Which Democratic Congressman Said Of GOP Gov. Rick Scott: ‘They Ought To Put Him Against A Wall And Shoot Him.’

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.”

I don’t remember a media firestorm erupting after Kanjorski engaged in this vitriolic rhetoric, or when JD Hayworth was targeted by sniper crosshairs in an opponent’s campaign ad, or when the DLC marked Republican districts with targets on their election maps. I only remember a media firestorm when Sarah Palin placed location crosshairs on her election map last March, a firestorm that erupted with renewed vigor immediately following  the tragedy in Tucson. The criticism last March, was laughable. Now, it’s so enragingly hypocritical, shameful, and opportunistic it amounts to blood libel.

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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.

See also:

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Moe Lane: ‘Three’ quotes from Paul Kanjorski.

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See if you can spot the made up quote. It won’t be hard.

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The Other McCain: Mission Accomplished, Markos Moulitsas:

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Unable to avail yourself of either confession or penitence, you are trapped, shackled to your “now infamous” lie.

You are a liar and a fool, Markos Moulitsas. And now everyone knows it.

Mission accomplished, indeed!

Newsbusters: Media Reality Check: While Media Indict Conservative Speech, Left’s Lunacy Is Ignored

Dan Riehl at Big Government: I’m Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

Legal Insurrection: Hijacking A Massacre

The Daily Mail: How America’s elite hijacked a massacre to take revenge on Sarah Palin

Linked by The Other McCain, thanks!