For the raging left of America, it was just another day, another couple of incidents – one on CNN, one in a San Antonio Whataburger.  In both cases, the person attacked was put on the defensive.  Shocked by the intensity of the assault and the seeming impunity of the attacker, both victims could do little but search vainly for a comeback.

It may be time to change strategy, but more on that in a minute.

In San Antonio, two teens were peaceably eating burgers and minding their own business at a Whataburger.  As captured on video, 30-year-old Kino Jimenez snatched the MAGA hat off the head of the one teen, grabbed the kid's drink, and threw it in his face.

"You ain't support s---, nigga," said Jimenez as he strutted away.  "This is gonna go great in my f------ fireplace, b----."  

"All right," yelled the teen, regaining his composure.  "Have fun with it."

There will not be much fun to be had in the Jimenez household.  As a result of the video, his employer fired him from his bartending job – this is Texas, after all – and the Green Party of Texas disowned him.  Among the Green Party's "key values" are nonviolence, respect for diversity, and social justice.  Jimenez made the mistake of showing how empty those key values really are.

The second confrontation in question was much more routine.  Thursday on CNN's New Day, prominent black Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson casually assailed President Donald Trump as a "racist" and called out Trump's supporters, including the one sitting next to him, for validating "what are essentially naked raw statements of racism."

Dyson cited no examples for the simple reason that Trump is oddly quiet on the subject of race.  He does talk about immigration, but "Muslim" is no more a race than "Catholic," and "Mexican" is no more a race than "American."  In fact, there is considerably more African DNA in America's gene pool than in Mexico's.

No matter.  It has become so axiomatic on the left that Trump is a racist – as are most, if not all, conservatives – that no examples are needed.  Besides, a recent Quinnipiac poll has 49 percent of respondents believing that Trump is racist.  That number is simply a function of people like Dyson repeating the racism charge like a mantra.

Former Bush appointee Scott Jennings acquitted himself well in countering Dyson.  "I disagree with everything you've said," said Jennings forcefully.  "I disagree with the motives you've ascribed to me."  Still, throughout the conversation, Jennings was put as much on the defensive as was the hat-wearing teen at Whataburger.

For too long, the right has been playing defense.  In 2012, on one specific occasion, Mitt Romney's failure to take the offense cost the GOP and the nation dearly.  In August of that year, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin made an awkward but innocuous comment about rape and abortion.  The major media did what they inevitably do when they smell blood: turn to the serial apologists in the soft center of the Republican Party.

Said Romney, then the Republican nominee, "Congressman Akin's comments on rape are insulting; inexcusable; and, frankly, wrong.  Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive."

Suppose Romney had gone on the offensive and said, "A credibly accused rapist is giving the keynote speech at the Democratic convention in two weeks.  That same convention will memorialize a lifelong sexual predator who allowed a young woman to drown in his car to preserve his political future.  And you want me to denounce a decent, God-fearing man for his inelegant comments about rape?  No, not happening, and if the truth hurts, put some ice on it."

Had Romney forcefully highlighted the sins of Clinton and Kennedy and Democratic silence on their abuses, he could have put an abrupt end to the Democrats' silly but effective accusation of a Republican "war on women."  If Romney had shown some spine, he would be president today, and Akin would be a U.S. senator.

As Akin learned, if not Romney, in politics, it does not pay to enable your opponent's abuse.  At some point, the right has to take the offensive, and the time to do that may be now.  The left is pathologically awash in its own virtue – so much so that it has lost sight of its greatest weakness, its most glaring point of vulnerability – namely, its historic support of abortion.

Scott Jennings could have turned things around on Dyson.  After all, Dyson's talk of racism, let alone child separation, has zero credibility.  For the last 45 years, he and his liberal allies have allowed nearly 60 million American babies to be permanently and fatally wrenched from their mothers' wombs, most for no greater reason than the convenience of the mother or the destruction of the evidence left by a child's rapist.

Speaking of racism, nearly 20 million of these babies were black.  Black babies were nearly three times more likely to be killed than white babies.  For a black child, the womb is the real middle passage.  What has Dyson done with regard to this genocide?  He has enabled it.  He has encouraged the funding of an organization whose founder, Margaret Sanger, is one of the most notorious racists and eugenicists in American history.

Enough with the civility.  If Republicans start calling Democrats "baby-killers" every time a Democrat calls them "racist," I might even start watching CNN.