
In today’s Republican Party, you have to toe the party line. You have to play by their rigid, uncompromising rules or you have to pay. Let me give you an example.
Today, a New York Republican congressman, Chris Jacobs, whose district in a Buffalo suburb near the grocery store where 10 Black residents were killed in a mass shooting a few weeks ago, has abandoned his campaign for re-election after his support for a federal assault weapons ban caused a GOP backlash.
Jacobs, serving his first term in the House of Representatives, stunned fellow Republicans by embracing a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines. Jacobs said, “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something.”
It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him. There was an intense backlash from party leaders, who started pulling their support of Jacobs. A local gun rights groups doxed him by posting his phone number and address on the internet. And he was subjected to a “forceful dressing down” from Donald Trump, Jr. Ooh!
Rather than backing away from his support for a federal ban on assault weapons, Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign. Imagine, a Republican politician with a conscience and scruples. No wonder his party is shunning him.
This situation demonstrates that Republican Party officials and activists will not tolerate any deviation whatsoever from their lawmakers on gun policy, despite broad support for gun safety measures by Americans.