An independent campaign to draw GOP Rep. Mike Pence into the 2012 presidential race is under way, with a veteran of the Reagan White House launching a petition drive on Monday urging him to enter the primary contests.
Ralph Benko, a deputy counsel to Ronald Reagan, announced the America’s President Committee to encourage a Pence-for-president bid. Former Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., is also helping the campaign to collect signatures from conservatives and tea party activists.
“Mike Pence extraordinarily exemplifies the optimistic, pro-growth, pro-job creation Reagan-Kemp wing of the GOP. Grass-roots conservatives, Republicans, the tea party and populists are looking for a man or woman of principle who can champion and unite the newly energized and engaged citizenry,” Benko said. “Mike Pence is the best choice to lead us into a new era of peace and prosperity.”
You can sign the petition here:America calling Mike Pence…. You are the Conservative Champion. We call you to Serve.
I wonder if he’s waiting to make a dramatic announcement, there?
Others potential 2012 candidates who accepted invitations: Romney, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Richard Cohen, who’s been with the Washington Post since 1968, had to throw in some obligatory digs, even as he defended Palin’s usage of the term, “blood libel” on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” :
He’s absolutely sure the hapless redneck, Palin, had never heard of the term, “blood libel”, didn’t know it’s history, and it was only through dumb luck that she even used the term appropriately. Why would some dumb snowbunny from ALASKA know the meaning of “blood-libel”. Only people on the coasts have enough knowledge of history to have heard of such an archaic term.
Byron York is rethinking Obama’s much lauded Tucson speech. Even conservatives have been swooning in its wake, because the President of the United States didn’t take the moonbat bait, and blame conservative rhetoric for Jared Loughner’s shooting spree.
But as York asks, how could he?
By the time Obama spoke, there was irrefutable evidence that shooting suspect Jared Loughner was deeply mentally ill and acted out of no recognizable political agenda. Obama simply could not have made the case that Loughner’s acts were in any way the product of political rhetoric from right or left.
He didn’t need to. The point Obama wanted to make was not that political rhetoric caused the violence but that such rhetoric — like, for example, criticism directed at Barack Obama — should be toned down. So even as he conceded that rhetoric did not cause the violence, Obama argued that it should be muted anyway. And he cloaked his appeal in so much emotionalism, in so many tear-jerking references to the recently departed, that some in his audience might not have noticed he was making the political point he wanted to make all along.
Read his entire piece.
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Tammy Bruce’s first impression was the right one. As “uncivil” as she was in making her case -she was 100% correct, and she had every reason to feel appalled. We all should.
Why is it that whenever conservatism is on the ascendancy – we are chided by the left to tone it down? We saw it happen in the ’90′s when conservative talk radio was on the rise, and we’re seeing it today with the tea party movement.
“Be civil”.
When the the left is losing all the arguments, what do we hear?
“Be civil”.
As Rush Limbaugh said on his show, Friday; “civility” is the new word for “shut up”.
We are brow-beated by the most uncivil of civilians. We are told to “watch our tone” by people who look the other way when conservative leaders are threatened, or verbally abused in the most obscene and unspeakable terms, or hung in effigy. How many leftists have been willing to defend Sarah Palin against the Tucson blood libel? Most have instead, attacked her for using the term, “blood libel”.
For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”
Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.
Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.
Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.
The left suddenly wants civil discourse.
Bite me.
The left wants to play games of semantics.
Bite me.
The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.
Bite me.
There is grown-up work to do now. Liberals ran up the federal credit card, destroyed the American medical system and undermined the rule of law — which is the foundation of capitalism — with a bunch of unconstitutional fiats from the president and his bureaucracy.
The economy is a mess. The president “inherited” a 7.6% unemployment rate. It’s now 9.4% — after we spent a record $787 billion on a stimulus.
I was not consulted on that stimulus. I had a very good argument against it. I said the money supply was too large and printing more money would fail. I said let the economic downturn run its course.
Lefties were too busy celebrating the 2008 election to listen.
When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.
Your civility, for decades, has to been to tell us that we are stupid. To mock those who speak for our views. To paint anyone who believes as we do as being stupid, ignorant, and hateful. You have poured scorn, derision, and condescension upon us with the obliviousness of those who never gave a thought to what they were doing. Any attempt at a dialogue which doesn’t require those on our side to start with a premise that you are correct on any of these characterizations has been met with a vehement ”Shut Up!”, and now, after days of engaging in savage slander and blood libel, now you wring your hands, and speak softly of civility, either as again, trying to control the speech of others, or in hopes of being treated with greater restraint than you and yours showed me and mine since Saturday morning?
Go to Hell.
Your orgy of hate and blame that started before the bodies even hit the floor of that Tucson Safeway last Saturday revealed everything important to any who still had doubts about who you really are. And I’ll be damned if I’ll be silent and polite about the people who I think are the real danger to America. Especially after they pantsed themselves in front of the country last week.
Here’s what I’ll do: I will continue to love my country and obey its laws as I always have. I’ll continue to not hang people in effigies, or wish death or destruction on anyone. I will continue my political dissent against the Obama regime, and I won’t shy away from words like, “Socialist” to describe it. I will also call far left nutjobs, “moonbats” when I feel it’s warranted. And it will be warranted.
If the past week has proven anything to me at all, it’s that liberalism/leftism really is a mental disorder.
MORE:
Bloggers who are politely declining the the left’s invitation to engage more civilly:
Of The Father’s Love Begotten (Corde Natus Ex Parentis):
A Christmas meditation on the Incarnation set to the 11th c. tune ‘Divinum Mysterium’ and the hymn ‘Of The Father’s Love Begotten’ that sings praises to the ‘Logos’, the Eternal Word. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not….and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory (the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Close your eyes, and enjoy:
Of the Fathers love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!
At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!
O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Saviour of our race;
And the Babe, the worlds Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!
This is He Whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord, evermore and evermore!
O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!
Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honour, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!
