Like most Americans, I am appalled at the senseless slaughter in Tucson\u2026 carried out by a deranged left wing madman against one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Congress who could be counted on to put service to her country and to her constituents ahead of service to her party.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the events of Saturday, January 8, became known, the American people could have joined hands in their collective repugnance at this horrific crime, as they did in the days following the 9\/11 attacks, but that unity was sacrificed on the altar of crass political opportunism the moment Clarence W. Dupnik, the Sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, stepped before the TV cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just minutes into his report, the sheriff opened a very large can of worms.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWhen you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government\u2026 the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous and, unfortunately, Arizona has become sort of the capital. \u00a0We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.\u201d\u00a0 Then he added, \u201c<\/strong>The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business… this has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n To blame the assassin\u2019s actions on talk radio and \u201cpeople in the TV business\u201d is reprehensible\u2026 particularly in light of the fact that nearly all brownshirt-style\u00a0 political violence in America is perpetrated by Democratic interest groups such as the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, and ACORN.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a longtime Republican activist, I know from personal experience whereof I speak.\u00a0 During the 1960s, when I led a statewide election reform campaign in Oklahoma\u2026 a program that brought voting booths to every county in the state where Democrats had systematically denied the right to a secret ballot\u2026 my associates and I had more threats on our lives than I care to remember.<\/p>\n In 1968, as some friends and I picketed a Hubert Humphrey campaign appearance in Tulsa, we were attacked by a mob of some 300 Democrats (there were only twelve of us).\u00a0 A group of four or five burly steelworkers stubbed their cigars and cigarettes out on my bare skin before wrestling me to the pavement and knocking me unconscious.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1972, while serving as a regional chairman for the Nixon reelection campaign in southeast Pennsylvania, I was subjected to repeated demands for money by members of a Philadelphia organized crime family\u2026 all south Philadelphia Democrats.\u00a0 When I refused to comply with their demands they threatened to kidnap my wife and our three children and smash their elbows and kneecaps with baseball bats.<\/p>\n I have witnessed many more acts of fraud, violence, and intimidation by Democrats, far too numerous to mention.\u00a0 In fact, we are aware of instances where shotguns and rifles have been fired indiscriminately through the windows of Republican party headquarters and campaign offices.\u00a0 Luckily, not all Democrat gunmen are as skilled as Jared Loughner.<\/p>\n Anyone who believes that Jared Loughner may have been motivated by the political rhetoric of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck is as insane as he is.\u00a0 Does the sheriff really expect us to believe that a man like Loughner would listen to hours and hours of counter-culture music on MTV and then switch over to watch Sarah Palin on Fox News or tune in to Rush Limbaugh?\u00a0<\/p>\n To the contrary, it has been reported that Loughner\u2019s favorite song is a sick little number titled \u201cBodies,\u201d<\/em> published jointly by Pounding Drool Music and Renfield Music Publishing, Inc., a subsidiary of Wind-Up Entertainment, Inc. of New York.\u00a0 In that composition, the phrase \u201cLet the bodies hit the floor\u201d<\/em> is repeated a total of 17 times in just 37 lines of lyric.\u00a0 And since Loughner\u2019s closest friends have said that he doesn\u2019t watch TV and pays little or no attention to the news, is it not logical to assume that he was far more motivated by the \u201cmusic\u201d he listens to than by conservative political rhetoric?\u00a0<\/p>\n With that in mind, I have a challenge for the sheriff.\u00a0 If he really believes what he says, I\u2019ll give him $100 for every conservative Republican we find among the employees and executives of Pounding Drool, Renfield, and Wind-Up, if he\u2019ll give me $100 for every liberal Democrat we find.\u00a0 Does he have the courage to put his money where his mouth is?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n What is most unfortunate is that Dupnik\u2019s mindless insinuations have inspired the left wing hate machine\u2026 The Huffington Post, Moveon.org, the Daily KOZ, Bill Mahre, Keith Olbermann, and others\u2026 a group that doesn\u2019t require a whole lot of motivating before they become totally unhinged.\u00a0 Sarah Palin could not have been more correct when she referred to the attacks by such leftist character assassins as a \u201cblood libel.