Really, I couldn't make this up. In case you came in late, yesterday someone tried to blow up the house occupied by Congressman Pieriello's brother and family (mistakenly thinking it was the Congressmans)
Today, Andy Sere the real, live, actual official spokesman for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (so presumably someone the RNCC thinks is GOOD at public speaking.) had this to say about the incident:
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Andy Sere said that while his organization doesn't condone the actions of the person or people who cut a gas line at Perriello's brother's house .., Perriello is not the victim.
"Central and Southside Virginians are the ones who are going to have the bear the burden of increased taxes," Sere told The Roanoke Times. "What you're seeing is a frustration among his constituents who believe he's not listening to them."
and he wasn't done yet:
we're not going to allow Tom Perriello to use one isolated incident as a cynical ploy to distract Virginians from the higher taxes and Medicare cuts he just imposed on them."
Yeah, boy, we clearly can't get anything past Mr. Sere, Perriello was clearly using the Ol' "Put Your Family in Mortal Danger to Distract the Voters" Maneuver. Curses upon him for seeing through it!
I mean, just consider the brilliance of the of the Congressman's evil scheme:
- vote his conscience,
- then cleverly trick an enemy blogger into posting the wrong address for his house, knowing that some poor abused constituent would simply be compelled to launch a cowardly attempt to blow up his brother's family , and then
- Just sit back and bask in all that cheaply won sympathy from horrified ordinary decent voters
But thank God, for Andy Sere, he saw through the entire ruse and was able to identify the REAL victims, so callously ignored by the media: those poor constituents who disagree with thier elected representative and have poor impulse control. Why does no one else think of them?
(I'm looking forward to seeing Mr. Sere take this theory to its logical conclusion and triumphantly announce that 100% of domestic violence is caused by women who just won't listen and do what they're told the first time)
And By the way, on exactly what planet, was the attack against Perriello's brother an isolated incident? Seems to me it was part of rather large string of violent incidents directed at democrats nationwide that continued today with, among other things a pretend Anthrax letter sent to yet another Democratic congressman
And while Republicans are scurrying to distance themselves from all these despicable attacks (or in the case of Rep Cantor try a desperate and obviously invented claim of "it happened to me too"), notice they aren't trying TOO hard to distance themselves, just enough to give them plausible deniability
Consider who Mr. Sere works for. If the RNCC isn't the highest level of the Party, it is very close. And instead of the outraged denunciation of these cowardly attacks, that you would expect would be the MINIMUM that collegiality would demand when a fellow Congressman comes under attack for doing his job, you get this nasty little exercise in "blame the victim". Once again we see a variation on the "I don't condone but I understand line that right-wingers are tossing out with increasing frequency when dealing with acts of domestic Terrorism (go back to the news reports from when that tea Bagger nutjob crashed his plane into the IRS building, see how many variations on the phrase you can count coming out of various right wing talkers)
But to be fair, and to show that there is some hope, I should point out that at least ONE Republican did/said the right thing today, evven when his party's spokesmen seemed incapable of it.
Perriello's Republican opponent in the fall released this extremely laudable statement today
Meanwhile, Perriello's potential opponent, Laurence Verga, released a statement today condemning 'any acts of violence.'
"If you disagree with him then don't vote for him in November," Verga said. "But promoting and/or committing any act of violence toward him or his family should not and will not be tolerated."
Good on ya, Larry, that's how grown-ups in a democracy SHOULD act.