The left’s new poster boy for the anti-tea party narrative is a guy named Eric Fuller, a 63 year old disabled veteran who was one of the unfortunates injured during Jared Loughner’s shooting spree, last Saturday. Here’s what he had to say about the shooting in a Democracy Now! radio interview:
“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Fuller says.
“Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled,” Fuller ranted on, “senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls.”
That’s the first time I’ve seen John Boehner linked to “Murder Incorporated”, the scary, gun totin’, Constitushun-loving cabal of sub-moronic hicks led by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in the far left’s fevered imaginations.
To the casual observer, Fuller’s rantings would seem disgusting, disgraceful, and a bit unhinged. But don’t question him – the left’s new icon has “Absolute Moral Authority”.
Shooting rampage victim arrested at ABC-TV town hall meeting
The theme of the event was “An American Conversation Continued” – the idea being to continue the conversation that a madman’s brutal rampage had interrupted. So it was inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to politics. It did, toward the end, with Amanpour leading a discussion on a very touchy but obvious topic: gun control.
That’s where the atmosphere turned tense. When Tea Party representative Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that Fuller finally rose, took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”
When State Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson) rose to explain and clarify current and proposed gun legislation in the state, several people groaned or booed her. One of those booing, according to several witnesses, was Fuller. Witnesses sitting near Fuller told KGUN9 News that Fuller was making them feel very uncomfortable.
The event wrapped up a short time later. Deputies then escorted Fuller from the room. As he was being led off, Fuller shouted loudly. Several witnesses said that what they thought they heard him shout was, “You’re all whores!”
Deputies have now charged Fuller with one count of threats and intimidation, and said they plan to charge him with at least one count of disorderly conduct. Humphries told KGUN9 News that he does plan to press those charges.
The irony could not be more pointed, or painful. One of the issues discussed in the town hall meeting was the question of why no police or mental health professionals had ever intervened with Jared Lee Loughner, despite his increasingly bizarre behavior that had included disruptive outbursts.
Poor lefties. Their unhinged anti- tea party meme just can’t catch a break.
UPDATE:
He has an excuse, yo! – Post traumatic stress:
Fuller’s actions could be a response to the trauma he suffered a week ago, said Dr. Laura Nelson, deputy director for the behavioral health sciences division at the Arizona Department of Health. “Grief after what happened here in Tucson last week is a completely normal reaction, and … anger is a very common symptom of grief,” said Nelson, who had been invited to speak at the forum. “I hope that he’ll get the help that he needs to get through this very difficult time.”
Fuller, who works as a signature collector for political initiatives, was about 10 to 15 feet away from Giffords, talking to her volunteers, when the shots erupted on Jan. 8. He said earlier this week he was hit by a bullet when he dove to the ground to play dead. He said that because he didn’t have any medical training to help others, he decided to walk to his car and drive himself to the nearest hospital.
The massacre in Tucson was a horrendous tragedy. Everyone in the country, of every ideological stripe, should have been allowed to mourn the victims’ deaths and injuries without the imposition of having to defend people who had nothing at all to do with it. But where normal people saw tragedy, the far left saw opportunity. They jumped at the chance to implicate an entire movement, and their leaders, (most notably Sarah Palin) as accessories to the crime. They did this before anything was even known about the assailant. They did it because of their own visceral hatred for their political enemies.
Now that it is known beyond a shadow of doubt, that Jared Loughner was not inspired by right-wing rhetoric, the tea party, Sarah Palin, or any other conservative notable, I think it’s useful, and frankly cathartic to name the names of the despicable vultures who swooped in and engaged in this contemptible behavior.
Here they are, all in one place, for you to hoot, jeer, boo, cat call, heckle and throw virtual (as in not real) rotten fruit at:
The Tucson Massacre Hall of Shame:
@mattyglesias: of Think Progress, (known in the right-wing blogosphere as the world’s dumbest blogger), was by all appearances, the first to assign blame to Palin, on Twitter:
A reminder that gun imagery and electoral politics don’t mix that well: http://yfrog.com/h4j00sj
The vile Markos:(taking Yglesias’s bait) Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.
Jane Fonda tweeted some really sick and despicable stuff, as well, on the day of the shooting:
@SarahPalinUSA holds responsibility. As does the violence provoking rhetoric of the tea party.
Sheriff Dupnik, a Democrat, shocked the nation by irresponsibly offering his political opinion, rather than sticking to the facts. His first statement, coming right out of the box:
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this county is getting to be outrageous. Unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital,” Dupnik continued.
“We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry,” Dupnik said.
Arizona is a Republican stronghold where the party members hold a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature and occupy the governor’s office.
A clearly delusional Paul Krugman who’s apparently been fearing a reichwing kristallnacht since the Clinton years jumped in early, as well:
I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again.
You won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.use the
Proof? Who needs proof when it comes to complicity to mass murder?
We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list. [...] You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Jonathan Alter distinguished himself for advising the President to exploit the tragedy as a political opportunity – in essence, suggesting the President smear talk radio the way Clinton did in 1995:
This horrific event offers the president a chance to show leadership qualities that he’s inexplicably hidden away in some blind trust. The shootings and the resulting debate over the climate of incivility play to his strengths as a calm and rational leader. Just as Bill Clinton’s response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings helped him recover from his defeat in the 1994 midterms, so this episode may help Obama change—at least in the short term–the trajectory of American politics.
Clinton did more than just speak movingly after Oklahoma City and pull the country together as griever-in-chief. He was able to use the event to discredit the militia movement and tamp down hate speech on talk radio enough that it wasn’t much of a factor in his 1996 reelection.
Last year, Sarah Palin’s PAC posted a map with gun cross-hairs over the districts of several Democrats who voted for health care reform, including Giffords. Sarah PAC appears to have taken the page down today, but a screenshot is here
Eric Boehlert employs his tortured logic to find a Fox News connection.
“No one is saying that they are responsible for what happened in Arizona, but they appear to have no regrets whatsoever in terms of what they have done to the political discourse in this country.”
Fox News must apologize for what they didn’t do!
