*The instant Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were gunned down at a public meet-and-greet in Tucson, leaving six dead-including a federal judge, several retirees, and a 9-year-old student council representative-Tea Party grandmaster Sarah Palin and leaders of her movement swung into damage-control mode.
Palin offered condolences to the families of the shooting victims and called for prayers for peace and justice. Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kremer went further and condemned the shootings as “an attack on the democratic process.”
Palin’s and Kremer’s expressions of outrage are undoubtedly sincere and heartfelt. But those fine sentiments don’t absolve them of blame for helping to create the hyper-vicious, borderline-vigilante climate that has provoked more than one unbalanced kook -as the alleged shooter Jared Loughner clearly is-to blast away at innocents, under the guise of striking back at someone or something whose politics, ideas, religion, or race they hate.
That this country had entered a new era-where it was some thought it permissible to take the law into their own hands and bombard public officials with life-threatening letters, texts, phone calls, and in some cases physical attacks-was plainly evident during and after the health care reform debate last year.
Nearly a dozen Democrats and Republicans received threatening messages. Republican Rep. Eric Cantor got a bullet through his campaign-office window. Other legislators had their windows broken and their tires slashed. Palin didn’t help matters with her oft-quoted exhortation to conservatives to “reload”-complete with photos of her on hunting forays, gun in hand. Palin and GOP leaders drove home their message that political opponents-i.e. liberal and moderate Democrats-were ripe for attack when she plastered an image of crosshairs in a Facebook post listing 20 vulnerable House Democrats who had voted for health care reform. Giffords was one of them.
Palin sensed the dangerous line that she had edged up to with her depiction of Democrats in the GOP’s gun sights. She protested that she was not calling for anyone to slaughter them with weapons but to vote them out of office.
Palin was far from alone in cavalierly tossing about violent images to make the point that Democrats were fair game for attacks. Tea Party member Catherine Crabill, who ran for the Republican nomination in the Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, flatly declared that the right to carry firearms was the way the Founding Fathers meant for citizens to fight off tyranny. Failed Nevada senate candidate Sharron Angle was unabashed in proclaiming that the Constitution gave citizens the right to oust a “tyrannical” government-which, she cryptically added, meant removing her opponent Harry Reid from office. Angle backpedaled fast, insisting that she meant vote him out, not kill him. Whether a retraction or “a clarification,” Angle’s words had a definite wink-and-nod feel to them, and Reid was neither amused nor mollified.
The scariest threats from the right-and the deranged feeding off their hate-have been aimed at President Obama. A year ago, hundreds of Facebook respondents answered a poll question, “Should Obama be killed?” The poll was quickly yankedbut the fact that it was even briefly on the site for a brief gave de facto dignity to the bizarre and murderous question.
Obama has been in danger from the moment he announced he would seek the presidency in February 2007. He had the dubious distinction of being the earliest presidential contender ever to be assigned Secret Service protection on the campaign trail. This didn’t ease the jitters over his safety. Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson fired off a letter to Secret Service officials practically demanding that the agency provide all the resources and personnel at its disposal to ensure the safety of Obama and the other presidential candidates, notably Hillary Clinton.
As the showdown with John McCain heated up in the fall of 2008, the flood of crackpot threats vowing murder and mayhem toward Obama increased. This prompted the Secret Service to take even more elaborate measures to protect his and his family’s security.
In the wake of the Giffords shooting and the murder of Chief U.S. District Judge John Roll, federal officials have again tightened security around Democratic and Republican elected officials. This is welcome. But it does not address the climate of fear and hate that ultra-conservative extremists and unreconstructed bigots and hate-mongers have created. Unbalanced individuals feel they have license to send a hate message, toss a brick, or-as the tragic events in Tucson amply prove- rampage against a public official and other innocents caught in the crossfire. Palin and company can’t evade blame for that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com and view The Hutchinson Report on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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It’s amazing to hear conservatives washing blood off of their hands this morning. I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that a Palin family member, born & raised in Alaska feels comfortable with the climate to have purchased a home in Arizona in the past month?
Her opponent had a fundraiser last fall where you could shoot an M-16 with him in exchange for a sizable contribution.
To say that palin’s condolences were heartfelt is a real stretch. The eskimo ho is a race baiter. Don’t ever forget what she stirred on the campaign trail against the President.
Nothing is more dangerous than a dumb slut who couldn’t complete her tenure as governor because she went for the money. A liar and a viscious queen of mendacity.
Mr. Hutchinson is letting this new level of trash off the hook. She is dangerous and forbidding. She is a nasty, surface-y infidel that should be removed from the political discourse. The more press she is given, the more it feeds the beast-y female dog (and I mean that in the nastiest use of the term).
im so sick of this narcissistic heffa i could shyt ice cubes.
She & the Tea Party has gotten something started that I don’t believe will be a 1 time occurrence. There are some crazy-ass folk who hang on to their every word and what happened a few days ago is proof of that. Maybe, if we’re lucky, this will be the beginning of the end for Sarah Palin and her undeserved fame! She should be ashamed of herself for the things that she’s said & the weak folk that she’s encouraged to do stupid things.
I still think for the most part, MSM has given her a pass on the shooting? I hardly hear anything coming from CNN and MSNBC. Can you imagine the noise that would be coming from Fox if it were Republicans who got sprayed like that?
I’m hoping Keith and Rachael will come through tonight.
But there may be more fallout for the Dems where Palin is concerned. This may lead to further marginalizing of her and her tea party rabble by the Republican establishment. But you really want Palin and her tea party goons to be out there causing division among the Republicans and in general saying crazy stuff. That’s how the Dems were able to keep the Senate.
I heard right-wing talkshow hosts washing the blood off of their hands this morning. Just like the NRA and the gun manufacturer and the gun seller will wash the blood off of theirs. For people who preach personal accountability there seems to be little inclination to accept responsibility for their actions.
Clearly this opinion posting is a bash Palin to pieces intent… & has nothing to do with truth & facts:
Briefly… while many in the tea party do like Palin… She is not the tea party.
Second: Political speech often uses many metaphors to express intensity … Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” for example, was not a death wish nor a suicidal ideation. People who wish their free speech rights to be protected & published, should be very careful how they accused others & unjustly make false associations where there are none… or else they are essentially yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre & stampeding the ignorant herd towards false exits (targets) of their own.
Thirdly, a mentally unstable person needs no excuses from others for why he does what he does in a terrific & terrible action such as this. With a mental instability, he is likely influenced by internalized vulnerabilities or external manipulations of others with unrevealed motives and which may never be correctly discovered as long as there’s a false distraction.
We all live with influences all around us… & some of us have stronger perceptions than others about what is right and what is wrong but it doesn’t lead to this kind of violence! Clearly, this person who committed these acts of murder could hardly be said to be focused in his attack as the media might have us to believe when a public event such as this is not about politics but is about public participation & connections with those who represent us. The obscenity of this crazy act is that it is already being picked up for political purposes when politics was not involved. While this does not speak to the motives of the shooter… it does say a lot about the motives and the agendas of those who already seem to know the cause & effect… focused on others instead of examining the perp & completing a thorough criminal investigation.
This man has no understanding, though he speaks of America as changing the wording of grammer, any truth there? For example don’t call me nigga in a book, don’t you know you are a slave.