What explains the nearly total takeover of Black Lives Matter?

A big part of the answer is that Republicans, especially in the days right after the Floyd video went viral, surrendered. The pushback to the inevitable riots and destruction of America was slow to commence and only slowly began to gather steam after the White House was besieged. Those of us who spoke out against it from the beginning of it were very alone in those early days.

The Monmouth poll shows that a lot of progress has been made from the growing resistance, particularly by President Trump, to BLM.

The shift in public opinion on racial discrimination over the past month appears to be driven almost entirely by partisanship. Among self-identified Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party, 40% say discrimination is a big problem. This represents a 14 point drop from a few weeks ago (54%) as well as from 2016 (55%) and is more in line with this group’s opinion in early 2015 (43%). The poll also finds that 35% of Republicans say racial discrimination is not a problem, which is higher than all prior Monmouth polls on this question (15% last month, 17% in 2016, and 26% in 2015).

The rest of the country, it goes without saying, is in horrendous shape. But you shift political opinion by first waking up your own people and then pushing beyond them. That’s how the Left has always done it. The extremely slow and uneven pace of GOP pushback allowed the Left to take over and dominate the rest of the public. Even now, AG Barr falsely claiming that the police are racist, sends mixed messages that are destructive and that help the Left dominate this debate.

There have been much smaller shifts among Republicans and Republican leaners. Currently 48% of GOP identifiers agree and 48% disagree that BLM has brought attention to real racial disparities. This opinion stood at 40% to 52% in 2016. Also, 10% of Republicans currently say BLM has made racial issues better and 67% say the movement has made them worse. This opinion stood at 4% to 73% in 2016.

So there’s still plenty of work to be done among Republicans, educating them about BLM’s hateful agenda.

Republicans are much less likely to say that the underlying anger of these protestors is fully justified than they were a month ago (from 40% in early June to 18% now), 

There’s progress because there’s been pushback from President Trump, FOX News, and conservative media. The important thing to remember is that when you cede the field, the Left wins. And it will use its victory to wage war on this country.

Never cede the battle to the Left. Never.