The Most Cynical Campaign

National Review Online
Monday, January 10, 2011

The Tucson shooting was an unspeakable horror, a characteristic exercise in American democracy — a townhall meeting outside a Safeway store — interrupted by gunshots and bloodshed. The gunman targeted Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot through the head but survived, and killed six and wounded thirteen others. Any time someone attempts to assassinate a public official it is an attack on the entire country, and the Tucson shooting has been appropriately treated as such by politicians across the political spectrum.

We barely knew all the facts in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, though, before this vicious act was being milked for political advantage by ghoulish opportunists on the Left. Their argument was that the suspect, Jared Loughner, was effectively sent from the Tea Party. Paul Krugman rushed to his keyboard to say, “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was.” Liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas blamed Sarah Palin because she included Giffords’s district on a map with crosshairs denoting Democrats she wanted to see defeated. Keith Olbermann called for Palin to be drummed from public life unless she repents of her role in the tragedy. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik blamed “the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government,” and called his state “the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry” — apparently for the offense of enforcing immigration laws. And so on.

The irony of criticizing the overheated rhetoric of your opponents at the same time you call them accomplices to murder apparently was lost on these people, most of whom have never been noted for their subtlety (or civility). It is vile to attempt to tar the opposition with the crimes of a lunatic so as to render illegitimate the views of about half of America.

Jared Loughner is clearly deranged, his fevered mind drawn to irrational extremes, whether those of Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx. He was anti-government the way paranoiacs who think the government is controlling their minds are anti-government — think John Nash, not Milton Friedman. Like the Virginia Tech shooter, Loughner had behaved bizarrely around his fellow students, frightening them. One former high-school classmate remembers him as a liberal, yet given what we’ve learned so far about his ravings, it is doubtful Loughner’s disordered mind was capable of a holding a coherent ideology.

That doesn’t stop the Left from arguing that he was basically taking his cues from a map on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. About that map: Martial imagery has been central to American politics for more than a century. Why do Palin’s critics think we say “campaign” or “rank-and-file”? We all use language of this sort, and no one ever before has thought it constitutes incitement.

That said, all of us have an obligation to speak with truth and charity in making our political arguments. Not because hateful talk will drive the mentally ill to criminal acts, but because civility is a good in its own right. We could always use more of it, but it’s not true that this is an unprecedentedly vitriolic time in American politics. The signature chant of the Vietnam protesters still lionized by the Left, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” is worse than most everything you hear on the airwaves today. Nonetheless, if we all can endeavor to be more civil, a place to start is to not to try to score gross political points off the heinous act of a disturbed individual.

Our prayers are with Rep. Giffords, everyone wounded in the attack, and the families of those who were slain.