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, there is politically inspired violence in this world, far too much of it.\u00a0 But I challenge the sheriff to name a single act of violence committed by a conservative or a Republican after listening to a Sarah Palin speech or a Rush Limbaugh monologue.\u00a0 On the other hand, acts of violence by those on the political left would fill volumes.\u00a0 We can start with Lee Harvey Oswald, John Allan Muhammad, Lee Malvo, and Ted Kaczynski, to name just a few<\/p>\n Since it has been widely reported that Loughner was a registered Independent who reads The Communist Manifesto <\/em>and Adolph Hitler\u2019s Mein Kampf, <\/em>it is highly unlikely that he ever voted Republican.\u00a0 What that tells us is that the Tucson killings represented an assassination attempt on a left-leaning Congresswoman by a leftist madman.\u00a0 The shootings had nothing whatsoever to do with conservatives, Republicans, talk radio, or Fox News\u2026 in spite of the sheriff\u2019s best efforts.\u00a0 What would be interesting to know is what the sheriff and his deputies knew about Loughner\u2019s history of creepy behavior and what steps they took, if any, to protect the people of Tucson from him.\u00a0 Was anything done?\u00a0 And if not, why not?\u00a0<\/p>\n And finally, we would be remiss if we failed to mention the Obama pep rally\/memorial service held at the University of Arizona\u2019s 14,000 seat McKale Memorial Center, instead of a more appropriate church or cathedral.\u00a0 There are those on the left who insist that Obama was as surprised as anyone in the television audience that he was to speak before an overflow crowd of 30,000 people\u2026 comprised mostly of politically unsophisticated students who will be important to his reelection bid in 2012.<\/p>\n Anyone who has ever done presidential advance work, as I have, understands that nothing happens within a mile of a president or a presidential candidate that is not fully approved and planned by the candidate\u2019s advance team.\u00a0 This is especially true of sitting presidents who must also satisfy the security requirements of the Secret Service.\u00a0 So, lest anyone doubt that Obama\u2019s participation was planned by his handlers to serve as a kick-off for his 2012 reelection campaign, we need only take note of the thousands of \u201cTogether We Thrive\u201d t-shirts placed on the chairs of memorial service attendees prior to the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n After days of speculation, it has now been confirmed that the \u201cTogether We Thrive\u201d theme had its genesis in the Democratic National Committee\u2019s Organizing for America campaign, formerly known as Obama for America 2008.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the only national leader who requires a teleprompter to lead a national moment of silence, one might question Obama\u2019s intellectual prowess, but never his audacity or his duplicity.\u00a0 In his address in Tucson, he said, \u201cAt a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized \u2013 at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do \u2013 it\u2019s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not (in) a way that wounds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cWhat we can\u2019t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other.\u00a0 That we cannot do.\u00a0 As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility.\u00a0 Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.\u201d<\/p>\n As might be expected, his words were in sharp contrast to liberal reactions of the past week, causing us to wonder what it is that causes Democrats to be so hateful, so downright deceitful.\u00a0 The best answer to that question comes from columnist Jonah Goldberg who wrote at the time of Ronald Reagan\u2019s funeral, \u201cIntellectually, the old liberal project is exhausted.\u00a0 Its arguments do not persuade, its numbers don\u2019t add up, its aims no longer seem achievable or worth the costs\u2026\u00a0 But some liberals, many of them hobbled by nostalgia, refuse to believe that this is true.\u00a0 They loved the romance and excitement of the New Deal and the Great Society so much that they continue to sit in a nearly empty theater, refusing to believe that the movie\u2019s over \u2013 even though the credits have rolled and the lights have come on.\u00a0 \u2018It\u2019s just an intermission,\u2019 they insist.\u00a0 \u2018The second half will be better \u2013 just you wait and see!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n As Sheriff Dupnik listened to Obama\u2019s plea for civility and humility from his seat in the tenth or fifteenth row, the old liberal war horse just couldn\u2019t make himself believe that the Obama era, the \u201cliberal movie\u201d as Goldberg described it, has run its course.\u00a0 More than likely he was smiling to himself, secure in the knowledge that Obama\u2019s plea was intended only for public consumption and that he really didn\u2019t mean what he was saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like most Americans, I am appalled at the senseless slaughter in Tucson\u2026 carried out by a deranged left wing madman against one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Congress who could be counted on to put service to her … Continue reading