I’m not going to bore with you a list of left-wing blogs. I think it’s safe to say most tried to connect the shooting to right wing rhetoric, so I’m not going to name them all, as that would be too tedious, and would take up too much space. But rest assured, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, FireDogLake, MediaMutters, and hundreds of others in the left-wing feverswamps played their own little parts in this obscene blame game.
Keith Olbermann called on Palin & Beck and O’Reilly, and Other Conservatives ‘Slightly Less Madmen’ Than Gunman, To Apologize for Past Violent Suggestions:
“If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bulls-eye targets on 20 representatives, including Gabby Giffords does not repudiate her own part – however tangential in amplifying violence and violent imagery in American politics – she must be dismissed from politics,” Olbermann said. “She must be repudiated by the members of her own party. And if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling.” By widening the scope of those individuals in Sarah Palin’s community of colleagues, Mr. Olbermann is extending blame to the entirety of the Republican Party. “If Sharon Angle, who spoke of Second Amendment remedies does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew and again of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada,” Olbermann said. And then Mr. Olbermann turned his attention to Fox News hosts Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. “If Glenn Beck who obsesses nearly as strangely as this Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt – and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore – and Bill O’Reilly who blithely repeated ‘Tiller the Killer’ until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers; if they do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death fantasies and the dreams of blood lust, for ever having provided just the oxygen for those deep in madness for whom violence is an acceptable solution then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers and listeners, by all politicians who would appear on their programs – including President Obama and his planned interview with Fox on Superbowl Sunday, and repudiated by the sponsors and by the networks that employ them.”
Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies. Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All is fair if it makes a point. Worse, some make great profit just fanning the flames.
Which wouldn’t amount to much if the words reached only the sane and the rational, but the new technology ensures a larger audience. Those with sick and twisted minds hear us too, and are sometimes inflamed by what the rest of us often discard as hollow and silly rhetoric. And so violence becomes part of the argument.
Howard Fineman is sure that Palin has a Svengali-like effect on her fans. She’s the Pied Piper of crazed gun-nuts who are ready to snap and go on murderous rampages the minute she blows the dog whistle:
HOWARD FINEMAN, Yeah. I, I – having seen her play with the, with the gun analogy, I’m not going to cut her that much slack here.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
FINEMAN: I saw her last spring in New Orleans, and she did the – in front of a Republican audience of grassroots hardcore people saying, “We’re not gonna retreat, we’re gonna reload.”
MATTHEWS: What’s that mean?
FINEMAN: Okay, now, I know she said, “Hey, that doesn’t mean anything.” To those people, that was dog whistle politics to those people.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, yeah.
FINEMAN: And it involves Second Amendment rights, it involves the whole mythology and reality of guns. She knew exactly what she was playing with here. That doesn’t mean she’s in any way responsible for this. To underscore that, okay? But that’s the thing that she’s playing around with here, and she darn well knows what she’s doing.
Jealous lib talkers like Michael Smerconish and E. Steven Collins also towed the party line on Hardball:
Philadelphia area radio host Michael Smerconish coined a word in his attack on conservative chatter as he talked about “the hatriolic comments” he’s heard and in referring to a scene he saw at a town hall meeting worried: “These are people who are on the edge and if somebody pushes them over, God help us all.”
E. Steven Collins, another Philly area talker, sided with Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik who attacked Rush Limbaugh, as he hailed: “The sheriff in Tucson was absolutely right…It does impact people who may have a mental problem or may not” and added that there was a “direct relationship” with Sarah Palin putting crosshairs on her Web site over Giffords’ district and the loss of a life of “that little girl who went down to meet the congressperson.”
The Politico’s Roger Simonsaw the shooting as a culmination of right wing rhetoric and activism run amuck:
The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others at a small political rally outside a supermarket in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday was one of those terrible shocks we were just waiting for.
It had been building for weeks.
A woman in Kentucky who was protesting Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul outside a debate was dragged to the ground and had her head repeatedly stomped upon. (She suffered a concussion and multiple sprains; Paul was elected to the Senate.)
A gubernatorial candidate in New York jammed his face against a reporter’s and said, “I’ll take you out, buddy.”
And people began showing up at political rallies carrying guns.
Why let facts get in the way of a great narrative…
The appropriate response to last weekend’s shooting in Arizona depends in large part on how we define it. If we choose to view the events in Tucson as the act of a lone lunatic, the American people will respond accordingly. If we choose to define it as an act of terrorism, the American people have quite a different response.
The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln was part of a conspiracy to kill several prominent national figures. The shootings of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were the acts of lone, deranged gunmen.
However, from the shooting of Lincoln to the events in Tucson, there is a thread that liberals and conservatives have ignored. Each event traumatized our government and disrupted its business — and was carried out by anti-government activists. And that’s terror.
Chris Matthews linked the shooting to Palin and Bachmann’s scary gun language:
“Sarah Palin using gun play language. What is she talking about crosshairs and reloading…and Bachmann out there with her kind of talk. I mean it seems like the way people talk now has, has gotten more ballistic…Why are guns talked about so much, especially on the right? Why?”
A Tale of Two Matthews: How MSNBC’s Host Handled Tucson Shooting vs. Ft. Hood Shooting
“To blame this on anyone specifically on the right in a ‘blood on their hands’ way would be too specific,” wrote David Polland. “But to dismiss the culture of rage that has been encouraged on the right, including the gun culture – have we heard what kind of weapon this guy shot 15 people with before being tackled – is equally foolhardy.”
“Sarah Palin still has not removed the controversial target list map from her Facebook page — the one that was posted back in March and features crosshairs all over a map … and the name of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among others,” said a TMZ post, complete with an image of the map from Facebook.
“Congresswoman in AZ, who is ON Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map was SHOT in the head 2day. Happy now Sarah?”
Bill Maher – all class, as usual, on The Jay Leno Show:
‘The right-wing loves, the go-to rhetoric for them is, “Wouldn’t it be fun to kill the people we disagree with?” You know, they try to put across this false equivalence. (the audience boos) No?’
