Lawmaker News

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), there has been near-hysteria about the tenor of our political culture. Has the inflammatory rhetoric gone too far? Is there too much vitriol in American politics? Is the Tea Party movement to blame?

This entire pointed conversation about our current state of political affairs — spearheaded largely by the American left — reveals a serious lack of self-reflection or historical perspective.

For those who feel compelled to point fingers at conservative radio personalities, Sarah Palin or the more indistinct Tea Party, they ought to take some time to read Joanne Freeman’s Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. If one is under the illusion that there was ever a golden era of political politeness, the Yale University professor of American history will tell you otherwise. “Regional distrust, personal animosity, accusation, suspicion, implication, and denouncement,” Freeman writes, “was the tenor of national politics from the outset.” 

You want balance? Here it is. Sarah Palin first went into hiding after the Arizona shooting, then emerged with her same old attacks and defenses. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) emerged to use the shooting in a fundraising e-mail. Both are wrong. Both should be ashamed.

In my view Palin will not run for president anytime soon, and her conduct since the Arizona shooting further destroys her credibility nationally.

Ever since we heard the tragic news from Tucson, there’s been lots of speculation about why a young man like Jared Loughner would go on a shooting rampage, severely injuring Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and killing six of her constituents.

There are those who deny this has anything to do with politics. Nonsense. It has politics written all over it.

Where did Loughner go to commit mass murder? To a political event. Whom did he target? An elected politician. And what congresswoman from Arizona was targeted by Sarah Palin on a map with crosshairs over her district and the admonition to “reload”? Gabrielle Giffords. Any attempted assassination of a member of Congress is, by definition, a political event.

There is no parity between "the right and the left" in the politics of hate in the America of 2011. Yes, some on the left say things I do not agree with, or approve of, and they should be criticized when they do. But the politics of hate, which I have been warning about for over a year, are heard far more from the right than the left these days.

Sarah Palin should not be blamed for the murders in Arizona, but she should be blamed for demeaning our political debate in ways unworthy of someone nominated by Republicans to stand a heartbeat from the presidency.

We live in a violent country.

It has always been thus.

One of our greatest statesmen (Alexander Hamilton) died in a duel with another one of greatest statesmen (Aaron Burr).

We were founded in bloody revolution, we were enlarged through a series of conquests later called Manifest Destiny, and we were forcefully unified in a terrifying civil war.

We glory in the wars we won (World War I, World War II, the Cold War) and we despair about the war we lost (Vietnam).

It is fair to ask, as New York Times reporters Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike do in a front-page story Sunday (“Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics”), “whether extremism, antigovernment sentiment and even simple political passion at both ends of the ideological spectrum have created a climate promoting violence.” And for the Times, even though the “exact motivations of the suspect in the shootings remain unclear,” it is hard to imagine that Sarah Palin wasn’t behind it.

As American Thinker reports, The New York Times inserted this paragraph in the middle of a story about the mass murder:

I promised myself I wouldn't write about the tragic shooting over the weekend that leaves Rep. Giffords clinging to life and other families mourning the loss of their loved ones. It's a profound tragedy, and words cannot describe such senseless violence.
 
But here in Washington, operatives with little decency, even of the political kind, are quick to affix blame. And I want to say just one thing.
 
Please, for the memory and love of those who perished, do not cheapen this criminal act with political charges. The shooter was crazy. Pure and simple. He echoed and acted on behalf of the devil himself — pure evil. Not a political party. To think otherwise drags the memory of those into the ditch, where it need not go.

I read with interest the press coverage of yesterday’s vote count for Speaker of the House. If you didn’t catch it in The Hill, you need to study the implications of what those votes that were cast AGAINST Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meant for her future as the Democratic leader in the House.

All told, 18 of the 193 Democrats voted for someone other than Pelosi. Historically, the minority party knows it cannot possibly nominate its choice for Speaker, so they all throw their vote behind their best choice. One-tenth of her caucus voting against her in a process that actually means nothing says something.

President Obama announces today the appointment of Bill Daley to be the new chief of staff, ditching the left for the middle. It shows him to be a trickster, a man without principles. But The Hill today reports that only 31 percent of Americans now identify themselves with the Democratic Party. Possibly that is why. But with a little Mao Theater at Mile High Stadium, the horde could swing back by 2012. The Democrats now will “look good.” The Republicans will attempt to repeal ObamaCare; they will fail and look weak and vengeful. And the pendulum will swing again.

I have no hopes for the Tea Party in Congress. Already in D.C. and here in New Hampshire there is hubris in the air. These problems are structural and have been growing for 50 years and longer. The likelihood of this new Congress having any impact would be as likely as that of Martin Luther had he joined the College of Cardinals in Rome. It is time now to go alone.

Some on the left are mocking today’s reading of the Constitution on the House floor as a political gimmick. While this is a largely symbolic act by the Republican House, it accompanies a series of more substantive new House rules that require lawmakers, for instance, to cite where the Constitution authorizes the bill they introduce.

Neither reading the Constitution nor initiating this new rule will by itself restore the limited government conceived of during the early republic. But it is an encouraging first step at a time when government — and specifically, the administrative state — has grown large, intrusive, and often invisible.