The Good, The Bad And The Tate Reeves, Who Isn't Very Good

Mississippi governor drops unhinged campaign ad.

You might've noticed that we're living through a gun violence nightmare in America, and it's the kind where you want to move but you're paralyzed. That's just the NRA holding you down. There's literally been a mass shooting every day this year. However, Republican politicians still act as if guns are just the coolest things ever.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is running for re-election next year, and he declared his candidacy with a video where he does nothing but shoot people, like the unhinged person who shows up at a bank, hospital, or your child's school.

The Team Tate Twitter account declares, "We're back!" but that's not entirely true: The video actually features Reeves's stupid round face slapped on Clint Eastwood's body from the 1960s spaghetti westerns Eastwood made with director Sergio Leone (known as the Dollars movie trilogy).

 Take a look. It's simultaneously stupid and scary.

“We’re back. #msgov”

— Team Tate! (@Team Tate!) 1683060657 

PREVIOUSLY:

 Only A Sick Culture Worships Guns 

 Mississippi Might Just Oust Gov. Tate Reeves For Elvis Presley* (Technically His Democratic Cousin) 

 Jake Tapper Very Through With Idiot Mississippi GOP Gov. Tate Reeves 

 Ennio Morricone's theme from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly plays as Reeves/Eastwood mashup shoots brown people. Eastwood's "man with no name" (he technically has three) is "inspired" by the protagonist in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo , a "ronin with no master." The "man with no name" is a gruff antihero with a strong sense of justice. These are entertaining movies but a sitting US governor probably shouldn't model himself politically after a sharpshooting bounty hunter.

You can't dismiss the video as goofy fun, a simple "metaphor" for an elected leader who stands up against bad actors (who are all brown). During a campaign rally last week, Reeves cemented the divisive rhetoric. This isn't a political race where opposing viewpoints are debated, and voters make an informed decision about who best to lead them. No, Reeves, like most Republicans today, casts the election as an existential struggle against good and evil.

“My friends, this is a different governor’s campaign than we have ever seen before in our state because we are not up against a local-yokel Mississippi Democrat, we are up against a national liberal machine,” Reeves said Wednesday at his kickoff event in Gulfport. “They are extreme. They are radical and vicious. They believe welfare is success. They believe that taxes are good and businesses are bad. They think boys can be girls, that babies have no life, and that our state and our nation are racist.”

Almost none of that is true. He can't directly challenge his Democratic opponent Brandon Presley, who's perfectly normal and Elvis's cousin, so he whips up his supporters in a frenzy over some diabolical liberal cabal that kills babies.

“They think they can teach all of us Mississippians a lesson,” Reeves went on, perhaps inspired by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's "craven bully's idea of a tough guy" speaking style. “They do not like who we are and they do not like what we believe. They look at all we have accomplished as conservatives and they hate it. They see our progress on education and the economy and they want to stop it. You see, a successful, thriving, growing Mississippi does not work for them, not if it is also a God-fearing, family loving and truth-believing, hard-working conservative Mississippi … They want Mississippi to be the butt of their jokes … They want to kick Mississippi around, and you and me are simply in their way.”

Mississippi is ranked at the absolute bottom for education and health. It's at 49 out of 50 for its economy and quality of life, so maybe that's Reeves's idea of "progress." Or he's just a liar who's not-so-subtly suggesting that fancy-pants liberals and brown people in general are "out to get" decent (white) Mississippians.

Reeves is only 48 but he stands on the shoulders of giant racists. They didn't have any solutions for average Mississippians, but they vowed to defend (white) Mississippians' way of life against "them." Republicans like Reeves still tell their supporters, "You might not have a pot to piss in, but I'll stand up agains those elitists who are laughing at you."

Sad to say, this probably still works.

[ Talking Points Memo / Mississippi Today ]

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