Well, I think this is a case in which intent doesn’t obviate the crime. No, I think most of these people who say these violent sounding things about how evil your government is and what it’s doing to you and who quote Thomas Jefferson about democracy needing to be watered by the blood of patriots and that sort of thing, I don’t think they actually intend people to take this seriously, but it can and there are people who are unbalanced who have access to guns who do take it seriously, and we should know that by now.
In a story entitled, “Crosshairs Controversy, Palin Criticized For ‘Targeting Giffords’” Mitchell noted: “The attack has reopened criticism of the way Palin targeted Gabby Giffords and 19 other Democrats in last year’s campaign.” Mitchell then went on to report that after Giffords’ congressional district, along with 20 others, was targeted with crosshairs on a map on Sarah Palin’s Web site, “Giffords’ Tuscon office was vandalized” and then aired a clip of Giffords slamming Palin.
Mark Shields linked hate speech to the shooting, conveniently forgetting about some highly charged rhetoric of his own in the past:
I think, Jim, that we have seen the deterioration of our public debate and the climate that has been fostered and nurtured by what could only be called hate speech. And I think that hate speech basically depersonalizes and demonizes political adversaries. You’re not an adversary, not an opponent. You’re an enemy.
And I think — I don’t know of a causal relationship here with this individual, but one should not be surprised that, when you do demonize to the degree that we have done in our politics and has been done, whether it’s calling George Bush Hitler or calling Barack Obama Hitler, or saying as Glenn Beck did, that he knows he’s a racist, something happens.
So weak and craven was her feeble defense of the lefty narrative, she spoke haltingly – as if she couldn’t believe the BS that was coming out of her own mouth as she sparred with Jonah Goldberg, on Megyn Kelly’s Fox show:
Nancy: Well…um…this guy had a lot of anti-government rhetoric going on, but he was unstable, so, um…yeah! There’s some connection!
Megyn: –But the Communist Manifesto was also his favorite book…
Nancy: (pregnant pause) He read lot’s of — of —
Jonah Goldberg: He didn’t like the government’s grammar!
Nancy: He was mostly….He didn’t. like. the. government! He was anti-government!
Megyn Kelly: (eyebrows raised) That makes him a right-wing…?
Jonah: He didn’t like George Bush either! He didn’t like the Iraq War! He didn’t like Afghanistan! He didn’t like any of that stuff!
Nancy: …that intended to be the tuh…tea-party flavor of the day: hate the government…gotta stop the government…
Megyn: Wow…
Nancy: Sarah Palin…with her crosshairs…
Jonah: He was a paranoid schizophrenic, and what you’re doing is disgusting, Nancy.
Nancy: …over her district!
Megyn: (with a look of pity and disgust on her face) Okay, I gotta go, we’ve gone off the rails, now…we’re really off the rails …now we are really disconnected from the facts as we know them…
James Clyburn bizarrely tried to link the shooting to the reading of the constitution in Congress:
“All of this stuff about delegitimizing the president of the United States, that is uncalled for. And all of the stuff taking place in the chamber the other day when the Constitution was being read, all of that stuff is uncalled for. The hanging over the banisters that some members did last year egging on the demonstrators out there, that stuff is uncalled for. We ought to conduct ourselves in public office in the way we teach our children to conduct themselves when they go out into the public. I don’t believe that any one of these members have been teaching their children inside their homes to act the way many of them have acted.”
One more:
How could I forget Hillary? When she first linked the massacre to political extremism, one was inclined to give her a pass because she was out of the country, and perhaps didn’t have access to all the information…but she doubled down on the preposterous meme when she was asked about it, again.
Well, I think from what we know – and of course, I’m reading the newspapers and watching TV like everyone else who was deeply affected by this tragedy. I knew that people all over the world would be expressing their sympathy, as they have been, on my trip… Based on what I know, this is a criminal defendant who was in some ways motivated by his own political views, who had a particular animus toward the congresswoman. And I think when you cross the line from expressing opinions that are of conflicting differences in our political environment into taking action that’s violent action, that’s a hallmark of extremism, whether it comes from the right, the left, from al-Qaida, from anarchists, whoever it is. That is a form of extremism. So yes, I think that when you’re a criminal who is in some way pursuing criminal activity connected to – however bizarre and poorly thought through – your political views, that’s a form of extremism.
Clinton should know by now that the mentally unstable Loughner had an obsession with Congresswoman Giffords which predated the Tea Party or the prominence of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.. To the degree that he has any coherent political views at all, they seem to tilt to the left, but crazy is crazy. To pin political extremism on this guy at this point seems either uninformed or disingenuous.
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Some of these folks seem sincere – they had real concern in their voices as they discussed what they believe to be over-charged rhetoric coming from the right, but some are clearly exploiting the tragedy to score political points. They all seem oblivious to the gross double standard to which they hold conservatives.
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Although most Americans have rejected the false narrative, a full 60% of MNSNC viewers believe that political rhetoric is to blame for the Tucson shooting.
If you can think of more examples to add to either list, please let me know.
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UPDATE:
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A few late additions:
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PZ Myers: The immediate reaction of a “warmy academic” by the name of PZ Myers to news of the shooting, via Tim Blair:
I’ll take a wild guess here. The scumbag who committed this crime has been caught; I’ll bet he’ll turn out to be a Teabagger who listens to a lot of AM talk radio.
He also said: Screw that. Now is the time to politicize the hell out of this situation.
The facts, moreover, are these: Palin singles out Giffords as a “target” for attack, illustrated by cross-hairs in gun sights, and urges supporters to “reload”. This is pointed out at the time and Giffords herself worries that it took things over the edge. Palin had a chance to apologize or retract or soften the rhetoric. She did nothing of the kind. An individual subsequently guns Giffords down. What more, in many relevant respects, do we need to know than this?
Ergo the monster Palin is entirely to blame. Gotcha. I went ahead and added Sully to the photoshop. See if you can spot him.
