Since the tragic events in Tucson Saturday there have been a lot of questions about the political atmosphere right now. Mainly, the left blames the right and the right says “both sides do it.” The right has been in full spin mode and the Tea Party Nation issued the talking points:
TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail “The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left’s attack on the Tea Party movement,” described the shooter as “a leftist lunatic” and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a “leftist sheriff” who “was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack.” Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement’s recent electoral gains.
“The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this,” he wrote. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to “blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh” and “The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term.”
“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,” he wrote.
Yes, a leftist lunatic who was anti-government, was obsessed with the gold standard, hated the 14th amendment and was obsessed with grammar mind control. But hey, he said he read the Communist Manifesto and someone who hadn’t spoken to him in 4 years said he was a leftist.
You can see Senator Jon Kyl here deploying the leftist sheriff talking point:
“I didn’t really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing,” Kyl said.
In a candid moment at a press conference on Saturday, Dupnik said his state had become ground zero for the sort of political rhetoric that foments violence.
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” Dupnik said. “And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
Yet despite all the spin on the right, the public isn’t quite buying it. The Palin gunsight map and the chilling interview that Giffords did calling out Palin stands alone. On the Sunday shows, ABC’s Randi Zuckerberg revealed this:
Earlier this morning Randi Zuckerberg participated in a live ABCNews.com talk about the shootings and told ABC News reporter Dan Harris that the top question being asked on Facebook today is whether Sarah Palin is responsible for the shootings. She also told Harris that over 2 million people on Facebook are communicating about the tragedy in AZ.
Palin isn’t getting a pass this time. Perhaps because Palin’s crosshair map isn’t an isolated event. She’s spent the last 2 years sowing fear and discontent and it’s finally coming back to her. Despite her attempts to deflect () people still remember “pallin’ around with terrorists,” “pro-America parts of the country” and other incidents.