I have discussed this with several other bloggers. A couple have told me he doesn’t really believe this. That was my first reaction. You know, because it is so 100 percent at odds with reality. Before I go any further, here is the statement in question (via Tom Elia):
No one who is even remotely honest can pretend that anything about [threats of violence] is bipartisan in character. The Right and yes the national Republican party has been stirring this pot for months. We all see this. Cantor’s behavior is shameful beyond imagining. It’s time for a truth moment for the national Republican party. Incitement matters. They have to take responsibility for what they’ve done: which is nothing less than a campaign of incitement for which they’re now unwilling to take any responsibility.
Erick Erickson does a great job responding to Marshall. It is a must read. (If you don’t get the 30 story reference see Jim Hoft.) I am not going to go through line by line and answer something so outrageously ridiculous. I just have a few observations/questions.
If Marshall really believes this he has to be extremely out of touch and uninformed or delusional. I really don’t believe he is any of those.
But if he doesn’t believe it, and is just playing the useful tool for the cause, he has to know how much information is out there to refute it. Even with media that have often ignored vitriol from the left, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples that have been documented of not only random liberal extremists engaging in it, but also liberal journalists and politicians. He has to know that. He reads blogs. He reads the newspapers. Right?
If not he should take a look at some of the conservative blogs today. Many have provided little blasts from the past — some from years ago, some from days ago. They are examples of just a fraction of the hate speech/violence/threats those on the left have aimed at Republicans and conservatives. There are many more where those came from, too. I’ll share a few links below. It would take anyone a few seconds, internet access and a Google search to find hundreds, if not thousands, more.
Instapundit
Gateway Pundit
Michelle Malkin
Ace
Big Government
NRO
Noisy Room
Zombie
Mudville Gazette
Kim
Update: I added a few more links to the list. I did not look up links for this, but do those on the left think we are so stupid and have such short memories that we don’t remember all the vitriol hurled at Sarah Palin? People saying she should have aborted her Down Syndrome child, burning her in effigy, calling her the vilest names you can use to refer to a woman? Why are Dems opening this door? Don’t they know how easy it is gonna be to show them as hypocrites and liars?
Here is the only answer that makes sense to me (I put it in bold because this is important): Democrats have seen the pure, raw force of American freedom of expression. They have seen it rise up against them and they are scared spitless. They realize how unpopular they have become and they have to fight back to survive. It is hard to fight back against elderly people with walkers at town hall meetings, and mothers holding infants at tea party rallies, and peaceful, clean cut, tax paying American citizens. So they have to vilify them — just like they have vilified Republicans all these years. It is just harder to do now that people have cell phone cameras and Twitter and blogs and YouTube and talk radio and Fox News, etc.
I predict this is gonna blow back on them big. Even with the help of those in the media, the reality of what is happening is getting to the people. The little people. And now instead of beating up* on rich Republican politicians, and fat cat CEOs, they are beating up* on the little people who don’t give a crap about party or politics. They just want their voices to be heard. They care about their pocketbooks, their childrens’ futures, their freedoms and the future of their country. They don’t care what letter is behind your name. They want representatives in Washington who will listen to them. Vilifying those people, calling them names (such as teabaggers), questioning their motivations, accusing them of being racists and just generally beating up* on those people, just because they disagree with the Democrat/Obama agenda, is just downright ugly. So much so that not even the MSM will be able to spin it as anything but that. When I think about it in those terms, I begin to understand why the Democrats are doing what they are doing. It doesn’t make it any less ugly, but at least it helps me to understand.
*The slang term “beating up on” is not meant as literal, physical violence. It is a term us little people use to refer to any type of abuse, whether it be physical, verbal, etc. I think 99.9999 percent of the people reading this know that, but for the others I just wanted to make that clear.
Update II: When someone in an email I received reminded me of Mary Katherine Ham’s Weekly Standard report last year about violence in the town hall meetings, it made me think about this. At the Kill the Bill rally in DC a few months ago — the one called by Michelle Bachman — Mary Katherine and Dan Riehl and I met up afterward there on the lawn to chat. I don’t know who first noticed it, but we looked around after most of the people had moved across the street to the offices and noticed there was not one speck of trash to be seen. No discarded cups or gum wrappers or anything. This was especially impressive because during the rally the foot tall stack of health care bill had been dramatically tossed into the air. We looked around at mothers with infants, elderly people, veterans, enthusiastic but polite young people, and that pristine lawn and marveled that anyone could attend such an event and then turn around and spin it as an angry mob of racists.
Mary Katharine’s Weekly Standard report referenced above included the following bit of information that seems particularly relevant considering this weeks’ events (or Whinegate as I think I will call them):
One public calendar, compiled by RedState.com, lists more than 400 congressional town hall meetings in the month of August. It’s likely not an exhaustive list, but it represents an average of more than 13 live town halls conducted per day in America during the monthlong span. At these meetings, there were fewer than ten documented incidents that could be described as violent, and most of them involved very little physical contact.[…]
In more than 400 events: one slap, one shove, three punches, two signs grabbed, one self-inflicted vandalism incident by a liberal, one unsolved vandalism incident, and one serious assault. Despite the left’s insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics. If you add a phoned death threat to Democrat representative Brad Miller of N.C., from an Obama-care critic, the tally is 7 of 11.