Michelle Obama jumped into the fray with what was supposed to be a sensitive and helpful letter to parents, but was instead filled with platitudes that did nothing to address the cause of the tragedy, (mental illness) and only helped advance the left wing narrative - *The tragedy is the result of vitriolic rhetoric*:
“The questions my daughters have asked are the same ones that many of
your children will have – and they don’t lend themselves to easy answers.” Or
even relevant answers, as we learn a few lines later on.She says, “We can teach them the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming
the best, rather than the worst, about those around us. We can teach them to
give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they
disagree.”
He probably could have been added, earlier, but now he must be added to the list, having shamelessly chosen to blame Sarah Palin for the shooting in a letter to supporters:
“As I observed on MSNBC last week, there has been a stream of violence and threats of violence by the right wing against Democrats. Gabby warned against it, and then became a terrible victim of it,” says Grayson. “Palin has instigated it, and then tried to pretend that it doesn’t exist. What do I think? I think that Gabby said it best: ‘We can’t stand for this.’ We have to stand against it.”
The Great One threatens to drag MSNBC’s ass into court; says, “Somebody has to draw the line, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough. Test me.”
So, for my friends on the left: facts count. You can’t spin a narrative and not be expected to be called on the underlying, flawed premise.
The response was unlike anything I have seen since the emergence of the new media. It wasn’t just conservatives that rebutted the left’s narrative, but diligent reporters. We think of “rapid response” as a campaign skill, but in reality that is how pundits, activists, reporters and politicians now react. Because the left’s narrative was so noxious — Sarah Palin or a floating cloud of conservative meanness caused a mass murder — the right was filled with indignation and responded passionately, quickly and effectively. And, meanwhile, in the race to report on the biggest story of the year, the working press furiously disclosed the facts, which, as I noted above, undercut the left’s storyline.
And then there is time. The reason I believe that Obama entirely avoided politics, indeed rebuked the Krugman-Daily Kos narrative, is because he saw the pushing and shoving, read the polls, figured which way the wind was blowing, and steered clear of associating himself with the tone-deaf left. Conversely, because the left couldn’t restrain themselves, they pounced immediately and left a trail of inanity on twitter and websites.
The final lesson for the left is this: for the sake of a second term, the president is willing to throw liberals under the bus.
The winner of the most cretinous statement of 2011 — and the list is now closed, so please hold your submissions — is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who on Monday night recalled Palin’s statement, “We’re not retreating, we’re reloading,” and said, I quote, “THAT’S not a metaphor.”
Really, Chris? If that’s not a metaphor, who did she shoot?
By blaming a mass killing on figures of speech, liberals sound as crazy as Loughner with his complaints about people’s grammar. Maybe in lieu of dropping all metaphors, liberals should demand we ban metonyms so that tragedies like this will never happen again.
As for Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and talk radio — oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal.
A couple hours of anti-Christianity, 9/11 “Trutherism” and the familar sort of “New World Order” paranoia beloved by connoiseurs of tin-foil everywhere. And Jared Loughner’s good friend says this two-hour video stew of high-grade kookery had a “profound impact” on the guy who (allegedly) killed six people and wounded 12 others in Tucson on Saturday.
It should go without saying that none of this cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs crackpot stuff has been promoted by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or any of the other usual suspects whom Matthew Yglesias, Markos Moulitsas and Sheriff Clarence Dupnik rushed to blame for the Tucson Massacre.
According to the poll, conducted by Gallup, a majority of Americans think that attempts to link Saturday’s shooting to conservative political rhetoric amount to “An attempt to make conservatives look bad.” Only about a third of respondents said it was a “legitimate point.”
While self-identified Democrats were predictably more likely to say blaming rhetoric from the right is a legitimate argument, a full third of Democrats agreed that it was just a partisan stunt.
I’m appalled that there are as many as 1/3 calling the meme “legitimate”.
…here’s what’s going on in the dance between Palin and what she calls the “lamestream” media: Every time they attack her, they wind up doing something that hurts them worse than it hurts her. She may not become President, and she may not even want to be President — though, regardless, it’s in her interest to keep everyone guessing as long as possible — but with little more than an Internet connection and Facebook she’s done more lasting harm to their position than anybody else. Last night Barack Obama threw them under the bus over the whole “rhetoric” question, just hours after she had managed to work them into a snarling frenzy with an Internet video. Even though it’s hurting them, they can’t — and I mean, literally, psychologically can’t — leave her alone. And she’s getting rich the whole time.So I don’t know about “Presidential,” but who’s dumb, here?
The following links were added to my last post – I’m reposting them here, again, in case you missed them:
Not impressed with the speech in any way shape or form, isTom McGuire:
So Krugman et al are wrong to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin but right that we all need to be more civil. I don’t think for a moment that the man who described his Republican counterparts as “hostage takers” includes himself among those who have lowered the tone, so I am reading this as a call to the right to pipe down.
It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.
Yeah, they know who the bad guys are, so the President didn’t need to sully his hands. Please.
I can hear it now! “Oh Tammy, why so political!? How awful of you!! Think of the victims!” of course, with a death threat thrown in and some crass misogynistic swear words from the Gestapo of Love and Unity for Everyone Except Some. For people shocked, just shocked at how I’m not being more ‘compassionate’ and genteel about this “event,” well, let me explain–Upon hearing the awful news Saturday morning, within an hour–even before we knew the number of dead–Barack Obama’s gestapos moved in for the kill–the Kill of Palin and the Kill of Conservatives in this country. For 5 days Tea Party, conservatives and Sarah Palin were blamed for murder. I spent the weekend, as did so many others, not being allowed to grieve but having to listen to crass political smears and libel, while defending those falsely accused of horrific complicity.
Democrat and Republican leadership sat silent, including Barack Obama, as this nation was stomped on by grotesque beasts using the dead and maimed in an attempt to add a 21st victim–Sarah Palin–to the body count. Obama may have been silent and he could be–his gestapos were doing all the work. His machine knew what to do and they moved quickly. The Massacre Cult chose their targets and went hunting, accusing innocents of the horror of being an accessory to murder to score political points.
