After a weekend of right wing violence against Democratic congressman, including racial epithets, broken glass and the cutting of a gas line at the home of Congressman Perriello's brother, GOP Whip Eric Cantor took to the airwaves to tell Democrats to Man Up. Why, my office has been shot up, but you don't see me whining about it! said the Congressman.
The police report indicates that the bullet, which penetrated the glass window but not the interior blinds, appears to have been shot in the air and fallen back to earth into the Congressman's office. This prompted Josh Marshall David Kurtz to quip that unless the assassin was trying to kill Cantor with a bullet bank shot off a cloud, this was clearly not an act of political violence, just another jackass popping off.
That's not the case with Perriello's brother. Tea partiers, erroneously thinking that the address of Perriello's brother was the congressman's home address, posted the address and urged supporters to "drop by" and see the congressman. Which they apparently did!
Republican lawmakers and right wing pundits have pandered for over a year to the lunatic fringe of the political right with hysterical warnings about "death panels," and "a government takeover of health care." They have sown the wind; now they're reaping the whirlwind.
Cantor's ridiculous press conference is a doubling down on the GOP's strategy of feeding the monster. Just as the segregationists of old blamed lynchings and police brutality on those "outside agitators," wingnuts like Cantor have the chutzpah to claim that the Democrats are stoking the rhetoric and the violence to advance their agenda. Way to blame the victim, Congressman.
No end of the political spectrum can claim a monopoly on political violence. An anarchist murdered President McKinley. The Weather Underground went to war against the government in the latter days of Vietnam.
But political violence in recent U.S. history has been a right wing phenomenon: Oklahoma City, the targeting of abortion clinics and providers, a plane crashed into an IRS building, and this weekend's pranks, threats and vandalism. The Right can stop Right Wing Violence by toning down the rhetoric and condemning violence.
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