Without hate, Republicans have nothing to offer but failed ideology. It's the only way they get elected. And if people are murdered, they won't give a shit. How many gay people have been murdered by the same hate? No, because all that matters to them is themselves.

Sorry to disappoint Paul Krugman, Dan, and Goldy, but the shooter doesn’t appear to fit the mold you're all hoping to continue to milk this with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw97MBDe1…

Please fix your post title, Goldy. She made it through surgery and surgeons are guardedly optimistic at present.

Sarah and the rest tea baggers are in a state of anxiety that there are no ties to their repetitive rhetoric.

Q: What person who has any shred of decency would be a Republican?

A. None

@2 You just don't want to see it.

Kid is a magical thinker that selectively picks often wrong information to prove his wild fantasies, and calls everyone that doesn't agree with him illiterate or stupid or whatever. That is exactly what every single Tea Party member out there does. That little film you posted has plenty of statements that could have appeared on Glenn Beck.

The target of the attack is proof of his politics. He didn't shoot up a Arby's employee party or a Republican event. It's a vanishingly small possibility that this attack was random.

@2 Check out the YouTube Paul posted below under "My Final Thoughts..." Starting at 3:04 to the end it is straight Tea Party litany.

The republican party, and the teabaggers, are motivated by fear. They are manipulated by their leaders into:

A: Telling them to be afraid (of terrorists, Iraq, Iran, muslims, liberals, gays, etc.).
B: Telling them the republican/teabag leaders are the only ones who will protect them.

That's just one of the reasons republican/teabaggers are big on the military, guns, and religion (the former two for obvious reasons, the latter because when you live in constant fear, you need a feeling that there's light at the end).

It's like Vince said @1, without fear and control, the republicans and teabaggers really don't have any other platform.

All this is just extrapolation (including from me) from the ramblings of a disturbed individual. Let's let the dust settle and the facts to emerge before demonizing other politicians and political parties.

@11: Phoebe, it is crystal clear that the Republicans have been using very dangerous rhetoric. It was only a matter of time before a crazy person took this stuff to heart and acted on it. Holding them accountable for their reprehensible behavior and their responsibility for manipulating hatred for their political advancement isn't just the reasonable thing to do; it's the only responsible thing to do.

This guy seems like possibly a neo-Nazi to me. His favorite books, according to his MySpace profile, included "Mein Kampf". I mean, the only people who read that book are Nazis, WWII scholars, and Indian businessmen.

@13: Exactly.

@11,
I have no idea if the shooter in this crime was politically motivated or just simply a lunatic.

However, no matter what his personal motivations, the right wing machine is encouraging people to fear and to hate.

Maybe this guy never heard their message, I don't know, but they're putting that message out there, and it's dangerous and irresponsible and they need to be called on it, regardless of today's horrible crime.

@14: You've been saying you DON'T think the shooter's a right-wing lunatic, and now you agree when I say he might be a Nazi? Nazis are a kind of right-wing lunatic, you know.

It's unfortunate that right-wing hate mongers won'tbe held in any way accountable for this. Because they are given a pass on everything. They'll bluster and take offense, their faux outrage all "how dare you try to link this lone individual with our bullet-based hate rhetoric." And the cowardly maintstream media will immediately back down and add some bullshit false equivalency "well their are crazies on both sides..." and that will be the end of it.

Maybe by the time the 3rd or 4th democrat gets shot something will change.

@16: Yes, he's definitely disturbed enough to be a neo-Nazi, or at least a right-wing lunatic. Agreeing with you doesn't negate what I'm saying in post 11.

There are two things at play: The shooter's politics, and his mental illness. How they intertwine is just conjecture at this point.

Jared Lee Loughner sounds like typical SLOG stalker:

“He was a pot head and into rock, like Hendrix, The Doors, Anti-Flag. I haven’t seen him in person since 2007 in a sign language class. As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. He had a lot of friends until he got alcohol poisoning in 2006 and dropped out of school. Mainly a loner, very philosophical,” she wrote.

http://wireupdate.com/wires/13960/jared-…

Did you look at his youtube page?