Yesterday the media and the left (bit I repeat myself) spent the day complaining that Sarah Palin “inserted herself” into the Arizona story. They failed to mention they were the ones who dragged her by blaming her for the shooting before the bodies were even cold.
Today’s fresh new narrative is, Palin’s speech was awful by itself but it was positively wretched compared to the wonderful and masterful job done by Obama.
As I’ve watched the left try to seize the moment of this unfortunate tragedy to score political points over the past four days, I’ve been asking the same thing:
“[T]he fact is that even the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League in expressing a mild rebuke to Palin for using this admitted itself in its statement that the term ‘blood libel’ has become part of English parlance to refer to someone falsely accused,” Krauthammer said. “Let’s step back for a second. Here we have a brilliant, intelligent, articulate, beautiful, wife, mother and congresswoman fighting for her life, in a hospital in Tucson, and we’re having a national debate over whether the term ‘blood libel’ can be used appropriately in a non-Jewish context? Have we completely lost our minds?”
“I found her speech unobjectionable, unremarkable but unnecessary,” he said. “Of course, anybody who is attacked as she was has the right to defend herself in public. However, it wasn’t as if others hadn’t counteracted the calumny about her and others being responsible in some way for the massacre in Tucson. By the time she had the video on her website, the debate was over. The left, which had launched the accusation, had been completely defeated, ‘refudiated’ if you like, and disgraced over this. There wasn’t a shred of evidence and the battle was over. I mean, it was a rout to make the Pickett’s Charge look like a draw.”
Maybe because the left-wing narrative has been so thoroughly discredited, the President chose to take the high road for his Tucson memorial speech, tonight. It’s too bad the event had such a “pep rally” feel to it. Cheering should have been discouraged.
The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy [-- it did not --] but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.
Seriously…what is it about Democrats that they have to turn memorials into pep rallies? That off putting pep rally atmosphere last night could easily have been avoided, (don’t out pass tee-shirts, for one thing).
Watch Bush’s speech. His somber demeanor was like that of a grieving man, not a “preacher man”. He didn’t pause for applause, and the audience was respectfully silent.
Still, Obama said the right words, and that’s a mercy.
Not impressed with the speech in any way shape or form, isTom McGuire:
So Krugman et al are wrong to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin but right that we all need to be more civil. I don’t think for a moment that the man who described his Republican counterparts as “hostage takers” includes himself among those who have lowered the tone, so I am reading this as a call to the right to pipe down.
It was important that Mr. Obama transcend the debate about whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents. The president’s role in Tucson was to comfort and honor, and instill hope.
Yeah, they know who the bad guys are, so the President didn’t need to sully his hands. Please.
I can hear it now! “Oh Tammy, why so political!? How awful of you!! Think of the victims!” of course, with a death threat thrown in and some crass misogynistic swear words from the Gestapo of Love and Unity for Everyone Except Some. For people shocked, just shocked at how I’m not being more ‘compassionate’ and genteel about this “event,” well, let me explain–Upon hearing the awful news Saturday morning, within an hour–even before we knew the number of dead–Barack Obama’s gestapos moved in for the kill–the Kill of Palin and the Kill of Conservatives in this country. For 5 days Tea Party, conservatives and Sarah Palin were blamed for murder. I spent the weekend, as did so many others, not being allowed to grieve but having to listen to crass political smears and libel, while defending those falsely accused of horrific complicity.
Democrat and Republican leadership sat silent, including Barack Obama, as this nation was stomped on by grotesque beasts using the dead and maimed in an attempt to add a 21st victim–Sarah Palin–to the body count. Obama may have been silent and he could be–his gestapos were doing all the work. His machine knew what to do and they moved quickly. The Massacre Cult chose their targets and went hunting, accusing innocents of the horror of being an accessory to murder to score political points.
Yesterday the media and the left (bit I repeat myself) spent the day complaining that Sarah Palin “inserted herself” into the Arizona story. They failed to mention they were the ones who dragged her by blaming her for the shooting before the bodies were even cold.
Today’s fresh new narrative is, Palin’s speech was awful by itself but it was positively wretched compared to the wonderful and masterful job done by Obama.
2012 presidential hopeful, Tim Pawlenty, is taking some well deserved heat from conservative bloggers because of his “weak-tea” responses to a questions posed to him about Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” map.
Here’s what Pawlenty had to say, as reported by The Politico:
“It would not have been my style to put the cross hairs on there,” he said Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” referring to a map like the one posted last year on SarahPAC’s website showing gunsights on the congressional districts represented by Giffords and a select group of lawmakers who supported health care reform.
“But then again, there’s no evidence to suggest that had anything to do with this mentally unstable person’s rage and senseless acts.”
“I wouldn’t have done it,” the two-term governor told The New York Times on Monday when asked about the map.
Okay, so that was two opportunities he had to smash a liberal narrative that amounts to blood libel…. and he punted.
I’m no Palin partisan. Far from it. In fact — and here I go starting trouble again — although I like her, there’s not much chance I would vote for Sarah in any primary. So I’m not tempted to scratch off Pawlenty because he supposedly dissed Palin. It’s clear to me that he did no such thing.
My problem with Pawlenty’s statement is twofold: It’s weak tea (no pun intended) and this is the exact wrong time to make even the smallest concession to the lefty narrative. By weak tea, I mean: Pawlenty didn’t say much at all, and I’d rather have a stand up guy sitting at the Resolute desk. As to his concession, it was tiny but it was there: Words, symbols even, can be bad naughty evil things that make otherwise nice boys shoot at congressmen.
And here’s my problem. “It would not have been my style.”
Really? If some Web guy had done that map, Tim Pawlenty would have looked at it and said, pre-Tucson, “Oh noes, those look like crosshairs! Take them off!” Tim Pawlenty may say he would have done that, and for all I know may even think he would have done that. But to me, agreeing with Stephen Green, above, it looks like an instinct to separate himself from controversy, and ingratiate himself with the interviewer, that speaks poorly.
“It would not have been my style”.
You know what that is? That’s “Minnesota nice” for ” Good God, NO”.
