From Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to Donald Trump Jr., it isn’t hard to find far-right MAGA Republicans who are willing to joke about the violent assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi — who, on Friday, October 28, was attacked with a hammer by a man who broke into their San Francisco home. Countless Republicans have been unwilling to call them out, obviously fearing that doing so might offend former President Donald Trump. But one Republican who is speaking out is Doug Heye, former communications director for the Republican National Committee (RNC).

In an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Halloween Day, Heye argues that the “ugly tweets and jokes from some Republicans about the attack on Pelosi’s husband, Paul” have gone way too far. And this is coming from someone who was part of the “Fire Pelosi” campaign during the 2010 midterms, which found Republicans enjoying a major red wave and retaking the U.S. House of Representatives — a political event that then-President Barack Obama famously described as a “shellacking.”

“More and more in our politics, the loudest, angriest, most divisive voices get the most attention and money,” Heye observes. “Real solutions, and the politicians who put their heads down to do hard work, get short shrift. Collectively, we have to lower the temperature. People keep getting hurt. We’re very lucky no one has been killed — and I worry I need to emphasize ‘yet.’”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.