It has been a week since a lone gunman went to a Tucson Safeway with murder in mind and shot 6 people to death as well as leaving a U.S. congresswoman critically injured. A lot of misinformation was observed in the initial moments of the tragedy (was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords dead or alive), so I figured it would be timely after a week of finding additional information out some conclusions can now be drawn.
1) Jared Loughner’s shootings had nothing to do with popular political movements of the day. We have found out that Jared Loughner was an atheist and pothead who prayed to a skull in a tent. We have seen his mugshot and drawn our conclusions about his insanity. We have even heard (regrettably) that he posed with a Glock in nothing but a G-String. But, according to people with intimate knowledge of the guy, Jared was not liberal nor conservative. He didn’t listen to political radio or watch the news. His hatred of Rep. Giffords was for his own reasons. Which leads to point #2…
2) The shootings were NOT motivated by heated political rhetoric. A recent Rasmussen poll confirms what most of us already knew. 58% of the people responded saying Loughner acted on his own accord. Only 15% say the shootings were politically motivated and only 9% say the guns were responsible for the killings. So any attempts to link the killings to the tone of political speech have failed. This leads to points #3, #4, #5, and #6…
3) Paul Krugman should be disciplined by the New York Times… and probably won’t. Listen, I don’t care if you won the Nobel Prize, that does NOT give you the right to blame political opponents for a shooting just moments after it occurred. This kind of inflammatory slander would get most people fired from their job. In Krugman’s case, he will probably get a raise and an award for this accusation.
4) The liberals’ latest attempt to link the shooting to the Tea Party have backfired… badly. The fact that the left was in such a hurry to try and blame Sarah Palin for this tragedy was disgusting. I can’t believe that just 24 hours after the shooting, I was in a heated exchange with someone who wanted to throw Sarah Palin in jail and who made the even more ridiculous argument that liberals would never use this kind of rhetoric. It didn’t take me long to find a counterexample (even though for the record, President Obama made his infamous “If they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun” remark in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, not the 2010 midterms), but that didn’t stop people from continuing their tirade. However, if you believe the same Rasmussen poll, the left’s attempt to link the Tea Party to this tragedy has actually caused a backlash. In the Rasmussen poll by a 36%-32% margin, the population believes that the liberals are more responsible than conservatives for the vitriolic political language in our society today.
5) Sarah Palin is NOT fit to be a political leader. You would think that after two and a half years in the political spotlight, Sarah Palin would know how to act on the National Stage. You could almost discount her initial missteps as being a novice. Her speech on Wednesday should have shown that she was ready to show how much of a leader she has become, in spite of the left’s slanders. Yet, with 2 simple words, Sarah Palin destroyed her chance to be President or any further relevant top figure. In the end, Sarah will be just a footnote to history.
6) Sheriff Dupnik should actually try to do his job instead of looking for soapboxes to stand on. Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County made no bones about who he blamed for this tragic circumstance. He also made no bones about his like of Rachel Maddow. However, he and his office let it slip that they investigated Jared Loughner for death threats he made on two separate occasions. Not only that, but Pima Community College had multiple incidents where Jared was acting in an aggressive manner. Yet, nobody at the police department ever put 2 and 2 together? If Sheriff Dupnik is not careful, he will become the next Mike Nifong. At least some people are starting to get it, which leads to…
7) President Obama (and the Republican House leadership) has reacted responsibly to this tragedy as responsible adults… even if it is sometimes a little over the top. Credit to Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor for saying and doing the right things early. But it is the President who has turned a serious corner in crisis management. He took his time, and delivered a measured response. When the Memorial service was starting to get out of hand and turn more into a pep rally, he was able to use his speech to calm the audience down a little, even if some of his rhetoric was a little too much. The call for civility was much needed from the top and it did two things for the President: (1) It showed he is serious about moving to the center (similar to how Bill Clinton did his triangulation) and (2) he left his far left supported out to dry. It was the correct thing to do, but it risks a challenge from the left in the 2012 Democratic Primary that could weaken the President in the General Election.
8) Finally, the calls for civility are nice, but following through is the most difficult part. Every one can talk about how civil we need to be with each other, but what many basically interpret it as is that you be civil to me and maybe I’ll be civil to you. At the end of the day, civility exists for a few weeks after a national tragedy, but then we go back to heated rhetoric soon afterwards. What needs to happen is a real soul-searching by all parties, a real look in the mirror about what they are doing to cause the problem and what they can do to stop it. And people must find common ground (non-politically if they must) to begin working on being more civil. Otherwise, these calls for civility will fall flat in a couple of weeks, and I can already see signs that this will happen again after this shooting. I pray that I’m wrong.
