Nice catch by JT. I’d forgotten about this incident from Campaign ’08, when McCain apologized for Bill Cunningham’s reference to “Barack Hussein Obama” in his intro at one of Maverick’s rallies. By comparison, not only is Hoffa not sorry for what he said, the best Carney can do by way of repudiation on Obama’s behalf is to say that no one speaks for The One (except him). Will that standard also apply to the Republican nominee next year? Of course not, but don’t expect any reporter there to challenge Carney on it later when the Democrats’ smear campaign against him/her gets going — except Tapper himself, of course. In fact, the new head of the DNC, who was one of the most adamant proponents of the “new tone” after the Tucson shooting, spent an entire segment on Fox News this morning deflecting questions about Hoffa rather than denouncing him. How soon things change.

Speaking of change, my favorite part of the Hoffa story is the left’s defense that he was talking specifically about voting when he called for taking those tea-party “sons of bitches” out. That’s super, but the whole point of the “new tone” demagoguery after Tucson was that intent doesn’t matter. Go re-read Palin’s Facebook post from March 2010 showcasing the crosshairs map that the media would make famous 10 months later. Sample quote: “This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.” Elections. Voting. And yet it didn’t matter to our liberal betters after Giffords was shot; the argument then was that the political “climate” in America had become so heated that it was irresponsible to use violent rhetoric or imagery even in service to a perfectly pedestrian nonviolent call for voter turnout. Remember? We were all going to clean up our language lest the scrambled brains of the Jared Loughners of the world derive some sort of incitement to murder from them where none was intended. Fast forward eight months and here’s the president of the Teamsters coloring his own turnout plea with a bunch of war metaphors and a call to start taking “sons of bitches” out, oblivious to the possibility that Loughners might exist on his side as well. How’s that post-Tucson rhetorical standard working out for you now, liberal friends? Is that bed you made for yourselves comfortable?