Christ, get it through your head, I am not saying the BSP want the criminals to stay. They don't.

My issue is that the BSP are not mentioning the criminal exception in their bloviating, thus inflaming the issue, as intended I should add.

Sorry - I was confused, then, by your OP. Where you imagined that a Blue State Politician was asked not about mass deportation generally, but specifically asked about the criminal exception. And then imagined that when specifically asked about the criminal exception, the BSP would say that they did not support the criminal exception.

Sounds like you agree that such a scenario would not play out that way, and that if directly asked about the criminal exception the BSP would of course acknowledge their support of the criminal exception. If your problem is that the BSP's standard stump speech doesn't explicitly call out the exception....well, yes, but I think it's because they feel like most people would understand in good faith that of course they're not talking about convicted violent criminals being protected from being deported. Talking about the strawman argument just promotes and gives visibility to the strawman argument.