I gave it a pass when Rmoney operatives showed up in Boston to heckle Obama advisor David Axelrod (from a pr0-Romney “news” source:
ROMNEY SUPPORTERS SHOUT DOWN DAVID ‘TRUTH HURTS’ AXELROD
WorldNetDaily 2012-05-31: Top Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod today lost his cool as pro-Mitt Romney protesters appeared at his campaign stop and shouted him down with references to administration scandals. “You can’t handle the truth, my friends!” Axelrod yelled at protesters in Massachusetts today. “If you could handle the truth, then you would quiet down.” Axelrod was staging a news conference…
But then I found out that these weren’t just Boston thugs for Romney. They were coordinated by the Romney Campaign, as Romney acknowledged with a child’s rationalization for bullying:
Heckler’s brawl: 2012′s nastiest day
President Obama and Mitt Romney have been trading schoolyard slaps for months. | AP Photo
PoliticoBy REID J. EPSTEIN, MAGGIE HABERMAN and GLENN THRUSH | 5/31/12 5:49 PM EDT Updated: 6/1/12 5:54 PM EDT
BOSTON — Welcome to the schoolyard slap-fight that is the 2012 campaign to lead the most powerful nation on Earth… After acknowledging that his campaign had orchestrated the Boston heckling, Romney predicted the two camps will spend the next six months elevating the debate, calmly exchanging views on the issues of the day and marinating the democratic process with dignity and self-restraint.
Not.
“Most of the events I go to, or many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me,” Romney said during a campaign stop at Solyndra’s Fremont, Calif., headquarters.
“And at some point you say, ‘You know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’ If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules. If the president is going to have his people coming to my rallies, and heckling, why, we’ll show them that, you know, we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does.”
And the ever pliant catamites at Politico take the Babysitter’s Position (or that of Sergeant Schultz): “Both camps said the other side started it.”
I kid you not.
(And the scrofulous Joe Scarborough thinks it’s no big deal, which generally means it’s not. Joe’s not got a very good track record in being correct about … virtually anything.)
There is a vast difference between sending your operatives to heckle (Shouting “SO LIN DRA!” at some points) and then secretly appearing in front of the closed Solyndra plant, and being disliked by fringe opposition supporters for … well, possibly for being the kind of jerk that would order the former.
I don’t know which is more infantile and transparent, Romney’s acknowledgement that HIS thugs were shouting down an opposition spokesman and his whine that it happened to him TOO. OR Politico’s craven tail-tucked retreat from any sense of morality, ethics or propriety. As clinical and detached as a porn film critic timing money shots and stifling a yawn.
And, if it can be believed, LESS ethically noteworthy.
And now the Mitt the Barber’s Bus has engaged in Brontosaurus Heckling at an Obama campaign event:
Romney Campaign Bus Taunts Obama Supporters
Honks its horn as hundreds of Obama supporters wait to enter event in Ohio.
posted Jun 14, 2012 12:31pm EDT
Zeke Miller BuzzFeed StaffCLEVELAND, Ohio — Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s guerrilla tactics continued Thursday, as the campaign bus circled the venue where President Barack Obama will be speaking this afternoon.As it passed the assembled throngs of supporters awaiting entry to the event at Cuyahoga Community College, the bus honked its horn dozens of times, before circling around to do it again. Obama supporters jeered and booed each time the bus passed the line outside of the security screening area.
The Romney campaign has routinely deployed aides to infiltrate events featuring Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who wait online like regular supporters, but once inside spin the media live.
Romney traveling press secretary continued the taunting on Twitter …
So what comes next? Cross burnings?
Read what the “meetoo” snarking blogosmear is chortling about the bus buzz. They LOVE it. It’s so GREAT! (Good lord. These are Visigoths with keyboards.)
Bonner County, Idaho cross burning, May 2012
I’m not kidding here. If Mitt Romney has decided to pursue heckling and harassment as OK, it’s just a short goosestep to violent and thuggish tactics, and, well, cross burnings.
Things are ugly, and Mr. Big Time Morality OUGHT to know that he sets an example for his partisans. And this example is reprehensible — and ought to be reprehensible — to all civilized people. It is the antithesis of our system, the antithesis of John McCain’s praiseworthy “No. He’s not a Muslim. He’s a good American.”
Mitt is giving license to that lady, to all the Birthers (Donald Trump) and, ultimately, those fellows burning that cross in Idaho.
Idaho TODAY, babies.
If you think that a bus buzzing a crowd, or sending campaign staffers to shout down the other campaign is OK and not a slippery slope, you don’t know much about American history. This is dangerous, dangerous tea that Romney’s tee-totaling.
