John Dingell has not been shy this week about using the Tucson massacre for political advantage.<\/p>\n
The View.com reported Thursday morning that the senior member of Michigan’s Congressional delegation – and the longest-serving U.S. House member – took to the House floor Wednesday afternoon to add more fuel to the narrative that Sarah Palin and Republicans were responsible for the shooting – even as President Obama was in the air to Tucson for a memorial service in which he would ask that politicians not “use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.”<\/p>\n
But it was not the first time Dingell had spun his conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n
On Monday at the Detroit Auto Show, Dingell was even more explicit – without any facts whatsoever – that Palin had provided a road map for Jared Loughner to kill Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.<\/p>\n
“Gabrielle Giffords had one of the great pundits of the far right come out and talk about how they were putting crosshairs on her,” Dingell told Nathan Bomey of AnnArbor.com while visiting Cobo. “It took only a little while for some fellow to believe, well, you know, that’s the case.”<\/p>\n
Dingell’s Monday accusation came as evidence mounted that politics had nothing to do with shooter Jared Loughner’s rampage. By Wednesday, when Dingell repeated the libel back in Washington on the House floor, there was no doubt that Loughner was a deranged individual that not only was divorced from politics – he was divorced from the real world.<\/p>\n
He was suspended from school “after police officers who removed him from a biology class told the school they believed he had mental health problems,” reports the Wall Street Journal. And Zack Osler, a friend of Loughner’s, told ABC News that “he did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.”<\/p>\n
No matter. Dingell followed his Michigan colleague, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, in fingering conservative “hate speech” for Loughner’s actions.<\/p>\n
“I saw the district of Gabrielle Giffords has a crosshairs put on it,” said Dingell departing from his prepared text. “As a lifetime rifleman and shooter, I know what crosshairs signify when you put them on somebody and I know what happened. And one other thing: ‘if ballots don’t work, bullets will.'”<\/p>\n
Using hyperbole typical of his party’s strategy to use the Gifford’s shooting to change the GOP’s legislative momentum, Dingell compared Republican rhetoric to the racism of the civil rights movement, declaring the current political atmosphere the worst he has ever seen.<\/p>\n
“Mr. Speaker, I have seen firsthand the anger brought on by landmark, life-changing legislation. The rage during the civil rights debates was unlike anything I had seen, until now,” said the longest-serving member of Congress.<\/p>\n
“Within the last year I have witnessed anger at my community events that rival the behavior I witnessed during the civil rights debates,” he continued in reference to a heated town hall debate in the midst of Democrats’ attempt in 2010 to force through Obamacare against broad popular disapproval.<\/p>\n
“What is different today is not the anger and apprehension felt by some in this country, but the inciting speech, dare I say encouragement, given by well-established folks in the seemingly mainstream political parties,” he said before ticking off the usual litany of quotes – taken out of context – by Nevada Republican candidate Sharron Angle, Texas GOP candidate Stephen Broden, Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), conservative commentator Glenn Beck, and finally Palin’s signature: “Don’t retreat, reload.”<\/p>\n
Dingell’s lesson was entirely partisan, as he included no controversial examples from the Left such as Bill Maher’s riffs on wanting Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh dead or even now-President Obama’s famous quote from a 2008 Philadelphia campaign speech: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”<\/p>\n
Politics, as Charles Kruathammer pointed out, is a natural theater for battleground rhetoric. Indeed, Michigan is regularly referenced as “a battleground state.” Why? “Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors,” writes Krauthammer. “Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest \u2014 ‘campaign’ \u2014 is an appropriation from warfare.”<\/p>\n
Perhaps Obama understood this as he tried to damp his colleagues’ raging rhetoric at the Tucson memorial service Wednesday night. His speech “was a non-accusatory, genuinely civil, case for civility, in stark contrast to what we’ve read and heard over the last few days,” reviewed Rich Lowry of the National Review. “He subtly rebuked the Left’s finger-pointing, and rose above the rancor of both sides, exactly as a president should.”<\/p>\n
Sadly, Dingell has shown no such leadership.<\/p>\n
“Members of this body have a duty to speak up – as do members of the media – who have been saying these kinds of things,” Dingell concluded on the House floor. “(They) will lead us into a time when we will create a threat not just to the lives and well-being of our members but also to the lives and well-being of this country and its debates.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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