Business As Usual

The state Democratic Party chairman said Friday that GOP leaders should denounce a state lawmaker who urged Republicans to disrupt a campaign event by supporters of presidential candidate John Kerry.

In a news release, the DFL Party included an e-mail that Rep. Bill Kuisle had sent to Olmsted County Republicans, urging them to attend an event in Rochester on Friday featuring singer Carole King and the group Minnesota Women for John Kerry.

Kuisle provided the details of the event and said, “If anyone can go and harass it would be appreciated. Bill.”

[…]

Randy Wanke, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, said it’s hard to take the criticism seriously given that Erlandson “didn’t condemn the Democrats who heckled the President in Duluth,” where Bush campaigned in July, and other disturbances at Bush rallies.

Yes, the two parties are equivalently malignant this way. Except that Bush supporters are routinely allowed their freedom of speech to heckle Kerry and do it quite often. Bush on the other hand deals with it differently:

Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room — some by their hair, one by her bra straps — and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.

After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush’s personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.

The Bush campaign has made unprecedented efforts to control access to its events. Sometimes, people are required to sign oaths of support before attending events with Bush or Vice President Cheney. At times, buses of demonstrators are diverted by police to idle in parking lots while supporters are waved in. And the Secret Service has played an unusual role; one agent cooperated with a plan by the Bush campaign last month to prevent former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), a Kerry ally, from handing a letter to the agent outside Bush’s Texas ranch.