Republicans Encourage Tea-Bagger Violence

Members of the "Tea Party" protesters, last Saturday, revealed their true core of ignorance and hatefulness when they verbally assaulted House Democrats shouting vile epithets including "nigger" and "faggot" and spat upon Missouri Democrat, Emmanuel Cleaver.

The House members were in a group passing through the Longworth House office building to the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats when a frenzied mob of "Tea Party" health care reform ruffians began heckling Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass) with exaggerated lisp-y screams and cat calls of "faggot". Representative John Lewis (D-GA), a highly revered figure in the civil rights struggle, was called a "nigger" by the mob out to disrupt the proceedings as they have in the past at various town hall meetings.

Disgusting and repulsive as all that might be to rational people, the situation is made even worse by Republican leaders who address these crowds and play on their paranoid fears and whip them into out-of-control frenzies. Saddest of all is that no Republican has come forth to repudiate, disown, or condemn such lawless excess. In fact, several, during the health care debate which followed, actually had mealy-mouthed words of tacit support along the lines of, 'While I don't exactly approve their actions, I understand their frustration".

"Don't exactly approve"?--where the hell is the, "I am disgusted by and utterly want no part of such repulsive viciousness"?

If you do not condemn it, you support it!

But it does not end with that. Later in the day, we learned that Rep. Louise Slaughter's office in Pine View, New York, was vandalized by a skulker who, under a cloak of nighttime darkness, hurled a brick through the window of her office.

These are not the sort of matters deserving a tsk-tsk, a head shake, and then back to business as usual. They warrant our complete and immediate attention and the application of the full weight of the law. The climate is becoming that of anarchy and assassination--someone is going to get hurt unless Republican leaders take significant steps to defuse and disown a dreadfully volatile situation.

As it stands now, their lack of action and even tacit approval empowers the lawlessness and violence which in turns empowers those same Republican politicians to mouth even more provocative pronouncements, such as "Baby Killer", screamed on the hallowed floor of the United States Congress.

Yes, I know. A tepid apology followed, along the lines of, "I didn't mean anyone in particular, just the situation in general". Yeah right! Where, I want to ask this bozo, was the maturity, decorum and self-restraint we deserve and expect from our representatives?

This congressman from Texas, Randy Nuegebauer, in that nasty moment of excess became one with the earlier mob which assaulted Representatives Frank, Cleaver, Lewis and vandalized Representative Slaughter's office.

Instead of suppressing the mob, the Republicans are becoming part of it!