Waiting for the right moment
by digby
So Rahm is touting gun control now:
In 2009 while serving as Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel reportedly told Eric Holder to “shut the f–k up” after the attorney general suggested reinstating the assault weapons ban — which expired in 2004. Emanuel’s profanity-laced frustration with Holder was detailed in Daniel Klaidman’s book, “Kill or Capture.”
Gun-safety groups and political scientists say Emanuel has always had an interest in pushing appropriate gun restrictions. But Emanuel also knows timing is everything in politics, the experts say.
“Based on his political record it would suggest that as Obama’s chief of staff, he made a judgment that emanated more from politics than policy,” said Robert Spitzer, the author of “The Politics of Gun Control” and a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland.
In 2009, Spitzer continued, Emanuel was likely more focused on Obama’s primary goal of passing healthcare reform and calculated that there weren’t enough votes to pass gun laws.
“There’s always an element of Emanuel that has his finger” to the political winds, Spitzer said. Now though, Emanuel “has a constituency that would be supportive to gun control.”
That’s the way politicians have to think on topics that are controversial, says Kristin A. Goss, an assistant professor of public policy at Duke University and the author of “Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America.”
“You have to sort of wait for the political stars to align,” Goss said.
And look how beautifully they’ve finally aligned for him:
Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Troop Killings In Afghanistan
But even that wasn’t enough, was it? The mayor of Chicago waited until various madmen mowed down a congresswomen and her constituents, an audience in a darkened movie theater, a church full of worshippers and classrooms full of first graders among literally thousands of other preventable gun deaths before he felt it was a good time to bring up gun control. Until we racked up a huge body count of innocent people, it was best to STFU and elect as many government officials of both parties who would oppose any kind of gun control.
That’s what people in the beltway call “pragmatism.” I call it immoral.
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