Politics: The DNC's chairwoman, a champion of Occupy Wall Street, once again associates the tragedy in Tucson with an end to civil discourse caused by the grass-roots Tea Party movement. Has she no shame?
There she goes again. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla, head of the Democratic National Committee and the "Debbie Downer" of American politics, has repeated the canard that somehow the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., a year ago at a Tucson event is somehow linked to hatred spawned by the Tea Party.
"We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords — who is doing really well, by the way — (was shot)," Wasserman Schultz said at an event hosted by the New England Council and New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
Having brought up the Giffords attack as a political bludgeon, Wasserman Schultz provided an example: "You had town hall meetings that (the Tea Party) tried to take over, and you saw some of their conduct at those town hall meetings. When they come and disagree with you, you're not just wrong, you're the enemy."
On Jan. 3 in Iowa for the caucuses, Wasserman Schultz had kinder words for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. "I have talked to Occupy Wall Street folks over the last few months; I've been publicly supportive of them. I think that they are well within their rights to be frustrated." But not the "angry mobs" of the Tea Party movement whose rhetoric promotes violence.
Never mind that Giffords' shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was eventually discovered to be a mentally unstable loner with no immediate partisan agenda and a serious alcohol problem. He would have been right at home among the incoherent OWS protesters.
While described as "angry mobs" at the time, those who peacefully assembled and began showing up at town hall meetings to confront the career politicians who claimed to represent their views left these meetings quietly to organize and rock the vote, to coin another phrase, in November 2010.
Voices were raised, to be sure, but we can find no reports of Tea Partyers being arrested, individually or en masse, at the thousands of events held across the country with millions in attendance. After the massive Tea Party march on Washington, D.C., in 2009, not so much as a paper cup was left behind. Nor was there any attempt to shut down the city or its commerce.
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