Running as Victims of Twitter Won’t Win the GOP Any Votes

Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk, is dripping out internal discussions showing how the company censored the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Yet Republicans hoping for a smoking tweet that wounds Democrats are in for disappointment — and a reminder that no outside event is going to win elections for them.There are black eyes for many on the left in journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter thread itemizing the “extraordinary steps [taken] to suppress the story,” including “posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe’” and blocking it from “direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.”Twitter employees called the policy “f—ed,” and Congressman Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, emailed the company’s lawyer worrying it would “invite more backlash than good” for the Biden campaign. Other elected Democrats “complained that the companies are inept” at regulating speech, declaring “the First Amendment isn’t absolute,” a point Mr. Taibbi calls “chilling.”Conservatives celebrated as if each example is redeemable for a McRib sandwich — or better yet, a Senate seat in Georgia. But in the absence of criminal behavior, expect Democrats to dismiss the story as old news, covered in March 2021 by the former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, who called the incident a “mistake” and is held innocent in the thread, all censorship “freelanced” without his knowledge.The embarrassment may spur Big Tech companies to think twice about policing speech and House Republicans may investigate or even pass a bill, but such legislation can’t violate the First Amendment. Twitter is a private company free for the most part to do as it wishes.That doesn’t change because, as Mr. Taibbi tweeted, it “was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation” giving them “more channels … to complain,” or because — according to a Pew Research Center survey — just 69 percent of its users are Democrats versus 26 percent Republicans.Twitter is founded by, staffed by, and donates to Democrats, so why be surprised that it jumped to squelch a Republican October Surprise? As journalist Finley Peter Dunne’s caricature Mr. Dooley said in 1895, “Politics ain’t beanbag.”Yet Republicans wait around for a scandal to sweep them into power, just as they counted on Mr. Biden’s unpopularity to deliver a red wave last month. It’s the same conventional wisdom that holds America needed the disaster of President Carter to get the greatness of Reagan.This myth ignores that the California governor came within a whisker of unseating the Republican incumbent, President Ford, for the 1976 nomination, and beat both Mr. Carter and an independent candidate, Congressman John Anderson of Illinois, four years later.Reagan didn’t sit around waiting for his opponents to lose the White House. He went out and worked hard, honing his skills, building a record of governing success to win office outright not by default.Thinking Republicans need something like the Twitter Files to win accepts that the natural order of things is Democrats governing, with the GOP only getting the ball when the other team fumbles. But would Vince Lombardi tell his players that the only chance they have is if the opposing quarterback breaks a leg?“The object is to win,” Lombardi once said, “fairly, squarely, by the rules, but to win.” The morality part, we should all know by now, doesn’t carry over into politics, yet Republicans act as if the Twitter Files are an aberration, forgetting past examples of dirty politics.Take Senator Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who in 2012 claimed that “an extremely credible source” told him that Senator Romney, the GOP presidential nominee, hadn’t paid taxes in a decade. Called on it three years later, Reid said, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” a remark reported under the Washington Post headline, “Harry Reid Lied About Mitt Romney’s Taxes. He’s Still Not Sorry.”Running as victims of dirty tricks makes for good fund-raising and whips up the base, but it won’t win any votes. The Twitter Files are just the latest evidence of Republicans facing an uneven field. It’s high time they develop a game plan to deal with it, because they’re not going to score any touchdowns playing bean bag.____________This article has been updated from the bulldog.

Running as Victims of Twitter Won’t Win the GOP Any Votes

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