I’ve had my own run ins with “Minnestota nice”.
Like my Minnesotan mother-in-law saying, “It’s not what I would have done…”, the time I sponge painted white tulips all over the bathroom of my husband and my first house. (Yes, it was hideous).
Maybe he really feels that way, (doubtful) or as Insty says, it’s an attempt to ingratiate himself with the interviewer. Here’s the problem with that: 90% of his the MSM is left leaning. If his first instinct is to ingratiate himself with lefties, he’s going to be butting heads with conservatives on a regular basis. Kinda like Michael Steele did. And we all know how that turned out.
…speaking only for myself, I would prefer a conservative leader who has the courage to stand and tell the MSM that he understands their game and they can shove it.
John pipes in with:
I share Scott’s disappointment that Pawlenty didn’t stand up more forcefully for his fellow Republicans.
He had, of course, a different agenda, and the last thing he wanted to do in these appearances was talk about Sarah Palin. But he should have anticipated that topic number one would be Tucson, and that if he wants to be held in high regard by the party’s base, he should take advantage of the opportunity to be a hero by standing up to the pathetically weak left-wing narrative. That he didn’t do so, strongly enough to be perceived as doing so by conservatives, is unfortunate, to say the least. We are in a moment in time where most Americans are ready to turn away in revulsion from the Democrats’ ghoulish opportunism, and Pawlenty played it much too safe.
Paul is being a squish:
I don’t think less of Pawlenty for having given what I take to be an honest and reasonable answer to a question on the topic of what the tone of political advertising should be.
The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.
Such a reckless and scurrilous charge warrants a stronger push-back than, “But then again, there’s no evidence to suggest that had anything to do with this mentally unstable person’s rage and senseless acts.”
That sounds like someone on the defensive – someone implying that the false narrative is valid, instead of expressing moral outrage and indignation at an unfair, and slanderous charge.
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Not impressed.
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Check out Ace, today, talking about the false narrative dream world the left is asking everyone to indulge:
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Thus we are all summoned to discuss the effects of Sarah Palin’s target symbols on the mind of Jared Loughner (quick version of that discussion: None) and pretend that it was a Tea Party “climate of hate” that cause Jared Loughner to get violent over his belief that the government was using grammar to mind control us and keep us from escaping into the world of “conscience [sic] dreaming.”We’re really supposed to have this discussion. And we’re supposed to be buttoned-up serious about it. People are dead, after all, so of course we must pay lip service to our opponents’ own Loughnerian escape into fantasy worlds of conscience [sic] dreaming.
As Allah asked: Am I awake?
Yes, yes you are. All of this shit? It’s really happening.
So, because one segment of the population has, along with Jared Loughner, fled to a dream world that they control, “consciencely” [sic], by simply asserting that white is black and day is night, we’re supposed to join them, and find common ground with them, and find something interesting that we can jointly agree upon.
I suppose: Yes, this world of conscience [sic] dreaming you’ve made is certainly a nice one, and, assuming the various false premises you’ve conscience [sic] dreamed into existence, I do see that your syllogism does follow (again, Loughner-like) from those false premises.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
An oath. 73 words. Defined as “a formally affirmed statement or promise accepted as an equivalent of an appeal to a deity or to a revered person or thing; affirmation.” And something serious to many, but not all.
It is easy to get lost in the horror of what madness can do. In the world of a 24 hour news cycle, people can often find themselves barely treading water in the rushing tide of blood libel unleashed by partisan media hacks pretending at neutrality and sanctimony, but we have the right to expect better of a select group among us. These are the people who put themselves forward as qualified to represent us, and they are set apart by the duty that we trust them with. It is good to remember that no one is perfect. Humanity at its best will still be flawed. Mistakes will be made, judgment will be clouded. Nevertheless, if one accepts the public trust, then one also has a minimum obligation to not to betray it.
And yet this is exactly what has happened in the wake of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, as several of her contemporaries have proposed legislation that offends the freedoms guaranteed by the document that they swore to support and defend.
One day after this tragedy, Congressman Robert Brady proposed legislation that would make it a Federal crime to to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.
“Perceived as threatening” casts a very wide net. And then there is that little matter of the First Amendment that very plainly states “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” . In Congresses past, Representative Brady might have had an excuse for forgetting such a plainly written prohibition, but seeing as we were still on a media hue and cry about the stupidity/waste of time/waste of money that occurred when the incoming Congress read the Constitution and Amendments just last week when a mentally ill man succumbed to his urges, it seems to me that he loses this excuse. Maybe the Representative was in the rest room when the part of the Constitution that he is rushing to assault was read?
He isn’t alone in this attack on a Constitutional pillar of our society. Representative Jim Clyburn has also taken up arms with his proposal to revive the long-dead “Fairness Doctrine” to insure standards to guarantee balanced media coverage. Even if I thought he meant it, I can see that what he proposes will hinder free speech, and since I’m fairly certain that his idea of “balanced” and mine are not the same thing, I’m even less in favor of such a proposal, especially since the Democrats’ preferred method of achieving such goals is to altogether forego the legislative process and go straight to regulation by government agency. Having someone else do the dirty work at his suggestion doesn’t relieve him of the oath that he took, either.
These two are not alone, however.
Representative Peter King has decided that further restrictions on firearms are an appropriate response:
“It is imperative that we do all that we can to give law enforcement the tools they need to ensure the safety of New Yorkers and prevent an attack before it happens,” King said at a news conference with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “That is why, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Illegal Guns, I will be introducing legislation that would make it illegal to knowingly carry a gun within a 1,000 feet of certain high-profile government officials.”
Now I would be hard-pressed to think how this law would prevent an insane loner who thinks that he is being controlled by grammar from deciding that he is going to take a shot a Representative or Senator, but I can see that law-abiding citizens could get caught up in nebulous enforcement of ”knowingly” carrying too close to a government official.
