A Call to Arms from the Right: ‘It Is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty’ With Blood
The topic of assassination has been unthinkable during the early months of Barack Obama’s presidency. But in light of the right-wing rage on display at health-care town halls this month — combined with new information that the president is receiving around 900 threats per month, a 400 percent increase over threats against George Bush — the topic has unfortunately become a lot less unthinkable.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post today, David Broder suggests Republicans are “playing with fire” by fanning the flames with talk of incipient socialism and by promoting lies about reforms, including the lie that will not die, that Obama plans to set up “death panels” with the power to euthanize seniors and the handicapped.
Broder means GOP leaders are playing with fire politically, of course. Their objective in ginning up the hysteria is to drive a wedge between Blue Dog Dems and the right-leaning independents whose votes they must have to stay in office. Broder warns the GOP leaders that the party could face a backlash from normal Americans who find the rage of the town-hall disrupters off-putting and who see through the lies about reforms.
Broder — the capitol’s leading regurgitator of conventional wisdom — is not ready yet to accuse his GOP buddies (and key sources) of fanning the flames of violence. But a new metric about the threat level faced by this president should give pause even to David Broder, the ultimate promoter of the status quo.
According to a new book, “In the President’s Secret Service,” by Richard Kessler, Pres. Obama receives as many as 30 death threats a day. That’s as much as 900 threats a month — roughly 7,000 threats since the president was inaugurated.
Given statistical probability — combined with the fact that the right-wing fringe has produced Timothy McVeigh, Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, Scott Roeder, the murderer of Dr. George Tiller, and other killers in recent years — it is a dead cinch that one of these lunatics will take the threat to the next level and launch a violent attack against the president someday soon.
Over the top, you say?