That guy up top of this column with the anti-Matt Shepard sign? That’s Mr. Burning Cross:
Sheriff candidate hosts cross burning
Bonner County’s Winkler: Misunderstood ‘lighting’ a pointedly Christian symbol
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 12:15 am
Updated: 10:43 am, Tue May 15, 2012.
By CAMERON RASMUSSON/Hagadone News NetworkSANDPOINT – It’s unlikely that any other Bonner County sheriff candidate spent their Friday night like Shaun Winkler.
At his compound just outside Priest River, Winkler and other family members of the northern Idaho Ku Klux Klan klavern held a get-together that included a nighttime cross lighting. Winkler, 33, is also tied to the Aryan Nations and Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. He has participated in racially-charged Kootenai County protests.
According to Winkler, cross lighting, more commonly known as cross burning, often provokes strong reactions from most people. Given that fact, the ceremony is generally conducted in private within the compound once a month or so.
“Generally, for a cross lighting, it’s extremely rare we’d let any media there at all,” he said.
However, after discussing the matter with his family and associates, the group agreed to allow outside observation for the ceremony. Winkler said the evening was meant to express both camaraderie and religious devotion….
Seriously? Nobody noticed that
this banner looks like Frankenstein?
Yeah.
You know, like Mitt claiming that it’s OK to send his hired goons because he gets heckled all the time. (Shucky darn!)
Home grown American
But it gets even better. Here’s what the County Sheriff candidate said (same article):
“Most people don’t know that we don’t just oppose the Jews and the negroes,” he said. “We also oppose sexual predators and drugs of any kind.”
Winkler added that if he had his way, perpetrators of sexual crimes would be hung immediately.
As for the cross lighting and his other white supremacist links, Winkler admits that those who oppose him for his viewpoints probably won’t come around. Given that likelihood, he’s not worried about alienating potential supporters.
“I think at this point, whoever is going to disagree with me will keep on disagreeing, and those who agree with me will keep on agreeing,” he said.
Really? This is the sort of GOP candidate (Winkler is, surprisingly, a Republican) that Mitt Romney doesn’t mind attracting?
This isn’t where it starts, but it IS where it ends …
No, there aren’t that many degrees of separation between Mitt Romney and Shawn Winkler if Romney continues down this path.
Now, luckily, Winkler LOST his election (Near Sandpoint, Idaho, where Sarah Palin’s family moved to Alaska from and relatives still reside, BTW):
Idaho Klansman Loses Sheriff’s Race
POSTED BY GEORGE PRENTICE ON THU, MAY 17, 2012 AT 9:03 AM
Here’s an update on the white supremacist running for sheriff in north Idaho: He lost.Shaun Winkler, who went as far as holding a cross-burning on May 4, came in last in a three-man race for Bonner County sheriff. Incumbent Sheriff Daryl Wheeler (3,934 votes) easily won with Tim Fry (1,427 votes) coming in second.
Winkler received 182 votes….
Defeated KKK Sheriff’s candidate Shawn Winkler
- the face of the GOP’s future?
Can’t these marginal types be DENOUNCED, rather than encouraged? Why would Mitt want to excite racism, hatred, violence, utter incivility and bigotry? Is that REALLY the only way Republicans can win?
This is the ACTUAL Idaho cross burning last month
Although it’s weird, when you think about it. Encouraging hate and childish, escalating acts of hostility OUGHT to scare hell out of a Mormon, given their history.
But no.
It’s come to this.
Which is insane.
Almost as insane as our media will be (watch what happens tomorrow) if they DON’T REPORT THE BUS HECKLING OF THE CROWD WAITING FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO SPEAK.
Almost as insane as the total news blackout of Mitt Romney’s felony violation of Wisconsin voter law last month, and Paul Ryan OF Wisconsin, who aided and abetted it, either knowing it, or else in advanced stages of dementia. The GOP made a BIG DEAL of that law not a year earlier.
Worse, the “opposition”/liberal blogs are literally asleep at the wheel, seemingly taking the noxious Steve Almond Op-Ed advice in the New York Times this weekend and ignoring the increasingly ugly rhetoric and tactics of the Right. Ostriches are the ultimate survivors, they seem to believe.
They think it’s curious and amusing . Nothing could be more dangerous and idiotic. This kind of crap (the hecklers, the buses honking people waiting to see the President) gets ugly in a hurry, and Republicans OUGHT to be as in a hurry to denounce it as they were to denounce the KKK Kandidate in Idaho. (Oh wait.)