I suppose that we could think of this as a test. They failed, and its good that we know that now, because it tells us something important. These are people who by virtue of their position will be looked to for leadership. Emergencies and crises are trying times for all. That does not excuse forgetting their primary duty. And either by accident or design, these repositories of the public trust have either let themselves get carried away in the hysteria rather than remaining calm and providing an example to others, or they have seen an opportunity, and chose to act like people who rule, rather than people who govern.
Congress is a place where it is possible to find fame. There are those who have walked its halls, and are remembered as legends, and those who should be, and this is why it is easy for their focus to become misplaced. But in truth, the real stars of this process are the American People. They are the ones who, election after election, preside over a peaceful transition of power, regardless of the rhetoric or its tone, and present an example for the rest of the world, where change is often accompanied by bloodshed. This can only be possible because of the genius of the Constitution, and the freedoms it guarantees.
Anyone who lets themself get carried away by emotion to the degree that they would assault what they swore to protect fails those whom they represent. Anyone who purposely designs against it after undertaking the responsibility to defend it shows a contempt for the people who entrusted them with the duty, and an unforgivably cynical outlook by asking for that trust in the first place.
While it is disappointing to have members of a new Congress that is more filled with promise and an emphasis on the right things than we have had in a long time, we are fortunate that these failures have occurred so early, because it gives these Representatives ample time to redeem themselves, and us time to seek others to fill their offices if they don’t.
Okay, so…believe it or not, there are still reputable liberals out there who are doubling down on the Sarah Palin blood libel even though Jared Loughner is clearly mentally ill, and left-leaning, if anything. Even though he has been obsessed with Giffords since 2007, before Sarah Palin was on anyone’s radar outside of Alaska.
Howard Fineman,speaking to Chris Matthews on Hardball, tonight, was still not willing to cut Sarah Palin any slack for her rhetoric:
“That was dog whistle politics,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman said of Sarah Palin’s “reload, not retreat” comment. “She darn well knows what she’s doing”
Listen to Sarah Palin in her own words, back in March 2010, commenting on “the B.S. coming from the lame-stream media” . This was around the time she was getting hit hard for her election map:
‘When We Take Up Arms, We’re Talking About Our Vote’
WE KNOW VIOLENCE IS NOT THE ANSWER.
Is that clear enough?
I’m guessing, no.
Because we are up against tacticians who know darn well exactly what their doing::
Suppose I want to say “Jared Loughner was inspired by a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh, episodes of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, and Tea Party rallies.”
What is the defect in that? Well, if you’re a leftist, it’s perfect in every single way: It connects a shooting to your political enemies and gives you an advantage you can’t get via your policies. But the one problem with it — which isn’t a problem so much as an obstacle — is that it’s simply not true.
But it’s so wonderful! It should be true; the fact that is not is more of a defect of reality than a defect of this wonderful sentence you’ve written in your head. Your ideology is perfect in its precision; it’s reality that’s messy, disordered, and off-message.
So there’s this sentence. Gorgeous, really. It deserves to be written. It deserves to be carved in ten foot tall white marble megaliths.
But you can’t write it. Because of that one little problem obstacle. If you write it, you will immediately have it fact-checked, and facts being stupid things, you will be forced to state it is not, in fact, true.
***
See, assumptions and implications can’t be fact-checked. You didn’t actually say them, so no one can claim you said something untrue. You didn’t say it; you just implied the living f*** out of it. But there’s no such thing as an implication-check, now is there?
Newsmax tracked down Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to get his take on the Tucson tragedy, and as you can imagine, he had some stern words for the way Sheriff Dipstick has been politicizing the case:
“I think we have to very careful about what we say, especially law enforcement officials or government officials. I think right now I think we ought to shut our mouth and let the justice system take its course.”
He went on to say, “Let’s just twist this around…say it was me...that made those statements – I would be blistered by the Justice Dept., by everybody – no one from the government is talking about Dupnik. They’re not criticizing him. Isn’t that interesting? But if it was me…What do you think would have happened? I would probably be investigated and everything else like I already am”.
Thus underscoring a tactic of Obama’s which is all too well-known by now: Speaking loftily and assuming the false image as above petty politics while encouraging his supporters to stick the knife into every warm body around.
Just when you thought you couldn’t be any more disgusted by all this…
You don’t know because you never heard about it, did you? Because when it was said, the MSM collectively yawned.
While Paul Krugman and other liberal commentators continue to exploit this weekend’s tragedy by making hay out of supposedly extreme rhetoric on the right, perhaps they would do well to examine some of the rhetoric that has come from the left. On October 23, The Scranton Times reported that Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., said this about Florida’s new Republican Governor Rick Scott:
“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.”
As others have pointed out, Sarah Palin wasn’t the only one to have targeted Gifford’s district on a map. The moderate Democrat was “targeted” by the far left Kos, as well.
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Of course there’s nothing alarming about targeting political opponents’ districts during election seasons. Nothing at all.
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But as Andrew McCarthy says, there’s no point in debating any of this.
Two years ago, we were still being told dissent was the highest form of patriotism; now it’s the root cause of murderous rampage. Modern leftists are tacticians. They’ve convinced themselves of the rightness of their cause, obviating the need to be consistent or faithful to facts in any single episode. For them, it’s all about how the episode can be spun to help the cause. That’s worth understanding, but not debating.
Second, can we forget that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn’s atrocities transformed them into icons of the modern Left — respected “educators” still passionate about “social justice”? Barack Obama didn’t say, “I’ll have nothing to do with unrepentant terrorists who dedicate books to deranged assassins.” He chose to hold his political coming-out party in their living room and cultivated relationships with them, just as he cultivated a relationship with other hate-mongering radicals.
It is as stupid to claim that rhetoric causes violence as it is to claim that normal people can be entrapped into terrorism. What vitriolic thing would someone need to say to you, whether the vitriol could be cast as right-wing or left-wing, that would get you to pick up a gun and start spraying bullets at people with whom you disagreed, however vigorously, about some political or social issue? It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.
If wanton violence has a cause other than mental illness, it is a culture that lionizes the savages. That culture is not the culture of the Tea Partiers so despised by the Left.
