Dr. John Lott’s news article at the National Review starts this way:
The Democratic party has clearly put itself in the position of being the anti-law-enforcement party. On Friday, Hillary Clinton told the 335,000-member National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) that she won’t even bother applying for their endorsement.
Although the FOP has traditionally leaned Republican, its endorsement has never been a sure bet. The FOP endorsed Bill Clinton in 1996, and declined to endorse either President Obama or Mitt Romney in 2012. But this is the first time that any major-party presidential candidate has refused to even ask the police for their endorsement.
There is more to this than simply Hillary Clinton knowing that Donald Trump is certain to get the FOP’s endorsement — not even applying for the endorsement is an open “snub” of the nation’s police.
The FOP Presidential Candidate Questionnaire actually contains a lot of union-related questions that should be in the Democratic party’s wheelhouse. All four legislative priorities listed at the beginning of the questionnaire, and then repeated in the section on “Employees’ Rights Issues,” are purely union issues: exempting police from having to participate in Social Security, providing salary and retirement benefits to all Federal law-enforcement officers, guaranteeing the right of public employees to engage in collective bargaining, and guaranteeing procedural rights in any police disciplinary proceedings.
Collective bargaining for public employees isn’t something that Republicans generally support. But it has never been a problem for Democrats.
It’s the second set of questions — “Criminal Justice Issues” — that presents a real problem for Democrats. For Hillary Clinton in particular; she has promised to cut the U.S. prison population by over 50 percent. The FOP, on the other hand, wants: . . .
The rest of the piece is available here.
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