The Maine delegation sign at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Jennifer Shutt/ States Newsroom)
For Maine Republicans, calls for unity following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump mean an end to doomsday rhetoric surrounding another Trump presidency.
At the same time, Republicans in Maine and across the country are blaming President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and Democrats’ characterizations of Trump for the recent shooting — though the motivations of the shooter have not yet been determined.
“That is a reminder again, to me, to be careful, to not vilify people,” Maine Sen. Lisa Keim (R- Oxford) said, “and to recognize that we have to keep politics as politics.”
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders and marginalized groups say Trump’s own words and the Republican Party platform contributed to the current climate of increased violence, that also pose a threat to their lives and health.
“Violence has no place in politics, period,” said Bev Uhlenhake, chair of the Maine Democratic Party. “We will continue to debate the ideas, present our vision for the future, and hold elected officials accountable for their policy agendas at the ballot box.”
Members of Congress condemn violence after shots fired at Trump rally
The state of democracy has been a point of focus for Maine Democrats, including Gov. Janet Mills, who said the night of the first presidential debate that democracy is on the ballot in November, as well as common sense and civility in the White House.
While calls for unity have come from both sides of the aisle since the shooting, political science experts are wary they will sustain, in part because of contrasting views on what such unity looks like.
“There’s obviously a difference between criticizing someone on policy over criticizing someone on rhetoric,” said Mark Brewer, who chairs the political science department for the University of Maine. “Policy I think is obviously much more substantive, and it’s what a lot of people say they wish these debates would be about — let’s get away from the name calling and the mud slinging and the fear mongering and just focus on policy differences.”
But, Brewer added, “American politics has never been all policy and substance.”
A focus on rhetoric
Minutes after Trump became the official Republican nominee, Josh Tardy, who is one of the two Maine representatives on the Republican National Committee, described the tone at the convention as one of high morale, optimism and hope.
“I think everybody’s coming into this convention with profound thankfulness that President Trump was not assassinated,” Tardy said, “and empathy for the victims.”
On Saturday, a gunman shot at Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, injuring him and two others and killing an attendee. The FBI killed the shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was registered as a Republican, according to Pennsylvania voting records.
Calling from the convention in Milwaukee, Tardy told Maine Morning Star that he hopes both Trump and Biden’s campaigns will refocus election discussions around policy issues in light of the assassination attempt.
“I think a call to bring down the temperature was much needed,” Tardy said.
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Both Democrats and Republicans in Maine have rejected political violence following the shooting.
“Please join me in praying for the health and safety of former President Trump, those who attended his rally today, and our country,” Democratic Gov. Janet Mills wrote on X. “There is absolutely no place for violence in our politics – none.”
Maine’s congressional delegation and Trump-backed U.S. House candidate Austin Theriault, who won the GOP primary to challenge U.S. Rep. Jared Golden for Maine’s 2nd District, have similarly condemned political violence. State Senate and House Republicans joined these calls for solidarity, too. House Republican Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor implored, “Let us not allow a would-be assassin’s bullet or heightened political vitriol to destroy our freedoms and set our nation on a permanent path of destruction.”
Back in Maine, Keim, who serves as assistant Senate minority leader in the state Legislature, said that the shooting underscored for her, “there are enemies of America, but they aren’t Biden and they aren’t Trump.”
“We just have political differences,” Keim added, “and that type of rhetoric just needs to get toned down and a call for unity needs to be a call for speaking about people as valuable individuals to our nation, valuing life and making sure that our political differences remain in a conversation about politics, not about persons.”
Finger pointing continues
While calls to tone down rhetoric grow, at the same time, Republicans are placing blame on Democrats.
“The rhetoric that they’re using, he’s a public enemy, basically, that’s how they vilified him,” Keim said, “and here’s a response to that vilification.”
Trump’s vice presidential pick, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who Trump announced on Monday, also took to X following the shooting to allege that Democratic messaging led to the violence.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Keim characterized doomsday rhetoric about Trump as overblown. “People that are already mentally on the edge hear this exaggeration of what is really just natural and normal political differences being phrased in dangerous rhetoric that causes some people to become unhinged,” Keim said.
There is no evidence that Democrats’ rhetoric led the shooter to commit violence as the FBI is in the process of investigating what happened as well as the suspect’s possible motivations.
Brewer, the political science professor, said this sort of thinking glosses over the history of political violence in America.
“It’s difficult, if not overly simplistic, to draw a straight line from rhetoric talking about the existential threat that some people think Donald Trump represents to American democracy to an assassination attempt on Trump’s life,” Brewer said. “I myself would not make that connection.”
He added, “What I would say is we are in a time in American politics of incredibly high tensions, and have been for some time. And, this is not the first time this has happened in American politics. Political violence has a long history in the United States.”
Political violence has been trending up, particularly right-wing political violence, and hate groups and the Republican Party have also become increasingly intertwined since Trump’s presidency began in 2016.
“In this particular presidential race, we’ve got a candidate who’s a former president who, at least in the eyes of some, incited an insurrection on the United States Capitol,” Brewer said. He added that Trump also “regularly endorsed violence on behalf of his supporters. He’s hinted at violence against those who oppose him. He’s implied violent retribution.”
Biden says ‘bullseye’ remark about Trump was a mistake but defends criticism
Brewer said that does not mean the left should be off the hook for contributing to rising political temperatures. He cited Biden’s recent back peddling on a remark he made in a private call with donors days before the shooting that Trump should be put “in a bullseye.” In an interview on Monday, Biden argued that he meant to urge Democrats to focus on Trump’s actions, rather than criticism of his debate performance.
While Biden said he did not intentionally use violent rhetoric, he did not apologize or back down from his criticisms of Trump as a “threat to democracy.”
Republican critiques of rhetoric about Trump being a threat to democracy echo the recent stance taken by Golden, considered a moderate Democrat, who wrote in an op-ed earlier this month that he refuses “to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system” — a view that Democratic lawmakers and community leaders told Maine Morning Star minimizes threats to human rights and freedoms.
This pushback was also seen at the convention in Milwaukee, where hundreds of protesters gathered on Monday, advocating for the rights of Palestinians, immigrants, women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people. Protestors pointed to Trump’s rhetoric, adopted by the Republican Party, as contributing to the climate of increased violence and posing a threat to their lives.
Election impact
It’s unclear whether the assassination attempt will have a lasting impact on the election outcome.
Tardy and Keim both argue it will amplify support for Trump, and Brewer said it is seemingly playing to his immediate benefit.
However, Brewer said historic precedent is not clear cut, given the differing circumstances of the last time a former president was shot while seeking re-election, Theodore Roosevelt, who did not secure the office in 1912.
For one, Roosevelt wasn’t running as a major party candidate, Brewer said. And, American society was different.
“One thing that I think needs to be pointed out is that we still have a long ways to go before Election Day,” Brewer said. “I think a lot of people are thinking, ‘Okay, this tragic event happened. Now, we’ve got this convention and the end is almost here.’ Well, the end is not almost here, right? We still have months to go and months in campaign time is the equivalent of years in regular time.”
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The post Blaming Democratic rhetoric for shooting, Maine Republicans join call for unity appeared first on Maine Morning Star.