Didn't Do It

The news of the day is that Paul Pelosi, husband to Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, was attacked in their home in California by a conspiracy theorist. The political class was quick to offer verbal condemnations of the battery.

GOP Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., reacted to the attack, writing he is "disgusted to hear about the horrific assault on Speaker Pelosi's husband Paul," adding: "Let's be clear: violence has no place in this country."
Home intruder yelled 'Where's Nancy?' before attacking Pelosi's husband, source says

Unfortunately, this view is not as widely held as one might like it to be.

A majority (56 percent) of Republicans support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life. Forty-three percent of Republicans express opposition to this idea. Significantly fewer independents (35 percent) and Democrats (22 percent) say the use of force is necessary to stop the disappearance of traditional American values and way of life.
After the Ballots are Counted: Conspiracies, Political Violence, and American Exceptionalism

And this is, in part, because people for whom violence is the answer when it comes to preserving "traditional American values and way of life" are often (potential) voters, too. Unless, that is, they're currently incarcerated for some impromptu preservation work, or ex-convicts in several states. And while some of the people who support use of force against those they see as enemies of the version of the United States they understand themselves to be entitled to would walk away from that position if the politicians they preferred came out strongly against it, many of them would simply look for new politicians to prefer.

It's that threat of lost votes, and lost offices, that mean that while people like Representative Scalise can be quick to stand up and speak out against violence directed at fellow House members, for a lot of Republicans (and likely some Democrats, too) tend to avoid talking about it unless there's been an incident that they feel the need to distance themselves from. (Like this one.)

But once one moves away from the political side of things, it's a different story. I know someone who a fairly devout follower of Donald Trump's brand of Republican party, and I mentioned to him that this was something of a bad thing for the Republican brand. Because even though people like this tend to be a bit too mentally ill to really described as partisan, the overly political nature of the attack would reflect badly on the party as a whole. He was having none of it, insisting that David DePape, rather than being someone who had gone off the rails, was actually a Liberal operative, who attacked Mr. Pelosi as a "false flag" operation to make Republicans look bad.

It's this sense, of being a member of a group that is on the correct side, and therefore incapable of any sort of wrongdoing, that grinds the conversation about political violence to a halt. Rolling Stone reported that Fox News sought to blame the attack on the Biden Administration and Speaker Pelosi herself, pointing to Democratic divisiveness and being "soft on crime." While seemingly absurd, it's a rational strategy for a media outlet that's built its brand on a certain level of partisan loyalty, and is expected to display that loyalty regularly.

It remains to be seen if this something that weighs down the low-propensity voters that Republicans are going to need, especially if they plan to retake the White House. But it offers and interesting view into the workings of the American political ecosystem nevertheless.