Only two days from the Arizona shooting that claimed six lives and injured several others and the Tea Party Nation has sent out no less than SEVEN EIGHT emails explaining why this is not their fault and how those evil, nasty librulz are hell-bent on blaming them.
In the first one, Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips said this (note, all links are to the Tea Party Nation website where the emails direct you, membership req’d):
At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter’s motivations where, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party Movement. Already on liberal websites, the far left is trying to accuse the Tea Party of being involved.While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing.
The event had only just happened and Phillips was out in front doing damage control. What’s the matter, Judson? Feeling a little nervous – maybe a little guilty?
Email #2 gave us this, also from Phillips:
Although there was no proof the shooter was involved in conservative politics or the Tea Party, the left went nuts. Immediately after the shooting, the left went after the Tea Party. The Daily Kos went on a rant. On the Hill.com, one of the comments in the story about the shooting was from someone called “AC.” He said:The Tucson Tea Party will be made to pay for the blood on their hands. An eye for an eye. You want a civil war, you got one. KILL Jesse Kelly for his role, then KILL Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Gleen Beck(sic). Whoever puts BULLETS in ther HEADS shall be a NATIONAL HERO.
On twitter, leftists were going after Sarah Palin in particular. Tweeters castigated Palin because during the election, she had put cross hairs on Giffords’ district, which was closely fought. They were then upset that her Webmaster took the image down. At Tea Party Nation, we were on the receiving end of some of this vitriol from the left.
Someone named “Kathlovestennis” tweeted: @teapartynation Your Hitmap, your hatred, your racism, your anti-semitism, your homophobia have created this hateful act. #repgiffords
Paul Krugman, who is generally an idiot, lived up to his reputation by trying to tie the Tea Party into an incident that has nothing to do with politics.
Traitor to America, Jane Fonda had to add her twitter to the list, blaming both Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for the shooting, as well as the Tea Party. Why isn’t she in prison for what she did to American POW’s in Vietnam?
The left has simply gone too far. There can be no civil discourse with people as crazy as those on the left are. What that says for the future of this country is tragic.
Ah, yes. The old “your whackos are worse than our whackos” argument. That’s about as predictable as someone resorting to a mention of Adolf Hitler.
Yesterday came Phillips email #3:
The wounded were not even at the hospital before the left began its attack on the Tea Party movement.The leftist sheriff of Pima County was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack. He said, “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. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” This is the same guy who announced he would refuse to enforce SB 1070 (The Arizona Immigration law) because it offended him.
McClatchy Newspapers repeated the standard liberal talking points. They said Conservatives were upset because she supported health care reform and during the debate her office was vandalized. Although no one was ever caught, the liberal media still feels it appropriate to blame this on a conservative.
For the Tea Party movement, we need to get ready because this week, the attack is going to intensify. Despite the fact that his friends from high school have described him as being quite liberal, the media is still going to be pushing the line that this is the fault of the Tea Party movement.
The hotheads on the left have been using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to spout off for the last 24 hours. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas fired off a tweet saying, “Mission accomplished Sarah Palin.” Hotheads like him will fade. Next week we will see a more serious attack from those who are the masters at the dark arts of media and politics.
This attack has already started and you can see the liberal meme forming. They will say the tone and rhetoric from conservatives and the Tea Party is responsible for this crime. In Politico today, first an unnamed “Republican” (read RINO) Senator said, “tone matters.” Politico then quoted an unnamed Democratic operative who followed the same “tone matters” line, blaming the “overheated rhetoric” for the shooting, then saying Obama should “deftly pin this on the Tea Partiers,” just like Clinton placed the blame for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
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.
New tactic: Jared Lee Loughner was a liberal. A person who knew him in high school says so.
Email #4 was from Ron Futrell:
Both sides of the political spectrum use metaphors denoting anger towards the other to get their point across. “We need to fight for the homeless,” does not mean that somebody is going to punch somebody out to get food to the shelter. We are more intelligent than that. I’m no fan of the vitriol on both sides and some of the worst offenses have come from Olbermann and his network, but the same people calling for cooler heads to prevail right now have quickly lost their minds and over reacted to fit their political purpose.
Wow. Now that’s a false equivalency: claiming that someone mentioning fighting for a cause is on the same level as a national political celebrity putting crosshairs on sitting members of Congress.
