Matt Drudge is using his finest bold type today: DEMS FEAR VIOLENT BACKLASH. The MSM is breathlessly reporting about this backlash. Congressmen who voted for health care reform are receiving death threats! In Rochester, NY someone tossed a rock with a Barry Goldwater quote attached through the window of the Democratic Party office! Louise Slaughter, of the famed “Slaughter Solution,” had her office window broken! A coffin was placed on Russ Carnahan’s lawn! We’re talking real wrath of God stuff here…fire and brimstone…dogs and cats living together…
I certainly would never advocate violence, but there needs to be a little perspective here. There are cranks and knuckleheads out there in every political group, but the air time given to this is intended for one purpose only: to delegitimize the opposition. By making such a public spectacle about what are, in reality, few real incidents, the Democrats are attempting to paint all Republicans and Tea Party folks as frothing at the mouth crazies. Don’t believe me? Here’s Louise Slaughter:
“It’s more disturbing to me that Republican leadership has not condemned these attacks and instead appears to be fanning the flames with coded rhetoric,” said Slaughter, a key supporter of the bill.
Now, frankly, that’s just a bold-faced lie. The Republican leadership has been vigilant in their condemnation lest they seem to be slow in responding to this sort of stuff. John Boehner, who as House Minority Leader qualifies as “Republican leadership” said:
“I know many Americans are angry over this health-care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Boehner told Fox News Channel. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change. Call your congressman, go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, make your voice heard — but let’s do it the right way.”
I’m sure that getting a death threat can be a really scary experience, but my guess is that there isn’t a single public figure who hasn’t received a few death threats. You think Rush Limbaugh doesn’t get death threats? Sean Hannity? Glenn Beck? Ann Coulter? Michelle Malkin? I wonder how many death threats Newt Gingrich got when he was Speaker Of The House…my guess is more than a few. The difference is that these people are not trying to claim that the kooks out there are part of a wider pattern. The Democrats right now are running around with their panties in a bunch and it’s all nothing more than a clumsy pantomime of real fear.
The FBI needs to investigate some of the more outrageous acts that have taken place, like the rocks through the windows and the cutting of a propane gas line, but let’s get real here. The vast, overwhelming majority of the threats of physical violence are nothing more than a bunch of angry people blowing off steam in a way that they think will have an impact. The serious threats need to be addressed, and the rest chalked up to another day of doing business in the eyes of 300 million citizens, some of whom are too lazy or stupid to argue the facts and resort to cheap insults or threats. But painting these cranks as somehow being indicative of the much larger anti-reform movement is as wrong as claiming that the WTO riots in Seattle were part and parcel of Democrat operations. Just because a kook wears a Tea Party button does not mean that all Tea Party people are kooks.
For a particularly ghastly example of how out of touch the Left is on this, look no further than Bob Herbert’s ridiculous New York Times column on the subject. Herbert is crystal-clear that he holds the entire Republican Party responsible for a few incidents at a Tea Party in D.C., many of which can not even be verified. I thought about creating a lengthy response to his tirade, pointing out many of hateful and violent things the Left has said and done, but it’s not worth it. For starters, he’ll never read it. And secondly, it wouldn’t matter to him. People like Herbert are prisoners of their ideology and see only as far as their blinders will allow them to see.
Just recently in Canada, a speech by Ann Coulter was canceled because angry Leftists were surrounding the auditorium, throwing tables and chairs, blocking the entrance, and demanding that Coulter’s books be burned. Are all Canadian liberals to blame, Mr. Herbert? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
I sincerely doubt that these are the first death threats received by members of Congress. What is unique about the threats this time is that they give the Democrats the chance both to play the victim and to blame the whole of their political opposition in order to silence those people with shame. The Democrats with their sissy press conferences and fevered brows, fretting ominously about their safety, are speaking out in the hopes that the millions of good and decent people who make up the Tea Party movement will abandon that movement so as not to be identified with a few crazies and cranks. In the end, it’s all show biz, and it won’t work.Violence should not be the means, but the ends of the Tea Party movement are still more than justifiable. Write, call, protest, read and understand the Founding Fathers, learn our history and the things that made America different…but leave the rocks and the threats at home.
UPDATE: Filling in for the semi-vacationing mistress of the house, Doug Powers is on the same page at Michelle Malkin’s site, while also pointing out some of the hateful speech that is coming from Democrats about this very issue: the odious James Clyburn accusing Republicans of aiding and abetting terrorism. Meanwhile Hot Air has video of Eric Cantor accusing the Democrats of fanning the flames of hatred. The difference between Clyburn and Cantor: Cantor’s right.
Fight the hype! (Well, not fight…but “peacefully protest the hype” doesn’t have the same ring, you know?)
The Clampdown 
I liked that Ann’s liberal antagonist is name A. Houle. Did he buy the extra vowel?
That’s the European spelling…adding a “u” like “neighbour” or “colour.”
Is there any violence on the left? Does it matter that most if not all of these alleged accounts of tea party and right wing violence are fabrications (lies, if you don’t like the costly use of syllables)? Were you outraged at Black Panther intimidation in Philly on election day, the day that our long national nightmare began? That a black conservative in a wheel chair was brutalized by a union thug, that’s OK and not worthy of your selective outrage (which is why your outrage is suspect, because it is selective, focusing only on the right and ignoring the history of violence from the left including the loony anarchists).
All violence bothers me, especially the proven cases and that includes the cases of intimidation.
I’ll tell you what else bothers me, not that someone sits on the other side of the fence, that there is a lack of fairness and no attempt at intellectual honesty. That Obama’s hide is worth more than a sense of one’s personal integrity.
I didn’t mean you, as in finger-pointing (–>) you, I meant anyone who will take exception to what I wrote. I have to blame the use of a laptop for rhetorical mishaps. 1st, it’s not a Mac. 2nd, it’s not a desktop. Strike two and I’m already out, thanks Gates.
Whew!