Republicans tough on Crime, not!
Updated: Apr 11, 2022
Republicans love to pretend they know better than Democrats. They self-righteously decry crime and drugs, falsely blaming Democratic policies for bad outcomes. In the aftermath of the latest shooting in Sacramento, they’re at it again.
Look past the “tough on crime” talking points, however, and you’ll find an interesting fact: Democratic states like California often do far better than many staunchly Republican states on these issues.
Take crime, for example. The GOP presents crime as a simple problem to fix. Just flood the streets with police and impose draconian sentences for even low-level offenses. But there’s a major glitch in the narrative: Republican states tend to have higher rates of violent crime than Democratic states.
“In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden,” according to “The Red State Murder Problem,” a report from Third Way, a Washington think tank. “Eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.”