Then came email #5, this one from Alan Caruba:
Here’s what you need to keep in mind. It’s not about gun laws. It’s not about Tucson. It’s not about Arizona. It’s not about political analysis and dialogue, so you can ignore the hypocritical ravings of MSNBC’s Keith Olberman and others eager to blame Rush Limbaugh or the Fox News Channel.Loughner is Hinkley redux. Described by all who know him as “a loner” and rejected for military service, invited to leave the campus of a local college, more than a few people understood that Jared had a screw loose.
The closest you can get to understanding what happened is to rent Martin Scorsese’s brilliant film, “Taxi Driver.” There you will see Robert DeNiro’s portrayal of Travis Bickle, the archetype of every lone gunman. And yes, also in the film, you will find Jodie Foster.
The shooting was about mental illness. It was about paranoia. It was about schizophrenia. It was about all the other killings where innocent people were gunned down by someone hearing voices in his head.
Of course he’s a lunatic. By definition, anybody who walks into a crowd and shoots people is insane. The point we’re trying to make here is that violent rhetoric can lead to unspeakable acts by lunatics and the fact that they are insane hardly lets you off the hook.
Email #6 was again from Judson Phillips:
Immediately after Congressman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the left wing went into over drive to try and blame the Tea Party for the shooting. There was one minor problem.There was no evidence.
In fact, in the hours after the shooting, the evidence began to pile up that Jared Loughner was in fact a liberal. Former classmates tweeted about his beliefs. He was a pot head who was kicked out of community college because he was such a disturbed individual. After twenty-four hours of ripping the Internet apart, the liberals are beside themselves with anger because the [sic] cannot tie Loughner to the Tea Party movement.
But have no fear, when the liberals really need help, they can count on the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS has magically come up with a report that says he has “ties” to an anti Semitic, anti-government group that has ads for tea party groups on its front page.
WOW! There is a legal term for this kind of stuff. It is MSU. That stands for makin’ stuff up!
I knew an anti-Obama administration conspiracy theory was imminent. Phillips only waited one day.
And, finally, just a short time ago I received the 7th email, another, surely not the final one, from Phillips:
It has been almost 48 hours since a liberal lunatic shot and killed six people and grievously wounded Congressman Gabrielle Giffords. The left immediately jumped into action, trying to blame this on the Tea Party. That did not work out too well when the killer was identified and his friends started saying he was liberal.Then the message changed, not because the facts changed, but because Conservatives fought back. Remembering what happened in the past, conservatives refused to let liberals try to claim this was the act of someone on the right. Conservatives refused to let the lunatic left define us or this tragedy. And as it turns out, the killer was not a member of the Tea Party movement, so they’ve been forced to change the message. Their message became this tragedy was triggered by the “hate speech” and “violent rhetoric” from conservatives. Again, they ignore the facts, but since when have liberals ever let the facts get in their way?
Does anyone remember the Health Care debate? When the members of congress from the party of treason decided to walk down the road to Capitol Hill to try and provoke the Tea Party protesters into doing something?
It did not work, so what did they do? They lied. First they claimed they were spit on and when video disproved that, and they claimed Tea Party protesters had used racial epithets against them. Funny, that got disproved too.
This type of lunatic legislation exists for one reason only – to try and silence political speech from conservatives. Liberals are quite willing to lie about these things, while conservatives have enough respect for America and the rule of law, not to lie.
Finally, the left is out to destroy Sarah Palin. We have known this for two years. Now they are trying to use this incident to end her political career.
With the possible exception of Rush Limbaugh, there is no bigger name in conservative political circles. The left wing media has gone after her, while ignoring identical comments from far left groups, such as the Daily Kos.
At Tea Party Nation, we know something about having the left try to destroy you.
A year ago, as we were preparing for the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, a group of liberal journalists, led by David Weigel, now of Slate.com, tried to destroy our convention. Sarah Palin could have cut and run because of the heat. She did not.
Now is the time we need to stand with Sarah Palin against the left. If the left can use this incident to destroy her, they can destroy anyone in the conservative movement.
That’s a whole lotta rewriting of history in one missive, I must say.
Let’s just get this straight: it doesn’t matter if he was a liberal, a conservative or a teabagger. He was insane. Violent rhetoric from the right has become so commonplace that it has started to seem “okay” to use it and, when that happens, the violence itself creeps toward being acceptable in the minds of the unhinged. It doesn’t matter whose whackos are worse, the fact is that the right has so demonized Democrats that the people on the fringe start to see it as their duty to rid the earth of these demons. And, no, that does NOT let you off the hook.
UPDATE: Got an eigth email this afternoon. Read it HERE.
I’m just sayin’…
