Cynthia Tucker implies GOP establishment wants Sarah Palin harmed

"Will no one rid us of this troublesome Palin?"
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Left wing columnist Cynthia Tucker, who writes regular hate screeds for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, has typed out another hit piece on Sarah Palin. Tucker, a liberal Democrat, presumes to tell the 2008 vice presidential candidate to stay out of the 2012 presidential primary because it "would be the right thing to do for her party."

Whenever liberal Democrats give Republicans advice, you can rest assured that they're in full "concern troll mode," as if they have the best interests of the GOP at heart. Tucker mostly just recirculates DNC talking points, referring to the Vichy GOP establishment as "rational Republicans." Well, of course she would! Any Republicans who do not betray their party's platform and fully submit to the Democrats are not "rational" in the Dems' view.

But as repugnant as her column is, it's just par for the leftist course. What we find more disturbing is her choice of a title for her slime job, "GOP: Will no one rid us of this troublesome Palin?" A little history, here:

When English King Henry II appointed his good friend Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry didn't count on Thomas taking his new job all that seriously. Or at least he didn't count on Thomas siding with Rome when it came to a conflict between the king and the Catholic Church:

In 1164, the first sign of a split between Henry and Thomas occurred. Henry passed a law which stated that any person found guilty in a Church court would be punished by a royal court. Becket refused to agree to this, and knowing of Henry’s temper, he fled abroad for his own safety.

It took six years before Becket felt safe enough to return to England. However, they quickly fell out again when Becket asked the pope to excommunicate the Archbishop of York who had taken sides with the king. This was a very serious request and a very serious punishment for someone who could claim that he was only being loyal to the king. Henry was furious when he found out what Becket had done. He is said to have shouted out "will no-one rid me of this troublesome priest ?" Four knights heard what Henry had shouted and took it to mean that the king wanted Becket dead. They rode to Canterbury to carry out the deed. The knights were Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracey, Hugh de Morville and Richard le Breton. On December 29th 1170 they killed Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. After killing him, one of the knights said "Let us away. He will rise no more."

[...]

Where Becket died quickly became a place of pilgrimage. The pope quickly made him a saint. Henry II asked the pope for forgiveness and he walked bare foot to Canterbury to pray at the spot where Becket was killed. Monks whipped him while he prayed.

A moral of that story is one should be judicious about what one says, lest others act upon it, regardless of the original intent and meaning. In Medieval England, Henry's lament cost Thomas Becket his head. This is a lesson which is seemingly lost on Cynthia Tucker. But as a leftist, she is no doubt better educated and in possession of a keener mind than ours, as liberals have been telling us poor, dumb conservatives for decades that theirs are the superior intellects.

Therefore, what is Tucker's excuse to use such an inflammatory title for her column? Doesn't she realize that there are loons out there on the far ends of both sides of political center just unhinged enough to act violently on her hateful headline and the contents of her column, just as four knights assumed that Henry wanted the Archbishop beheaded? No, Tucker is not King Henry, and Sarah Palin is not Thomas Becket, but deranged minds don't always make those distinctions which seem all but obvious to sane folks.

It's past time for the left, which is always the first to accuse conservatives of inciting violence, to take its own advice. And Cynthia Tucker not only owes Gov. Palin an apology, she owes one to the AJC's readers, along with a clear disclaimer that she is not recommending that anyone attempt to do any harm to the former governor.

- JP

Palin advisor and Sen. McCain address hysterical Democrats' claims

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A Sarah Palin spokesperson has answered the former governor's critics, including some prominent Democrats, who claimed that she is encouraging threats of violence against members of Congress who voted in favor of health care reform. As we and several of our colleagues have reported, the charges are bogus and politically motivated:

An adviser to Palin responded by pointing to several instances in which the former Alaska governor has urged supporters to focus their energies on civil debate and action at the ballot box - not extremist activities.

"We are now the keepers of an honorable tradition of conservative values and good works, Palin said at the national Tea Party Convention in Nashville last month. "We must never forget that it is a sacred trust to carry these ideas forward. It demands civility and it requires decent, constructive, issue-oriented debate."

