Yarmuth: McConnell is wrong. Not Everything is the Democrats' fault, not even crime spikes

I haven't spoken to Mitch McConnell about the rain on Oaks Day, why it took nine months to recognize Mandaloun as last year’s Derby winner, or why nobody bothered to tip us off to Rich Strike’s superpowers. But after reading his op-ed last month in The Courier Journal—and knowing him for more than 50 years—I can tell you with certainty his explanation for all three. Those darn Democrats! That's because Mitch will take any calamity and blame Democrats no matter how laughable. In-laws overstayed their welcome? Baby has colic? Leaky basement? Democrats, Democrats, Democrats!

The truth is crime has gone up in an alarming way. But the suggestion that this is in any way a Democratic problem is 100% false and McConnell knows it. For example, in 2020 (the last year with complete data), Republicans' favorite liberal bogey city of San Francisco had 128 fewer murders than Jacksonville, Florida, a smaller city with — you guessed it, a Republican mayor. In fact, Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco had a lower murder rate than Kevin McCarthy's nearby Bakersfield, which also has a Republican mayor.

Read Mitch McConnell's op-ed here: It’s time to get serious about crime and give Kentucky safer streets

To take McConnell at his word, this is a liberal big-city problem. How then does he explain that rural crime is up double digits year over year with Trump-voting states holding a horrific 40% higher murder rate per capita than Biden states — led by Mississippi with a rate five times higher than New York and nearly four times that of California? Only Mitch McConnell could blame Democrats for the murder rate in Mississippi.

The same week that McConnell published his op-ed on law and order, he said he would support a presidential candidate who he himself called "practically and morally responsible" for inciting a violent mob to try to overthrow the U.S. government, a man who covered up the murder of a U.S. journalist, extorted Ukraine's president, and has victimized so many people in such obviously craven ways that he's barred from operating a charity in his home state. McConnell cares nothing for law and order, only partisanship and power.

More: Morgan McGarvey, Attica Scott weigh in on crime, inflation and more at Louisville Forum

Mitch didn’t cook up this crime story himself, of course. It’s a carefully crafted message that’s been refined by Republican pollsters in Washington and will be shipped out to conservative candidates in congressional districts and states across the country. He’s just giving it a test run here in Kentucky. Between now and November you’ll see much of the same rhetoric McConnell used finding its way into 30-second campaign ads plastered across our televisions and on those glossy, too-big mailers that clog up our mailboxes. It’s a message he hopes might return him to power in the mid-term elections.

While rural towns are experiencing the same crime spikes as urban centers and Trump states are suffering far worse with Republican leaders than blue areas run by Democrats, there are places that don't have murders as we know them across the country: Virtually every other developed country in the world with common sense protections to keep firearms from flowing freely to the ill-equipped and malicious.

If Mitch wants to reduce violent crime, he more than any single person in the country has the power to make protections from gun violence as bipartisan in Washington as they are in the rest of the country. So many Americans have needlessly died for Republicans' refusal to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them, I'm not sure how Mitch can sleep at night. But I'm sure of this. If he can't sleep, he'll find a way to blame Democrats.

John Yarmuth, a Democrat, is a U.S. representative from Louisville.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Yarmuth: Mitch McConnell is wrong. Not Everything is Democrats' fault