NYT: Giffords’s opponent, Kelly, "invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him"

[denem]

... in an interview with MSNBC the day after the attack (on her district office), Ms. Giffords said: “We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the last several months. Our office corner has become a place where the Tea Party movement congregates and the rhetoric is incredibly heated, not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Last summer, Ms. Giffords found herself challenged by Jesse Kelly, a Republican candidate with Tea Party backing, who assailed Ms. Giffords on health care and immigration. He held a “targeting victory” fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him. This was playing out against a backdrop of a souring national economy and rising unhappiness with Democrats everywhere.

Mr. Kelly, who won the nomination after defeating a moderate Republican, offered tough-worded attacks on the establishment and Ms. Giffords. “These people who think they are better than us, they look down on us every single day and tell us what kind of health care to buy,” he said at a rally in October. “And if you dare to stand up to the government they call us a mob. We’re about to show them what a mob looks like."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11district.html

[somone]

1. The subtext was clear

[Rainbow Wave]

2. And of course

The article ends with this:

“People are trying to rationalize an irrational event and in the process of doing that they’re blaming the blameless,” he said. “The blame is being aimed at everything from the past campaign to the Tea Party when it should rest, by all reports, on the shooter himself.”

Well, yes, of course, the shooter is ultimately responsible. But blameless? Me thinks not.