The adviser also noted that Palin spoke out last year after the murder of abortion provider George Tiller in Kansas, writing on her PAC Web site that "violence is never an answer in advancing the pro-life message."

"Its good that she finally agrees with the Democrats on something," the adviser told CNN. "[House Majority Whip] Jim Clyburn said that silence equals consent, and in this matter she agrees, which is why she has been vocal about condemning violence."

Sen. John McCain, Gov. Palin's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, defended the governor's Facebook posting on NBC's "Today Show" this morning:

"I have seen the rhetoric of targeted districts as long as I've been in politics, please," McCain said. "Any threat of violence is terrible but to say there that there is a targeted district or that we reload or go back into the fight again, please, those are fine, they are used all the time."

- JP

What's behind the Left's latest Big Lie

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The Left and its lamestream media lapdogs have launched a full-scale, coordinated attack on Republicans, TEA Parties and Sarah Palin using Alinsky's tactics and the Big Lie theory in an effort to associate political opponents of President Obama and Congressional Democrats with racism and violence. Our colleagues Adrienne Ross, Ron Devito, Karen Allen and Ian Lazaran (here and here) have ably addressed what the Left is up to and the lack of substance in their arguments. To their lists of examples of the Left inciting violence, we would like to add two more.

The first example comes from the Democrat party's unofficial house organ, the Washington Post:

On Monday morning, the Washington Post decried the "hideous display" of Tea Party protests, but it sounded pretty foam-flecked on Wednesday as Post Metro columnist Courtland Milloy was expressing violent rage on the front of the Wednesday Metro section against the Tea Party protesters:

"I know how the 'tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads."

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Milloy’s racial animus is on Red Alert, but no editor at the Post suggested he count to ten. They must have wanted it this angry.

The second example is from the DNC's unofficial PR agency, MSNBC:

If there's one liberal pundit in absolutely no position to criticize others about stoking a climate of violence, it's Chris Matthews. Just a few months ago, the Hardball host indulged this hyper-violent fantasy: "at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into [Rush Limbaugh's] head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp." [H/t reader Matt W.]

But, predictably, that didn't stop Matthews, as NewsBuster Geoffrey Dickens has documented, from making the condemnation of Republicans in connection with recent untoward incidents the focus of his show this evening.

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So please, Chris, spare us the moral indignation. You don't come with clean hands.

There are many more examples, some of which NewsBusters has collected here and Big Government reported here.

These attacks from the Left could all too easily be dismissed as the usual hysteria we have seen so often from unhinged "progressives," but that is only a partial explanation of what is behind this latest Leftist scheme. This time it's not just the usual Palin-hatin' suspects (Huffington Post, Keith Olbermann, Alaska Hit Squad, Lamestream Media, etc.) trying to slime Gov. Palin. Democrat Congresscritters Louise Slaughter and Steve Israel, both of New York, have joined in the attacks. Indeed, Sarah Palin is working to get 17 of their fellow travellers in the U.S. House fired, but the less visible reason they are doing this is to give Congressional Democrats cover.

House Dems who voted for ObamaCare knew that they were doing so at considerable risk to their own careers. They can read public opinion polls just like anyone else can, and the Congressmen didn't want to face the prospect of going home to their districts and having to explain their votes to their constituents. So the Big Lie was put to use to cover their backsides. When your number one talking point is that you allegedly fear for your own personal safety and that of your family, you can use it to to weasel your way out of taking phone calls, answering e-mails or -- God forbid -- having to actually interact with those pesky citizens face to face. Some Democrats used this excuse to cancel town hall meetings that they had scheduled last summer.

So the twofold purpose behind this latest tactic by the left is not simply to demonize Gov. Palin, TEA Partiers and Republicans, but to also give the Congressional Dems who voted for ObamaCare a bogus excuse not to have to grow a spine and face We The People, whose will they so blatently defy. Be ye not deceived.

Oh, and those "crosshair" icons on Gov. Palin's Facebook post? They're metaphors.

- JP