Blame Sarah Palin for many things — divisive partisanship, poor leadership, exploiting her celebrity, idiotic interviews, abandoning her constituents, and having a voice so annoying that it makes chalk on a blackboard sound like Beethoven’s ninth symphony by comparison.
But don’t blame her and her cross-hair graphics for prompting some psycho to try to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) and others.
A Palin website used crosshair graphics to identify the Democrat Gifford’s congressional district as vulnerable to a Republican takeover. Palin also said conservative voters in those districts should “reload” rather than retreat.
Palin is fun to mock for her obvious shortcomings, but liberals should be ashamed if they stoop to blaming her for a psycho’s actions.
Besides, there is no need — she’ll politically hang herself on her own just fine.
Palin for Prez in 2012!
I gotta disagree, Jeff. Palin’s actions were irresponsible. Pretend for a moment that she put crosshair graphics on you. Would you think twice when leaving the office? But more than that, she has raised the bar on dirty politics to a new level that probably were noticed by the shooter. He could have felt emboldened by her rhetoric similar to the way whites were whipped into a froth by certain southern politicians back in the 60’s. It became acceptable to mistreat and even murder black people. I see disturbing parallels.
Jeff, something I culled from Andrew Sullivans column in the Atlantic yesterday that pretty much nails it.
”Refudiation free zone here. 20 people are mowed down in a grocery store and Palin thinks she’s the victim? Typical. You don’t get to spend 3 years blowing a dog whistle and yelling fire in a theater then get to wash your hands of it when it goes bad,” – from a commenter on Politico.
Sarah Palin faces the same dilemma Socrates faced. Her rhetoric links her with what happened even if she had absolutely nothing to do with the horrible event. She is faced with a really tough choice: either continuing with the same cynical, violence-tinged rhetoric or backing off and sounding like a hypocrite … and let’s face it: Palin’s “I hate violence. I hate war” sounds a little “hopey-changey.”
The most graceful thing for her to do might be to accept political exile.
Anyone who regularly incites the mob should understand how quickly the mob can turn.
I’m so tired of the media drawing equivalencies between right and left wing extremism. With the exception of Reagan, liberals and progressives have been the targets of violence (Huey Long, Gandhi, the Kennedys, MLK, Malcolm X, Moscone & Milk, John Lennon). Liberals are the ones who should be walking around with guns.
OMG! Can you believe the crap these Socialist-Liberals pull out of the thin air? I mean in a plot like the one Wil Adams uses in his hit e-book, Redemption, on Amazon and at barnes and noble, these people refuse to accept reality. They can not grasp the idea that Americans are a different breed of cat than the Europeans that most Americans sprang from. We are–as Wil Adams points out in his bestseller–stronger than they think. We will not go quietly into the night. We want all that we had from our parents for our own kids, and these NOW cows and the other Socialist-Liberals like them have to accept the facts–like Skip did in WIl’s brilliant story–they are doomed, and will never change us.
How many gun sights has Sarah Palin looked through? Seriously! And how many Surveyor sights has she looked through? Really!
What do you honestly believe? When she say those cross-hairs on the map targeting those districts and she tweeted as to promote the map, DON’T RETREAT – INSTEAD RELOAD, well, tell me, how do you reload a surveyor sight. Sarah Palin, it would seem — to any reasonable person — was lying about believing that those were surveyor sights. She brags about shooting and killing publicly. Did she not, at least for a moment, think that those symbols look an inksy winksy bitty like rifle sights? Now really?!
Now the question is why is she lying? Maybe she IS guilty and knows that this will hurt her aspirations to be President so she plays ignorant.
I believe they all the members of the Tea Party know that those were intended to be rifle sights but to not admit fault, the Bible says to confess your part in any conflict
“go and be reconciled to your brother.” (Matthew 5:24). The state of America now has reached new lows. Maybe it is because of the wars, maybe it is because of the economy but people who profess hatred, who put up cross-hair targets and tweet “don’t retreat – instead reload,” have no place in this country of ours.
Sarah Palin should confess her role in this tragety. Peter urges us: “Turn away from evil and do good. Work hard at living in peace with others.” (1 Peter 3:11). When you work for peace, you are doing what God would do. That’s why God calls peacemakers his children.
My prayers are with you Sarah Palin.
What is it that makes all you people think the gunman ever looked at Sarah Palin’s web site and saw those cross hairs? He has not spoken a word to police. Maybe it was a rap album that made him want to kill or maybe a televangelist’s message pushed him over the edge, or maybe it was the poor play this year by the Dallas Cowboys.
@ Berezan: That’s the most thinly disguised book plug I’ve ever seen. But at least you were creative in trying to connect it to the blog post so we’ll let it slide.
What’s more predictable than the left using this tragedy to point out the right’s violent rhetoric is the media’s call for ALL sides to tone it down. Talk about false equivalences. ALL sides have not engaged in it. Just the right. From OK City right down to gunsights, second amendment “solutions,” calls for the murder of abortion doctors, reload-not-retreat, “death panels,” campaign photos of assault weapons nestled in crotches, on and on and on.
The Republicans, the Tea Party, and nitwits like Palin and Beck and, yes, Rick Perry, own this tragedy.
@berezan…i have the feeling you couldnt define socialism or classical liberalism w/o looking it up. nice nonsensical try jerkoff.