From HP:
"The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this," Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips wrote. "The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words."
Now. There are some in the Tea Party who have acknowledged the error of their ways and understand that embracing people like this shooter have grave consequences.
And there are others like Judson Phillips who only see this tragedy through their own self centeredness.
We've had 10 years of a divide that grows larger with every shudder. A hatred from the right brought to a froth by George W. Bush, a man who honed the skill of dividing others while still in high school. For this past decade we, as a nation, have had to envelope the personality of a small, angry, disturbed little man who, thanks to a party of people who wanted nothing more than to honor their biggest donors, was primed for a Presidency he was never prepared for and an office he should never have held.
When you put the mentally disturbed in positions of power you embolden everyone with a hateful notion, an itchy trigger finger and an insecurity that needs an angry outlet.
And then there's the Tea Party. Most of these people cannot even recognize that their party runs on the fumes of hatred and bigotry. For whatever gibberish they want to espouse about reigning in the federal budget and dismantling healthcare, their knowledge on these issues has been wanting and their ugly crowds during the election showed less interest in change than in defying a black President and spitting on the left just like the Bush era trained them to.
And lets put it this way. As Paul Krugman states, they're only being urged on by right-wing enablers:
Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.
And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.
And now, these people are on the defense over a situation that looks more and more like a political hit by a person who would easily identify with them just as David Duke identified with the republican party decades ago when he held office.
There are consequences to hatred. Maybe we need to tone down the political discourse. But we also need to acknowledge who the players are in this drama that have created the chaos around us. And people need to stop looking at these people as heroes and instead focus on what they really are: Angry instigators who know the power of their own hatred - and want you to join in it.