News Jan 10, 2011 at 7:37 am

Comments

1
"the thoughtful voices of the vast majority of conservatives"? is this dude high?
2
It's the Sun-Times. In this city, the Chicago Tribune is the #1 paper for a reason.
4
Actually, it's much more fun watching you guys fall all over yourselves trying to convince yourselves that he somehow wasn't a liberal.
5
Remember when Michael Steele had to walk back his condemnation of Limbaugh's "incendiary" and "ugly" rhetoric for fear of losing his own legitimacy? I do.
6
How many more massacres will it take to convince Americans that their guns laws and gun culture are not a great idea, I wonder.
7
@4: How many liberals are into the whole "gold instead of paper money" thing? How many liberals white power groups are there in the US? I'm not from your country, just an observer from the outside. I really don't have a dog in this fight, but I really have no idea what information would lead you to think he's liberal. Can you explain? I'm honestly asking. What information or context am I missing?
8
@4 and how many liberals are rabid anti-choice?
10
@9: First and foremost he was likely an untreated schizophrenic. Secondly, he was probably a sexually frustrated loser who wanted attention.
11
it's really simple: he smoked weed, and he was crazy. outside of our seattle bubble, that's a liberal.

liberals generally don't shoot liberal politicians. it's not like they're muslim fundamentalists.
12
@9,

This country is crawling with sexually frustrated losers who want attention. Most never resort to assault or murder.
13
I believe the point of the message in the paper was not to be fooled by Republican commentary that nutjobs are spread equally across the political spectrum. Whether this particular nutjob happens to have a few liberal tendencies is ir-fucking-relevant. Very few people are 100% their political ideology. For instance, I am staunchly anti-Republican but I still embrace Republican ideals like lax gun control. I have relatives who are staunch Fox-loving religious Republicans who smoke pot recreationally.

It's meaningless. We are not wholly defined by our political parties. People are too nuanced and complex to fit into those little prescribed boxes.
14
13: because lax gun control is working so well for America. Oh wait.
15
@5: I also remember how Rush Limbaugh was actually seriously considered as a frickin' candidate for GOP leadership, but he turned down the offer.

You're right. There is no moderate right anymore, except as a minority. We can thank the media for that.
16
Actually, in a weird way, I think it may be the same problem that Islam has right now. There is a solid core (probably even a majority), in both groups, of quiet, reasonable people whom most of the world would consider perfectly sane, but the nutjob fringe is not only loud, it is, at least to a degree, in charge.

This leads the solid core of quiet, reasonable people to mostly do one of 3 things: fake being nutjob-fringe (either from mob mentality, or to avoid notice), keep quiet to avoid being singled out as a "traitor" or insufficiently "pure", or abandon the group and go do something else instead.

And there's not a solid enough core of vocal in-group moderates trying to beat down the whackjobs and rein in the rest of the group.

If this nutjobbery keeps up for the repubs, I predict the Libertarians may rise to actually-able-to-elect-to-national-office levels, there's a good bit of overlap between sane conservatives and Libertarians. (I suspect Islamic nutjobbery has led to a lot of conversions to other religions...)

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