In rummaging around the bogosphere, I passed through a diary by Julie Gulden at Daily Kos venting her feelings about the shootings in Tuscon. Ms. Gulden lamented that not one Republican or Tea Partier condemned the “lock and load” rhetoric that may have fueled a young man to commit this horrendous crime and called for at least one of them to stand up and say, “this is just wrong”.
In it she linked to an Op-Ed from New York Times columnist Frank Rich from February 27, 2010 that more accurately predicted that tragic event that cost the lives of six people that included a nine year old born on 9/11 and a Federal Judge, put a Congresswoman in the fight for her life and injured eleven others.
Mr. Rich’s column was about the murder/suicide crash into an Austin, TX IRS building by a deranged tax payer and the lack of condemnation from Republicans and the right wing.
No one knows what history will make of the present – least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.
What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass – or, worse, flirted with condoning it.
(emphasis mine)
And what did prominent Republicans say? Iowa Republican Rep Steve King said “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”
Rich goes on to point out that the new “grass roots” leadership of the right that includes Palin, Beck, and Ron Paul
have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism.
(emphasis mine)
It has now amped up from flying a plane into a building, killing a Viet Nam veteran that worked there, to mass shooting that most likely targeted a congresswoman.
Where are the Republicans to condemn the rhetoric that calls for target practice with machine guns to gear up for an election, or maps that use target to locate opponents or the calls for the “second amendment solution”? A lot of words without meaning.
Who could have known?
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