 9/11 terrorists and the domestic 1/6 terrorists sought to destroy our democracy in service to a crazed ideology of intolerance."
Rubin noted the Republicans who voted to overturn the election results the same night as the insurrection, essentially voting to let the terrorists win.
"One can only imagine the reaction if, after a foreign attack premised on the big lie, Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the other Republicans proceeded to make challenges to the democratic process based on the same conspiracy theory advanced by foreign terrorists," she wrote. "In every case, had the terrorists been foreigners, we would have labeled their Republican apologists as anti-American, if not traitorous. There is no difference, as Bush pointed out, when the terrorists carry Confederate flags or a radical Islamist flag."
Rubin said it is important to brand the Trump supporters who sought to overturn the election as terrorists.
"Our collective error may have been in refusing to consistently label 1/6 as a terrorist attack and its perpetrators as terrorists. If we do that, as Bush did, we would arrive at a much more realistic — and damning — portrait of today's GOP. The media would be compelled to drop its false equivalence between the parties. We would, in short, reach the inevitable conclusion that today's GOP operates outside of and is a threat to peaceful democratic governance and a multiracial democracy," she argued.
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