Ed Perlmutter, the Democrat congressman from Colorado’s 7th District, is a likable guy, as I discovered while serving with him for four years in the Colorado Senate — even if his political leanings are not to my liking. However, the Congressman has a tendency to become piously myopic — and inappropriately sanctimonious — when reacting to gun-related tragedies such as the weekend shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford and others in Arizona.
Earlier today in 850 KOA’s Colorado Morning News, he told hosts Steffan Tubbs and April Zesbaugh that we risk tragedies like the Arizona shooting “when you ramp up the rhetoric” in politics.
OK, Congressman, cool your own rhetoric and take in a little recent history for perspective.
Democrats disgustingly seek to hang this shooting, through some tortured chain of conjecture, on the TEA Party and others who believe that government has grown too big for its britches. Ergo, to Perlmutter, speaking out against government is a forerunner of political assassinations.
How nutty is that?
Flash back to the presidency of George W. Bush and recall the following:
- Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear thought he was witty when he quipped: “When I mention that Democrats are problem-solvers, I can think of only one Republican who can be a problem-solver — that is Vice President Dick Cheney if he would just take (President Bush) on a hunting trip.” This after Cheney had accidentally shot a friend while hunting. Imagine the outrage, charges of racism, and much more if a Republican made a similar crack about President Obama.
- CafePress, a popular online vendor of political apparel, offered a “KILL BUSH” t-shirt that read: “For Gods sake … KILL BUSH Save the United States and the Rest of the World (sic).” In fact, an entire cottage industry sprang up around Bush assassination propaganda and paraphernalia.
- And don’t forget the British “mockumentary,” Death of a President — a futuristic retrospective that purported to investigate the fictional 2006 assassination of George W. Bush.
How is that the nuttiest nuts on the Left can actually fantasize about the death of a sitting president and folks like Congressman Perlmutter see no danger, but they see a direct link between a the public’s general sense that government is out of control and a deranged, antisocial goofball with no coherent political philosophy?