The New York Times, Very Upset By The "Violent" Rhetoric In Politics Just Six Months Ago, Loves Biden's "Terrorists" Talk

Column headline: The Tea Party's War on America.

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

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For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

Damn those right-wingers for being so crude as to deploy, and be whipped into frenzies, by hyperbolic rhetoric suggesting violent solutions.

This is just the latest supeheated burst of violent rhetoric from the terrorists of the left. (Hey, fun! Thanks for the tip, guys!) Taranto compiled more such talk. (Link fixed to point to yesterday's column, where this came from.)

A New York Times editorial calls the deal "a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists. . . . This episode demonstrates the effectiveness of extortion. Reasonable people are forced to give in to those willing to endanger the national interest." Haha, remember "civility"?

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is even huffier: "By demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, [the deal] will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. . . . What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question."

Roars Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect: "The United States has been rendered ungovernable except on the extortionate terms of the far-right. For the first time in modern history, one of the two major parties is in the hands of a faction so extreme that it is willing to destroy the economy if it doesn't get its way. And the Tea Party Republicans have a perfect foil in President Barack Obama."

What makes this not just hypocritical but ironic and poorly timed is that the supposed victim of "rightwing hate speech" -- Gabby Giffords, shot down by a schizophrenic who believed grammar, which he had trouble comprehending, was a government mind-control program -- just made a triumphant return to the House, to a bipartisan ovation.

Apparently the left, having claimed that Giffords was shot due to "superheated, violent rhetoric," has staged a large-scale, coordinated outbreak of precisely such rhetoric to, I guess, welcome her back. I guess their operating theory is that a sharp change in rhetoric -- to be less superheated and violent -- would be too big a transition for her to manage at this time, so they thought it would be a good idea to recreate the conditions which they claim led to her shooting.

Same Idea: Jonah Goldberg made the mistake of watching the Today show, and saw the same absurd hypocrisy at work.

And yet you know the next time there’s the slightest, remotely exploitable tragedy or hint of violence, the same reporters, editors, producers and politicians are going to insist that blood was spilled because of the right wing’s rhetoric.

Well, go to Hell. All of you.

Goldberg trots out the hypothetical of "what if Dick Cheney called his opponents terrorists?"

Frankly, I think that needs to be done. I think the right should say exactly what the left says. This will highlight the hypocritical contradictions in the media narrative.

Yes, we should call them terrorists, and should say they are making "war on America," and they are taking hostages, and they are holding guns to our heads.

If they're really so frightened of such rhetoric, perhaps the only way to make them take ownership of their own war-talk is to deploy their exact same terms of debate ourselves.

Loves Biden's "Terrorists" Talk&bodytext=Column headline: The Tea Party's War on America. You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 11:55 AM

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