Which Side Has The Goon Squad?
by digby
I’ve been told that it’s very bad form to be hyperbolic about the Tea Party and that it’s especially bad form to apply analogies to their behavior that might suggest they are anything but good God fearing Americans with legitimate grievances.
So I won’t. I’ll let the Lousiville Kentucky Courier Journal do it instead.
The ugliness outside a U.S. Senate debate in Lexington Monday night was not a mere act of incivility. It was a violent assault.
It was the kind of thuggish intimidation you expect against a political protestor in Tehran today or a civil-rights marcher in Birmingham in 1963. It has no place in an American election today or ever.
Rand Paul supporters knocked down an anti-Paul activist who was trying to get her picture taken with Paul as he and Attorney General Jack Conway arrived at KET for their last debate.
A man identified as a Paul campaign volunteer from Bourbon County used his foot to push the woman’s head into the concrete. Video of the assault is being watched around the world.
The Paul campaign condemned the attack, disassociated itself from the volunteer who stomped the woman’s head and called on activists “on both sides” to avoid “physical altercations of any kind.”
The problem with the Paul statement is that only one side, his side, resorted to violence.
We keep hearing this is the year of the angry voter. But what motivates people to physically assault a woman who’s carrying a political sign they don’t like?
Certainly not respect for the Constitution, which enshrines the right of all citizens to express their opinions without fear. Not a belief in the rule of law. Not common decency.
Some members of Paul’s Tea Party issue paranoid warnings that President Barack Obama and Democrats are totalitarians out to impose Marxist control over our country.
But look which side produced the goon squad.
It was disappointing that the president gave a lukewarm response when asked about this. I suppose he can’t risk getting into another Louis Gates controversy by expressing an authentic opinion but still, there was a whiff of “both sides need to calm down” which is mildly annoying when only one side is producing goon squads.
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