The Shrapnel Has Hit Sarah Palin

The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords set a fire in the U.S. “Sarah Palin incited murder,” — the Democratic camp is calling out, while the tea party leader is accusing her opponents of “blood libel” — yes, like against the Jews.

“It's the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out … this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in.”

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital… We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” So it was announced at the press conference a few hours after the shooting in Tucson on Saturday a week ago by Clarence Dupnik, sheriff of Pima County in Arizona, who opined from his vantage point within hours the background for someone firing at a Democratic and Jewish member of the House of Representatives.

But 57 percent of Americans, according to a survey published by CBS Network this week, is positive that the rhetoric of the tea party movement — targeted by the allegations — didn’t have anything to do with the rampage and that the ex-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is not accountable for the action, as determined in a hurry by those for whom the thing fit nicely from a political standpoint. The Americans believe this was the act of a madman.

Perhaps that data were in front of the eyes of President Obama, who demonstrated a stately approach in the early morning hours yesterday. In his speech at the memorial service for the six killed, Obama put the fire set in his camp out a little bit: “…none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack,” he said. “We have to guard against simple explanations…”

This soothing declaration has come after a political storm. Sarah Palin, who at first took a defensive posture, after a few days switched to an offensive one. She accused her rivals of “blood libel” — thus provoking a new attack upon herself because the expression is in fact taken from the Jewish world of concepts.

Sheriff Dupnik, who is himself an elected Democrat and overseeing the investigation of the gunfire where 22-year-old Jared Loughner murdered six people and critically injured Giffords, came forward with a very political statement — and has opened a broad public debate on the radicalization of political discourse in the country.

According to all indications, Jared Loughner, who was brought in Tuesday before the judge with his head shaved, acted out of insanity. But this was enough to let out all the pus accumulated in the American political system since Obama was elected to the presidency.

The Plans Which Have Been Ruined

Loughner was convoyed to the courtroom Monday. “He did not watch TV, he disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio, he didn’t take sides, he wasn’t on the left, he wasn’t on the right,” said Zack Osler, the shooter’s good friend from high school, who also added that Loughner wasn’t shooting people — “he was shooting at the world.” He suspects that Loughner’s downfall began when he broke up with his girlfriend and started using drugs.

Actually, this should have been a week when the Republicans were supposed to flex their muscles in the new House of Representatives they have controlled since the midterm elections in November. The plan envisioned repealing Obama’s health care reform. But the U.S. flags flown at half-mast reminded the congressmen that these are the days of unity and raison d’état.

Palin, the leading representative of the tea party movement of today, for her part made a fatal mistake, even if out of naivety. Her site had been decorated with an illustrated map of the U.S. with twenty gun crosshairs standing for twenty members of Congress to be won back. Giffords was one of them. In no time after the murder attempt, this page was taken down from the Internet.

The New York Times has reported this week that some Democrats have claimed that Palin should apologize for these tactics and suggested she should think about what contribution she might have made to the anti-establishment atmosphere prevailing in the U.S today.

The heads of both parties besought national conscientiousness in face of the grim event and, paralleling this, President Obama accepted his advisers’ tip to use the occasion as a point in time for national soul searching.

Obama was the one to order lowering the flags to half-mast and a moment of silence at 11 a.m. on Monday [Jan. 10]. Obama also wanted to deliver an address to the nation immediately after the gunfire but his advisers opined that he should wait until the stabilization of Gifford’s condition and until additional details on the bloodshed are known.

John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, made readjustments in the agenda Wednesday, and instead of tackling Obama’s health care reform switched to tackling the security of the Representatives, deeming it a suitable issue in these current days of consensus, even if these days are temporary.

But lest we err — we are very far from consensus. Many in the Democratic camp were quick to attribute the aggression in Tucson to reckless talk against the Democrats.

Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize for economy and columnist in the New York Times, wrote in his blog just hours after the shootings, “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was.”

The Republicans, from their side, have found themselves in a situation of self-defense. They were furious that the liberals turned the tragic accident into a political one. For instance, they latched on to what was said by a former Representative Chris Carney of Pennsylvania whose district was on Palin’s “crosshaired map” as well: “It would be very useful if she came out and, if not apologize, say that she was wrong in putting that sort of logo on people’s districts.”

On the opposite side, Rebecca Mansour, one of Palin’s aides, argued: “I don’t understand how anyone can be held responsible for someone who is completely mentally unstable like this… People actually accuse Governor Palin of this. It’s appalling — appalling. I can’t actually express how disgusting that is,” she said.

To Learn from Clinton

And thus, the public discourse has also deviated to the direction of the Democrats’ efforts to take the initiative again in light of the Republicans’ victory in November.

In this spirit, Democratic representatives called for their President to learn from the way President Bill Clinton handled the Oklahoma City terrorist attack — when he laid the blame on the anti-government sentiment predominant in the U.S.

But as Clinton’s aides explained this week to the New York Times, seeking political advantage in tragedy is a delicate business and can backfire.

“The only way you gain political advantage is by doing absolutely nothing to take advantage — and not have a lot of people backgrounding about how clever your political strategy is,” said Michael D. McCurry, who was Mr. Clinton’s press secretary at the time of the Oklahoma bombing.

And so the crisis revealed more split and more angry America; the Democrats about the shooting and about the instigation preceding it, and the Republicans about being accused of the responsibility for the assassination attempt. Sound familiar from somewhere?