Giffords shooting: at the very least Palin and the Tea Party have questions to answer

January 9, 2011 at 3:49 pm (Congress, Harry's Place, Jim D, Palin, Republican Party, United States)

Nobody knows the motivation of Jared Loughner, the man arrested for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. It may well turn out that he is simply mentally ill, with no coherent political motivation of any kind. That’s certainly the view of Edmund Standing over at That Place. I can agree with Standing that knee-jerk political conclusions are best avoided “until all the evidence is in.” But not with his argument that Palin, the Tea Party and the ‘mainstream’ Republicans who tolerate these nutty bigots, have no case to answer. Their incendiary rhetoric against Giffords and other moderate Democrats over healthcare reform, and their use of images like this…

…have surely created a political climate in which the physical intimidation of moderates is encouraged.  Whether or not the rantings of Palin, her Tea Party followers and various ultra-right shock-jocks, directly contributed to the Giffords shooting is debateable: what is not is the fact that in March, Giffords was one of ten Democrats to be physically harassed over their support for Obama’s health reform bill, and her Tucson office was vandalised.

.

Make no mistake: Palin and the Tea Party bigots still have plenty of questions to answer before we should join Mr Standing in giving them a free pass.