At least one blogger seems to get it: “If this tactic is not repudiated, the dangerous implications that could stretch well beyond 2012.“
[On the other hand, here's a "Right Wing News" columnist on his own blog: William Teach / Pirate's Cove: Funny Stuff: Romney Campaign Bus Taunts Obamazombies. Ha ha.]
No: we are headed down a dangerous path, and we’d better stop them at the brickbats stage, else, once the shooting starts there will be no stopping whomever whatsoever. Take a minute and consider what that will mean.
Is THIS the America that the GOP wants? Are these “American Values”?
Is this the kind of tactic Mitt Romney will continue to use to grab the highest office in the land?
Are we in deep deep doo doo?
Time will tell.
Courage.
UPDATE 10:19 PM PDT: This was written BEFORE the White House Heckler Incident; see short follow-up post: Yes, I Guess This IS What It’s Come To.
Heh! I wish I was a paid Daily Caller columnist. Alas. No.
Nobody ever said you were paid. But you’re right. I have corrected it.
They may as well re-brand themselves as “The party of childish sociopaths”, they encourage hate and violence, and then blame it on a “lone wolf crazy”, just an isolated incident. Many of us have taken notice of ALL the isolated lone wolf crazy incidents the last 3.5 years.
Of the “Festival of Mendacity,” which looks more appealing to the bumper sticker mind.
Let’s face it: since the McCarthy Era, the GOP has been defined by the depths and intensity of their hate. When the Soviets (and most all Commies) vanished, the hate was still there. So they redirected it to their fellow Americans (and Muslims, and Socialists, and the French for being right, and well, you get the idea).
After a lifetime of hate, only the need to hate remains, while the objects OF that hate can change with the shifting sands of time.
I’m all for burning crosses… and churches, and banks.
The way thing are going, those may become popular pastimes in the very near future. Sad to say.
I’m in favor of not speaking of burning stuff down, we get enough of that from the far right. Yesterday I was talking with my neighbor (he carries at least one gun everywhere he goes) and he told me if Obama was re-elected there would be an uprising and battles in the streets. These people are definitely un-hinged, so we don’t need to fan any flames.
I think that was what I was referring to, Bill.
Your friend is right, Bill (did I mention I carry a gun everywhere? Not that I need one…). It’s a tough row to hoe, man, and if you don’t have what it takes I fully understand. It’s OK, someone else will die for your freedom.
Now, let’s play nice. It’s no more appropriate to act as though civil society were normal in a time of war than it is to act like it’s war in a time of civil society. I fear that right now we’re on the cusp.
I’m sorry man, that was inappropriate. I’m just pissed because my whole world is falling apart and no one but myself seems to be willing to fight for it. “Let’s just be good little peace freaks and the Republicans will be nice to us, might even throw us a bone”.
We will not win this – they have won it – until we, lefties, wobblies, middle-of-the-road, are willing to fight back. To put it back in their faces, to turn it around and fight fire with fire. And nobody is willing to do that.
The Fascists didn’t win, the lefties gave ‘em the ball game. The Whole Damned Ball Game. What we do is naught but a boondoggle.
This is the time when the Kipling poem kicks in, Ten Bears: “If you can keep your head when those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you …”
Keep your powder dry. Hunker down. It’s going to get darker before it gets light.
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I agree with the author but noted this little slip….”It is the antithesis of our system, the antithesis of John McCain’s praiseworthy “No. He’s not a Muslim. He’s a good American…” Those words of McCain are praiseworthy? Aren’t they in fact still connoting Muslim with “Bad American?”
No: it wasn’t perfect, but considering the company, it was probably as good as we were going to get. This blog has resolutely rejected anti-Muslim bigotry for many years now.
I reject any kind of bigotry and appreciate the Progressive Blogosphere. It is the only semblance of Free Thought!
“Can’t these marginal types be DENOUNCED, rather than encouraged? Why would Mitt want to excite racism, hatred, violence, utter incivility and bigotry? Is that REALLY the only way Republicans can win?”
No they can’t be denounced. Yes, Mitt would want to excite racism, hatred, violence, utter incivility and bigotry. Remember so called Minorities are still that! You bet the population could be whipped into action on that basis. Look at the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq! And the implementation of Chicago/Austrian style economics there but not Democracy! It all went with nearly everyone cheering! MSNBC even lead the Cheering, except Keith Olbermann!
from “My 2¢ Worth on the 9-11 Anniversary” (11 September 2011):
This is the only way that the repubs can take back power because if the public knew what they really had in store they would never win.