He seemed to be in favor of the gold standard and an originalist view of the constitution. Not exactly liberal positions.

And I believe those videos had been made since 2007.

http://www.alan.com/wp-content/uploads/2…

I don't get out much--what's the "2012 prophecy"?

Was the shooter directly influenced by Tea Party rhetoric? Is he a member of the Palin Youth? I don't know. But how does Palin's and Beck's constant violent language—crosshairs, reloading, Second Amendment solution—helping anything?

@22: He also liked Mein Kompf. What's your point.

@22,
And another of the favorite books was We the Living by Ayn Rand.

Not a liberal, left wing book.

Who knows what was going on in this guy's head, but to pin it on politics, as you do, is pathetic.

Anyone who thinks self-righteous hatred is a right-wing thing hasn't been reading Slog or its comments. There is plenty of hatred here. So go ahead and speculate about the nutjob shooter's politics so it can serve your own purposes, but don't pretend the "climate of hate" is a product of conservatives alone.

@28 - show me a Slog post that placed crosshairs over right-wingers, or suggested "second-amendment solutions." There is plenty of vitriol on both sides, but only one side is stirring that particular pot.

@29. Hows about publishing the addresses and photos of private citizens who support the GOP by putting signs in their yard?

http://captainleadbottom.wordpress.com/2…

Only one side stirs the pot?

I await your rationalization that this example is somehow "different".

I've got to say that these threads have given me some valuable insight into which commenters here are the rational, reasonable ones, and which are simply knee-jerk radical libtards. If you think the Republicans are responsible for this, or if you think Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh are responsible for this, you're in the latter camp, and I'll be taking everything you say a whole lot less seriously from now on.

@31: you're right, that's EXACTLY THE SAME as having a national 24/7 cable channel and hundreds of AM radio stations and propagating violent rhetoric and gun-grabber paranoia.

read 29 again, particularly the line about "stirring THAT PARTICULAR pot". equivalence is the issue, and the violence is not equivalent. if it was, where the fuck was leftist violence during 8 years of the Cheney junta?

@33 29 wanted an example of the stranger targeting people and I gave him one.

You can rationalize it all you want but it doesn't make it go away.

@32 No one knows what's in the guy's head. But I think it's a bit far fetched to imagine his target is a coincidence.

Us Libtards said, when people started making up conspiracy theories about us that paint us as a threat to democracy, grandmas and freedom, that this would happen. When the Sarah Palins of the world started putting moderates in rifle sights on her website, we said this would happen.

Now it's happened. There's nothing knee-jerk about it. We made these predictions based on the knowledge that there are crazy people out there. Those crazy people watch Glenn Beck, listen to Sarah Palin, and they have guns. Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck called us traitors and Nazis, and grandma murderers knowing that there are crazy people with guns out there, knowing they would act in defense of their precious country against these made-up threats. This is exactly the kind of guy Palin and Beck are reaching out to.

But even if this guy wasn't motivated by the worlds largest media empire calling for the death of public servants, someone will be.

But really? You really think this guy just randomly targeted a Democratic Congresswoman?

Or do you think your not responsible if you only tell someone to murder another human being? The way I see it, if you lie to an irrational person to get them to kill someone, you share some of the responsibility when that guy goes out and attacks someone.

Maybe I'll think about it a bit more. Shock can do crazy things to people. I'm sure my mind could change if I get more information.

@34 The funny thing is all the death threats came from the Right-Wingers to The Stranger.

If you think taking photos of people's yards that those people have chosen to publicly display their political affiliation, you're really reaching.

You fail the false equivalence test. I hope your not being paid for this.

Another excellent rationalization! Automatic negation by failing equivalence! Good one!