The View tells CPAC speaker to her face that the GOP was taken over by the far-right
March 01, 2022
Co-hosts of "The View" called out guest co-host Michele Tafoya on Tuesday for her participation in CPAC as one of the questioners and speakers, which the women called an example of the extreme right.
Tafoya told the women that she considers herself to be a Libertarian, despite the far-right turn that the GOP has taken.
After playing a clip from the event with the CPAC speakers railing against "woke" culture, Joy Behar nailed them on their cancel culture hypocrisy.
"What gets me is when they talk about the cancel culture as if they're not involved," she said. "They want to cancel LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, 'don't say gay' in Florida, they're burning the books, Liz Cheney. They're the ones who are canceling. And if you read about critical race theory, you might become more woke. Is that what you're talking about? They don't want you to be woke and informed about history. What are they talking about?"
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That's when Tafoya threw up her hands and called herself both a Libertarian and an independent, which are two different parties.
"I'll talk to anyone," she said for why she appeared at CPAC. "I'll listen to anyone. I'm for more voices. I wanted to say listen, take hate out of all this. The cancel culture, true, it goes both directions. Let's be honest about it. All the evils of politics comes from both sides."
The "both sides" argument is often used by conservatives to excuse extremism on the right, particularly when it's violent.
"I feel like there's a huge group in the middle that's being ignored," she continued. "The in-between folks are being told to shut up and listen and we're focused on really tangible issues like how much do I have to pay to put gas in my car, to put groceries on the table? Are my kids going to school unmasked? Things like that matter to us. Safety and security. I live in Minneapolis where the defund the police movement got overturned by a vote in Minneapolis."
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The Minneapolis "defund the police" bill wasn't a law, thus it was never overturned. The long-shot ballot initiative actually received considerably more support than expected.
"I have a question. It seems to me the extreme right is now the Republican Party. The extreme left is not the Democrat Party," Behar said.
Tafoya claimed she didn't agree, "the largest party in America are the independents," which wasn't even a question.
"Then why are 67 percent of the Republican Party all in for Trump?" asked Behar.
"That's at CPAC," Tafoya tried to say, incorrectly.
"No, those are polls we've read," said Behar. The number she cited is from a Pew Survey.
Tafoya, who continued to be defensive about the GOP, maintained, incorrectly, that the stats were from CPAC, so Sunny Hostin pulled out the facts saying that 59 percent of the CPAC audience said they would vote for Trump if the election were held today. She noted that 28 percent would vote for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
"Whether it's Trump, which we've been talking a lot about here, or DeSantis, many of these people are cut from the same mold. It doesn't matter if it's Trump or DeSantis or anyone else," said Haines as Tafoya disagreed, saying there was a "spectrum" with many in between. "Before you go on, I'm one of those in between people. I think the right is following still, whether it's Trump or DeSantis, that's the loudest voices. Whether it's a poll or with what we're seeing in the CPAC leadership, whether the straw poll, they're showing it's Trump or DeSantis that's going to run the party."
Tafoya tried to cite Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but that didn't satisfy Haines either, because she sees them both as far-right.
"I'm not a Cruz fan, I think he's further to the right of even Trump," said Haines. "As we head into the midterms, they almost always switch parties when you have a certain administration -- in the last 19 midterm elections the president's party has only gained house seats once. You're going to see it most likely flip. What I think about what you were saying about the middle and the ends, there's a point there which is that so many of the issues a lot of the left are speaking about are so important, it's the prioritization of where it falls. On the heels of a pandemic, we saw in San Francisco, which is the one that exemplified it the best. The school board was voted out by 74 percent because during a year where they couldn't get their kids in school, the school board was renaming schools."
Whoopi Goldberg cut in saying that everyone wants kids back in school and the conversation was about what is or isn't dangerous at a time that it was killing children. She said she never understood why people were so hell bent on following what Trump said about masks and not wearing them.
Tafoya went on to complain about masks in schools, which Whoopi cut in and said, "but they're being dropped. So, what is there to bitch about?"
See the video below:
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