The Types of Criminals That Republicans Love
Greg Abbott Pardons a Convicted Murderer to Prove His Conservative Bonafides
One useful frame to think about Republicans is Wilhoit’s Law: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”1
There’s a specific type of Republican who wants a legal system that protects them and their individual rights, but that can be abused to punish outsiders.
Governor Abbott’s Political Pardon
Yesterday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardoned convicted murderer Daniel Perry. Perry shot and killed a Black Lives Matter protestor in July 2020. The fact pattern of the murder is damning, and worth reviewing in detail.
Prior to driving down to the protests, Perry sent a variety of racist text messages ‘joking’ about how he wanted to kill protesters:
In May after the George Floyd murder, he texted a friend “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
Several days later, he texted a friend “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment.” The friend and Perry then had a conversation about how they would go about shooting protestors to conserve ammo, with Perry saying “I will only shoot the [protestors] in front and push the pedal to the metal.”
In June, he again texted his fantasies about murdering protesters: “I wonder if they will let my cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me”
He joked “To bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe” on Facebook the year prior.
In the months prior to the murder, Perry had a lengthy back and forth conversation about a Seattle man who shot a BLM protestor, where he discussed tactics for ensuring that he could maintain a self defense claim in the event he ever shot a protestor.
There’s more, those are just the most glaring examples. You can read them all in the court’s filing.
Then, in July, he drove into downtown Austin as an Uber driver. He saw a crowd of protesters, honked at them, and then drove directly into the crowd. One member of the crowd, Air Force veteran Garrett Foster, was legally open carrying a gun. Daniel Perry shot him five times through the car window. Perry claimed that Foster raised his weapon, though all other witnesses disputed this.2 Even with Texas’s strong self defense laws, the case was open and shut.
The jury unanimously convicted Daniel Perry of murder, and the very next day Governor Abott promised to expedite a pardon before the judge had even decided on a sentence. Perry became a conservative cause célèbre, with pundits like Tucker Carlson3 calling on Abbott to pardon him.
Big Picture
This isn’t the first time Republicans have rallied around a white guy who shot a protestor. Kyle Rittenhouse rode his murder trial into right wing fame, getting a chance to meet Donald Trump and make regular appearances on FOX News and the TPUSA event circuit. Matt Gaetz offered him an internship while the trial was ongoing and Paul Gosar challenged Gaetz to an arm wrestling match for the right to have Rittenhouse as an intern, while Lauren Boebert challenged Madison Cawthorn to a race to see who would get to have him.4
This is weird behavior! Conservatives — who have long campaigned on a law & order tough on crime platform — are bending over backwards to welcome criminals into their ranks, and protect them from the consequences of their own actions.
This apparent contradiction only makes sense when you remember that Tough On Crime only applies when other people do crimes. Wilhoit’s Law: for conservatives, the law is a tool to protect themselves, and to punish others outside of their group. See also: conservatives rushing to defend all of Trump’s crimes.
Housekeeping Notes
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Weirdly, Wilhoit’s law was not first formulated by the political scientist Frank Wilhoit who wrote about Southern conservatives. It was first formulated by some other dude named Frank Wilhoit in the comment sections of a minor political blog.
Perry’s story about this has changed — in his initial police interview, he said that he fired before Foster could aim at him, contradicting his later story that Foster raised his gun. Either way, Foster’s gun did not have a bullet in the chamber and the safety was on.
Sidebar: it’s kinda fun that we never hear about this guy anymore after he lost his FOX primetime slot and pivoted to longform twitter video. No one watches longform twitter video.
Yes, she made a bad taste joke about Cawthorn’s use of a wheelchair.