What to Make of Trump’s Prison Reform Pitch?
Nov 19, 2018
RUSH: The president also… Apparently somebody has decided that one of the ways going forward for the president to, well, win election and reelection in 2020 and to maybe steal an issue from the Democrats is prison reform.
There is a new prison reform bill, and there… (sigh) I don’t know. I’ve got mix emotions. I have no problem with prison reform, don’t misunderstand. But as a mechanism to steal things away from the Democrats, I don’t know. I’m gonna have to think about this. Dawn, how many people do you talk to in the course of a day, week, month, who start complaining about prisons to you? (interruption) Zilch, zero, nada. Me too. But then, of course, you and I are not from the prison community.
I mean, I don’t know anybody in prison, do you? Have you ever been to prison? (interruption) Well, yeah, for depositions. But, I mean, you never been sentenced to prison, right? (interruption) Neither have I. So what’s the issue is in part, not toto, is a mechanism whereby it is thought that Republicans can take African-American votes away from Democrats. And, believe me, I am all for that. I just don’t know that that is the primary road that needs to be traveled.
I mean, if we’re gonna talk about switching, if we’re gonna try to talk about appealing to various groups of people to leave liberalism, socialism — if we’re gonna try to convince people that they are destroying the country and their own families by supporting various leftists and Democrats — I just don’t know that prison reform is the way to do it. But it might be. I mean, the left wants the felon vote. They just got it in Florida. For some reason, the left thinks all convicts are Democrats.
I wonder why the left thinks that. Why does the left think that all prisoners are liberal Democrats or will vote for liberal Democrats? Why do they think that? But even if we get all the felon vote, that’s not the… I know that’s not what this is about. But the reason I’m not crazy about it is some of the lingo the president himself is using is left-wing lingo in this thing. And some of the things that he’s acknowledging about prisons and the criminal justice system sound a lot like certain things that certain Democrats say about it.
Look, I understand the need to get Democrat votes and I understand the need to get crossover votes and I understand the need to appeal to a broader cross section, and I understand the temptation of being able to steal 10 to 15, maybe 20% of the African-American vote from the Democrats. It would be crippling.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/11/19/what-to-make-of-trumps-prison-reform-pitch/
