The loyal opposition
by digby
Roy Edroso surveyed the right wing response to Orlando so you don’t have to. An excerpt. Oy:
“Gays Immediately Blame Christians for Muslim Terror Attack on Florida Gay Bar,” blared Warner Todd Huston, citing a couple of people on Twitter. Example: “A tweet from Hoosiers for Hillary posted that the terror attack was directed at Gay Pride month when we now know it was not.” Huston closed: “In the end, we all now know that this act of terror was committed by an ISIS-connected Muslim from Florida who is a registered Democrat voter.”
(Huston wasn’t the only one who thought, or pretended to think, that Mateen’s voter registration was significant; many rightwing sites headlined it, and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit joked, “Democrats need to purge themselves of this anti-gay hate.” Ha ha, get it? Thoughts and prayers.)
For others, the real victims were, as they will always be, the guns. Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review spent most of the day of Twitter defending the Second Amendment, mocking people who don’t know the difference between automatic and semi-automatic weapons and thus seizing the moral high ground.
“Under Florida law, guns can’t be carried into bars,” reported John Hinderaker at Power Line. “So Pulse was a gun-free zone. That is one legal change that should be made.” Yeah, let people bring loaded AR-15s into nightclubs — that’ll make things safer!
At National Review, one-time almost-candidate for president David French called for a return to the Middle East interventions of the Bush era (“We need to crush the head of the snake”), then expressed outrage that some people disagreed with him. “My feed at least is filled with people on the Left utterly furious at the NRA,” he marveled. “And a few who are actually tweeting against Christians for wanting to protect their own religious liberty… The enemy is the enemy,” French closed. “Look at him — with open eyes — and your domestic political grievances will pale by comparison… You will see the hate, and you will know that there is but one response — war.” Back to Iraq, guys — third time’s the charm!
When the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations arranged a joint press conference with the LGBT Center of Orange County, National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy applauded the outreach. Kidding! Instead, the torture enthusiast said, “Isn’t that precious?” and claimed CAIR has an “Islamist agenda to implement Muslim law.” He wondered puckishly if CAIR would denounce a bunch of jihadists with whom he insisted CAIR shared a hatred of gays, notwithstanding that they’d just agreed to hold a joint press conference with a leading gay organization.
The news that a possible attack on the Los Angeles Pride Parade may have been thwarted also excited the brethren, at least at first; “Police say the events are unrelated, unbelievably,” said Caleb Howe at RedState. Then they found out the guy wasn’t brown. “They say this guy is white, which means nothing,” said Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, unsuccessfully hiding her disappointment at Right Wing News.
Nothing quite reaches this level of cynicism and demagoguery though.