Below is my column in the New York Post on the growing attacks on Haley Stevens for daring to oppose Abdul El-Sayed as anti-Semitic. The response is all too familiar to Republicans. She has been denounced as mentally unstable and a danger to others in the party.
Here is the column:
Haley Stevens is a dangerous woman. That message is echoing across liberal cable stations and websites. Only recently embraced as the best candidate for the Michigan Senate nomination, Stevens is now being portrayed as unstable and menacing by her self-described friends. Other Democrats launched into sexist attacks or declared her a “traitor” that should be expelled from the party.
Haley Stevens has the misfortune of now being an object lesson for anyone who stands against the far left. They are going to “hoist the wretch” for all to see to deter anyone else standing in the way of the mob. She will not be alone.
As soon as the House flipped, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the expected chair of the House Oversight Committee, posted a two-word message: “Lawyer up.” Rage politics has little room for dissent or compromise. Indeed, with Stevens, the party seemed to become a collection of Madam Defarges knitting names into the list of the walking dead.
After she declared that she would split her ticket and vote for Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed, Democrats across the country declared her mentally ill. Some used the attack literally, feigning deep concern over her safety — the way that you describe a friend found raving on the subway about being probed by aliens.
Lawyer George Conway encouraged her to check into a mental facility immediately. He is, after all, a Juris Doctor.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Md.) explained to CNN in the tone of an intervention that “I have been worried about her all last week. She’s a human being.”
Former Republican Bill Kristol was more direct that Stevens “seems to have had some kind of breakdown or something.”
Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan said that Stevens is “clearly a disturbed, deranged, dishonest woman.”
The left often portrays Republicans as mentally ill, from Barry Goldwater to Donald Trump. Liberal psychiatrists often supply the patina of medical authority. Indeed, after Goldwater was falsely portrayed as mentally unstable in his presidential run, the American Psychiatric Association adopted the “Goldwater Rule” to bar doctors from making such unethical diagnoses of individuals without evaluating them.
The rule was violated during the first presidential run of Donald Trump when he was also declared mentally ill by psychiatrists.
It is a tactic made infamous by the Soviets, who invented conditions such as “sluggish schizophrenia” to lock up dissidents in mental hospitals. Nikita Khrushchev explained that mental illness was the only plausible explanation for anyone who opposed communism.
From the perspective of many politicians, Stevens must be mentally ill to risk everything for mere principle. Establishment politicians have caved to the far-left mob in promising to pack the Supreme Court and calling the defense of our constitutional institutions as mere “nostalgia” or dangerous “incrementalism.” In such company, Stevens looks like an escapee from St. Elizabeths Hospital for the criminally insane.
Other Democrats are turning to sexist attacks, including Democratic strategist James Carville who described her as a “used condom.” Others claimed that she was simply under the influence of her fiancé, Jason Turkish.
Susan Wild, a former Pennsylvania representative suggested that Stevens was just doing what her boyfriend told her to do. She wrote, “All I can say is that any woman who abandons her friends when a new guy comes along is no friend at all.” Journalist Ray Wert said that Steven’s voice “more often than not… is now her fiancé.”
This sexist claim has long been denounced by many on the left as the idea that a professional woman could not reach such decisions on their own.
Stevens notably only made this decision after El-Sayed refused to denounce an anti-Semitic commercial that was supporting his candidacy while arguing that Jews were taking money from Michigan families for food. Not only did El-Sayed tell Stevens not to attend a rally, but in his final campaign speech, he echoed the same basic claim that money was going to Israel rather than feeding Michigan families.
Whether she is insane or just a brainless woman or just a “traitor,” Democrats are calling for her expulsion from the Democratic caucus.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., ominously suggested to POLITICO that action would be taken for “her terrible decision” in which she “isolated herself from the House Democratic caucus. We will have a discussion about appropriate next steps upon our return.”
In higher education, this is all too familiar. Universities have long had a groupthink culture with little tolerance for dissent.
The attacks on Stevens expose the sheer hypocrisy of the “big tent” claims of the Democratic Party. Stevens challenged those very Democrats, like Jeffries, to support the claim. He responded by suggesting that she may be formally expelled for the sin of opposing one candidate over what she viewed as anti-Semitic views.
The result is an entire party that has become a version of Lord of the Flies where children become so deranged by groupthink that they chase a child deemed an outsider around an island to try to kill him. What is missing is the single voice of “Simon”: “Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”…
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
I am a woman. When I finally saw a picture of Senator-elect El Sayed with his wife, I felt fear. She was enshrouded, while still alive.
When I read the quotes in Professor Turley’s piece above, I again felt fear–again, specific to being a biological woman. There it was, back from the dead: That old trope of a hysterical woman unworthy of being listened to. Ha, ha, snicker, snicker. A dog-whistle to misogynists everywhere. And there it was, the Pavlovian wolfpack responding.
The misogynist dog whistle is almost as sure fire among the weak and lazy-minded as blaming Jews for expensive bananas. There is nothing new under the sun.
Are the enshrouders in El-Sayed circle behind this there-is-nothing-old-under-the-sun campaign against Stevens?
Are his supporters are trying to form up an army of big-mouth, lazy-minded scapegoaters?
That Carville contributed his own gendered put-down to the pile-on against Stevens does surprise me. Truly, thought he was better than that. But maybe I’m just being hysterical.