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My response to the Tucson shootings and the ensuing debate crystalized Friday morning upon viewing Steve Sack’s political cartoon in the Minneapolis Tribune depicting the new House speaker, John Boehner, marching with House colleagues under a banner reading “Kill Obamacare.” The Speaker is saying, “But remember – kill it “civilly!” Boehner’s conveniently long upper lip makes him easy to caricature, but otherwise, Sack’s draftsmanship is as crude as his political thinking and it is as difficult to make out who else might be portrayed in the cartoon as it is to determine just what its import might be.
Of course, the reference to civility would be an echo of the political left’s monologue on the Tucson shootings. After first blaming it on the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and conservatives in general, they backed off a little and compromised on an “overheated political climate,” and “atmosphere of vitriol” as culprits. The subtext, naturally, is that the generators of the latter were the former, particularly those who are so rudely objecting to Obamacare.
Let’s think for a moment. Here we have people whose immediate reaction to a tragic massacre is to point the finger of blame at their political opposition, without the slightest evidence, nor even making any plausible argument, nor the slightest attempt to cover up a massive, nauseating hypocrisy. And they now ask for a civil dialogue? First accuse the other side of instigating murder by opposing your agenda, and then call for everyone to calm down and be nice?
If there is a superheated political atmosphere, blame for it goes to left wing politicians, many of them recently thrown from office, thankfully. They have, as a comfortable majority now sees it, used terrible economic conditions as cover to advance a widely unpopular socialist agenda for their benefit, while ignoring a mandate to tend to the common good by coping with the recession intelligently.
Now the same people — who used to make phony and disingenuous arguments to justify the government health care bill they hadn’t read — blather on about violence engendered by this deplorable lack of civility. They are equally contemptible now as then, which should encourage Boehner and his colleagues to roll back their agenda as quickly as possible, and without mincing words. Kill it now, kill it dead.
J.E.
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