Cast your mind back to the rise of the Tea Party, when any liberal within shouting distance of a microphone conspicuously opined about the very worrisome violent undertones of the movement. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot by an apolitical madman, the Left instantly blamed conservative speech and delivered bad-faith lectures about the importance of "civility." And as Republicans (and some Democrats) have pushed common-sense voter identification laws to ensure the integrity of our electoral system, so-called progressives have furiously denounced their opponents' alleged "voter suppression" efforts. With all of that in mind, how are some liberals behaving in the run up to election day 2012? In Wisconsin, Walker derangement syndrome continues to metastasize. An openly gay Republican volunteer was sent to the hospital by a deranged Leftist who labeled him a "traitor:"



“I was getting ready for work and there was a knock at the door,” Wood emailed The Daily Caller late Wednesday. “I opened it, and a guy wrapped a ligature around my neck, slammed my head into the doorway, and smashed my face into a mirror, telling me ‘You should have kept your [f*******] mouth shut.’” “He then kidney-punched me, while at the same time saying I was ‘warned,’ and continued to beat me,” he added. Wood said his attacker’s reference to a warning likely pointed to graffiti he found painted on his car last week. The vandalism included the phrases “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.” Those slurs, he explained, were references to him being a gay Republican working to help Lee, a straight GOP candidate, defeat the openly gay Democrat Mark Pocan.



Also in Badgerland, the son of a Republican State Senator was badly beaten when he attempted to stop vandals from stealing his Romney/Ryan yard sign:



Early Friday morning Kedzie heard a noise, looked out his front window and saw someone stealing his Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan yard sign. He says, "I immediately opened up my front door, ran out off the front porch and said hey, you have something that belongs to me." Kedzie says the two men told him he was right and while one put the yard sign back in the ground the other walked around behind him. He says that's when they charged him and before he could defend himself he was in a choke hold. He says they punched him at least 20 times in the head ... Kedzie's injuries are visible. He says his head is still swollen and his eyes are still sore. He says, "During the beating they're saying things like Romney sucks and F-Romney and go Obama."







In Virginia, a Romney supporter watched in horror as an unidentified perpetrator literally torched her yard sign:



The couple’s signs have been stolen in the past but never set on fire as a sign for Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was about 2 a.m. Monday. "The dogs were barking so I came downstairs and looked out my front window and there’s a gentleman standing on the front porch and I looked past him to see the sign in a fireball in my front yard," she said. Her first thought was that the sign was deliberately set on fire. "It’s one thing to spray-paint a sign or slash it or steal it," she said. "It’s another to set it on fire. That’s wrong." "Due to the nature of the call, we did turn the case over to the fire marshal’s office for Loudoun County," Leesburg Police Officer Chris Tidmore said.



And as Katie mentioned earlier, conservatives in Florida are receiving mysterious letters questioning their eligibility to vote and warning of potential criminal consequences for doing so. The state's Republican Party chairman was even targeted by the hoax:





Florida Democrats have spent quite a lot of energy complaining about the new voter ID law in the Sunshine State, predictably whining about illusory "voter suppression" at every step. Here's a cut-and-dried instance of verifiable, targeted, partisan voter suppression. Will Democrats notice or care? My aim here is not to impute the egregious behavior of a few unhinged liberals onto the Democrat Party as a whole; there are bad apples on both sides of the aisle. But I'm tired of the Left regularly slandering conservatives for supposed "violent" tendencies, almost always with zero evidence. Enough of the sanctimonious "new tone" lectures. Spare me, and heal thyself.



UPDATE - Another: A Florida veteran's American flags and Romney signs were torched in his front yard.