The latest slogan from the left has got to be their craziest (so far): “defund the police.”
There already seems to be a split among pundits on the left, with some taking the slogan literally, and others claiming that it’s more to echo sentiment that major reforms need to be made. In both scenarios the slogan makes no sense. If someone legitimately believes that police are routinely committing abuses, how would paying them less money change anything? And if the purpose of the slogan is to call for reform, their slogan should be “reform the police.”
Do people think that when Republicans say something like “defund NPR” they mean “reform NPR”? Of course not.
Perhaps we will see a rebranding soon, because while support for movements like “Black Lives Matter” has reached a record high, support for (literally) “defunding the police” remains a fringe position, and a fringe position that is becoming even less popular as crime rises in cities nationwide.
According to the latest from Rasmussen Reports:
- 66% of American Adults now oppose reducing the police budget in the community where they live to channel that money into more social services. That’s up from 59% in early June when we first asked this question. Just 23% favor defunding the cops where they live, down from 27% in the previous survey. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.
- Calls for defunding the police are being aggressively championed by the Black Lives Matter movement, but even among black Americans, 57% are opposed to defunding the police in their home community. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of whites and 62% of other minority adults share that view.
- Sixty-one percent (61%) of all Americans believe that violent crime is likely to go up in communities that defund the police. Only 12% think violent crime is more likely to go down, while 20% predict it will remain about the same.
When a policy is this unpopular, we can only be grateful to see Democrats pushing it in unison.
