The Arizona tragedy

By Jennifer Rubin

The horrific shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the death of six (including a 9 year old and a federal judge) and the injuring of a total of 18 revealed the best and the worst in American politics.

First, let's look at the best. President Obama issued an eloquent statement as did Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Obama, having learned something about emergency incidents, quickly dispatched the FBI chief and appeared on top of the incident. Congress appropriately put off its business for the week. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) paid tribute to the slain federal court judge. They all conducted themselves in a calm and dignified fashion.

Then there are those who conducted themselves with far less dignity, namely partisan leftists and a segment of the blogosphere. The shooter seems to have no agenda, unless you conclude that a mix of conspiratorial rantings about currency and a fondness for the writings of both Hitler and Karl Marx represent some coherent ideology. From what we know, he's a lone lunatic. The New York Times reported:

A series of short videos posted on the Internet, apparently by Mr. Loughner, consist of changing blocs of text that are largely rambling and incoherent. Many take the form of stating a premise and then a logical conclusion that would follow from it. They speak of being a "conscience dreamer"; becoming a treasurer of a new currency; controlling "English grammar structure"; mentioned brainwashing and suggested that he believed he had powers of mind control.

And yet all the left can ponder is the politics. This is the doing of Sarah Palin, they tweeted. (We are to believe the man who scrawled about currency conspiracies saw a year-old campaign map of Palin's?) This is all about immigration politics, others surmised.

We saw the same phenomenon following the Oklahoma City bombing and the Holocaust museum shooting when MSNBC hosts and liberal pundits blamed the incidents on radio talk show hosts. These exercises in blame-mongering inevitably run aground when inconvenient details muddle the "talk show hosts did it" mantra (e.g. Did radio talk show hosts tell the Holocaust museum shooter to target the conservative Weekly Standard offices?) The same is true in this incident. You can almost hear the disappointment from the left that he was a pothead rather than a Tea Partyer.

It is as noxious to associate Saturday's shooting with conservative campaign rhetoric, even that which is over-the-top, as it would be to claim that violence is the doing of those who labeled Tea Partyers un-American (as Democratic leaders did during the health-care debate) or of those who accuse senators of being unpatriotic (as a liberal newspaper columnist recently did). If a lunatic attacks a businessman, are we to blame Obama for vilifying the Chamber of Commerce? Was the attack on an Arkansas recruiting station the fault of anti-war liberal Democrats? Of course not. The impulse to blame political opponents for tragedy and to convert human misery into a political weapon -- both of which were played out on Twitter and the Internet by liberals as diverse as Paul Krugman, Jane Fonda, and the Daily Kos crowd -- is deeply regrettable. But it has unfortunately become par for the course.

Supposedly respectable political groups followed suit: "'It is fair to say -- in today's political climate, and given today's political rhetoric -- that many have contributed to the building levels of vitriol in our political discourse that have surely contributed to the atmosphere in which this event transpired,' said a statement issued by the leaders of the National Jewish Democratic Council." Fair? How so, and on what evidence is this string of flimsy assumptions based? Shame on them.

To his credit, Howard Kurtz blasted the blame game. He wrote, "This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map [targeting Giffords's seat]; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves." Likewise, Howard Fineman wrote: "The deaths there are not about politics, ideology or party. From what we know, Jared Loughman's acts were those of a madman divorced from reality, let alone from public debate." Bravo. And where are the other voices of reason calling for an end to the political witchunting?