"Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill."
-- From "The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel," by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, that appeared in today's Wall Street Journal.
There can't be higher priority right now, I would think, than praying that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords makes a complete recovery from the assassination attempt of her alleged attacker and that the families of the six people who died and the 14 injured in the senseless shooting spree are comforted by family members, friends, and faith.
I am old enough to vividly remember the assassination of President Kennedy and the attempted assassination of too-many other prominent American politicians in the years since. Thus when I heard the news of the massacre in Arizona, I experienced an all-too familiar nauseous feeling deep in the pit of my stomach.
I write about this tragedy for two reasons. First, as my brother put it, one of the principal differences between us and some banana republic is that we protect our public servants. House Speaker John Boehner quite correctly said, "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve." But I would extend that to say it is an attack on an elected official is an attack on all Americans.
The other reason is that when some people aren't fabricating imaginary links between Jarek Lee Loughner and prominent pro-life politicians and/or talk radio hosts who also happen to be sympathetic to the case for unborn babies, they are lecturing us that this is a 'teachable moment' that President Barack Obama should utilize. Both are seriously wrong on multiple levels.
I won't belabor the obvious--at least obvious to anyone who is not a graduate of the Rahm Emanuel School of Demagoguery. (The former White House Chief of Staff once famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.") As details have poured in filling out the initial sketchy portrait, they confirm what seemed to be clear from early on: the alleged killer is a deeply disturbed young man with no discernible politics.
Smearing, for example, Sarah Palin and Russ Limbaugh is not only ugly in itself, such guttersnipping also represents an increasingly ominous attempt to stifle criticism of a notoriously thin-skinned President by whatever means necessary.
I began with the quote from Glenn Harlan Reynolds because the parallel to President Clinton was one that crossed my mind two days ago. I remember like it was yesterday how Clinton, a demagogue's demagogue, unleashed an unabashedly partisan attack soon after the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that to this day was among the ugliest I have ever seen in public life.
As a POLITICO story that is very sympathetic to both Clinton and Obama noted today, "It was nearly a week after Timothy McVeigh plowed his truck into the building when Clinton blamed conservatives for poisoning the political atmosphere by spreading 'hate' and '[leaving] the impression…by their very words, that violence is acceptable.'" Meanwhile, "behind the scenes," a Clinton adviser "was calculating the political advantages six months after humbling losses in the 1994 midterms, issuing a memo that predicted Clinton could leverage the crisis into a 'permanent gain' in voter perceptions," according to Glenn Thrush and Carol E. Lee. That included use of "the 'Extremist Issue vs. Republicans.'"
Last April, fifteen years later, Clinton recycled that odious line in an attempt to marginalize critics of Obama in general, ObamaCare in particular. Indeed he told the New York Times, the potential for violence may be worse today because of the Internet! The man has no shame.
Turning to Obama, there is something about Obama as lecturer-in-chief that has an irresistible appeal both to the President himself and to many journalists.
"Of all the unfulfilled campaign promises President Barack Obama made in 2008, the one that bothers the president most isn't any squandered policy priority – it's his failure to re-civilize what he views as an increasingly savage partisan climate," Thrush and Lee write.
It isn't necessary to reiterate the President's own habit of attacking opponents in deeply personal language, language which strongly suggests that the opposition of his critics is beyond the pale. President Obama gives every bit as good as he gets, and often then some. "Re-civilizer-in-chief"? I think not.
My point is a simple one. What is there about this President that would lead any neutral observer to believe he would not use this "moment" in a straightforwardly partisan manner? Why wouldn't an unbiased observer conclude that Obama would attempt to silence the overwhelming resistance to his policies--particularly ObamaCare--that was at the engine that drove the November 2 elections--all in the guise of "quieting" or "tamping down the rhetoric"?
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: January 10, 2011
