Giffords Shooting Fuels Debate over Rhetoric

TUCSON & SANTA FE, NM (By Susan Page and Fredreka Schouten, USA Today) January 10, 2011 ― Has the nation's harsh political rhetoric become more than just talk — to the point of being dangerous?

The attempted assassination of Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as she spoke with voters outside a grocery store in Tucson fueled a debate Sunday over whether the sharp partisanship and anti-government language that now mark American politics have created a climate that makes violence against public officials more likely.

As a moderate Democrat who barely won re-election in a state torn by disputes over immigration policy, economic angst and growing mistrust in the government, Giffords was familiar with today's increasingly nasty political rhetoric. Her opponent last fall accused her of betraying her district. Meanwhile, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's website posted a map with cross hairs on 20 Democrat-held congressional districts Palin was targeting for takeover by Republicans in the November elections. Giffords' was one of them.

"You can't say they're just words; they have consequences," said South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a member of the Democratic leadership. He said he worries about the effect of words on "people who may not be clicking on all cylinders."

He cautioned, "We need to take a look at what we're drifting into here."

However, some Republican leaders and conservative activists rejected the suggestion that their hard-edged language on issues such as health care and immigration could fairly be tied to Saturday's attack by a gunman in Tucson that left six people dead, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. Giffords, who was shot in the head, was in critical condition Sunday after surgery.

"This is a terrible politicization of a tragedy," said Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin. "We don't know (the suspect's) motive. It doesn't seem like he was motivated by a political ideology. Craziness is not an ideology."

She dismissed criticism by liberal blogs suggesting that Palin's congressional map had helped encourage violence.

The map didn't show Giffords herself in a gun's cross hairs, only her district, Mansour said. "The language of 'targeting a swing district' has been used long before we used it. We have no idea whether (suspect Jared Lee Loughner) ever saw that graphic."

Some national tragedies — the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, for one, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 — became moments of national unity and solemnity that prompted officeholders and voters to step back from the most polarized politics of the day, at least for a time.

Whether that will happen in the aftermath of the tragedy in Tucson isn't clear, though officials on all sides decried the shooting and offered prayers for Giffords and the other victims. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., announced that Wednesday's scheduled vote to repeal the health care law that was passed by the Democrat-led Congress last session — a measure guaranteed to be the focus of heated rhetoric — would be postponed.

There were calls for comity: President Obama ordered American flags flown at half-staff and called for a national moment of silence today at 11 a.m. ET to honor the victims. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, urged members of Congress to rally together. "At a time when an individual has shown us humanity at its worst, we must rise to the occasion for our nation and show Congress at its best," he said during a conference call for members.

Even so, the instant venues that have accelerated the polarization of U.S. politics — cable TV, talk radio, political blogs, Twitter and more — have become the vehicles for fierce back-and-forths on who was to blame and what should be done.

"When politicians and news commentators use nasty, violent rhetoric, it revs up the base and it fills campaign coffers, but there are repercussions," said Daniel Shea of the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. "No one wants to make a direct connection between this fellow's actions and a single political speech or event, but we have to worry about the climate."

Not so fast, said political scientist John Geer of Vanderbilt University. "Shootings happen all the time. It could be political, but it's more likely that this person isn't stable," he said, calling criticism part of democracy. "It's not for the faint-hearted."

The 'Tombstone' of the United States

Arizona is the center of some of the nation's most polarized politics.

The once-booming economy in the Grand Canyon State has been devastated by the mortgage crisis that has left some neighborhoods pockmarked with foreclosed homes. Fears about illegal immigration across the border with Mexico led the state Legislature last year to enact the nation's toughest crackdown. The state also has among the nation's most lenient gun laws.

"We're the 'Tombstone' of the United States of America," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told reporters Sunday, a reference to the dusty Arizona town that was the site of the legendary 19th-century gunfight at the O.K. Corral. "I have never been a proponent of letting everybody in this state carry weapons under any circumstances where they want. That's almost where we are."

The blunt-spoken Democratic sheriff called Arizona "the capital" of anti-government rhetoric that is heard across the country, often citing the Wall Street bailout and the health care law as outrageous overreaches by the federal government.

"The rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates — and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — has impact on people, especially (those) who are unbalanced personalities to begin with," Dupnik said.

The health care law has been a flashpoint in Arizona. During the debate over the bill in August 2010, a protester at a Giffords event dropped a gun; police escorted him out. On the night the law passed in Washington with her support, a window in her district office was smashed.

In the November election, she faced a Republican challenger who had Tea Party support. Jesse Kelly, a businessman and Iraq veteran, used tough language against Giffords, accusing her of having "betrayed" her district on immigration and of having produced "four years of failure" in Congress.

She prevailed and won a third term, but barely.

An 'angrier, confrontational environment'

Just before 10 a.m. Saturday, Giffords typed out a tweet on her iPad. "My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now," it read. "Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later."

Setting up outside a grocery store on a weekend morning so voters would have a chance to chat is the type of event many members of Congress routinely hold to connect with their constituents. But a few minutes after Gifford sent the message on Twitter, Loughner, 22, walked up to her, pulled out a gun and hit her and 19 others in a spray of gunfire, according to charges filed Sunday.

Ultimately, the victims also may include events such as "Congress on Your Corner." Congressional leaders and U.S. Capitol police are reassessing security for lawmakers and their aides at the Capitol and when they travel to their home states, typically without any security. Republicans and Democrats will hold a rare joint meeting in the House on Wednesday to discuss security measures.

House records indicate only a few assassination attempts against members of Congress: A duel between two House members in 1838, a brutal fistfight over slavery between two House members and a senator in 1856, an attack by Puerto Rican nationalists on Congress in 1954 and the ambush of a California congressman in 1978 while he was on an investigative trip to Guyana.

In this case, Giffords was simply meeting with constituents when the gunman began firing. Fears of such violence could make officeholders more reluctant to hold open events where there often are often no law enforcement officers present.

Rhetorical attacks on officials have been getting tougher, and words that once would have seemed out of bounds now are almost routine. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" at Obama when the president spoke to a joint session on health care in 2010. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has compared the president to Adolf Hitler.

Sharron Angle, the Nevada Republican who challenged then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid last year, said she hoped "we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies" in dealing with "Harry Reid problems." (Reid was re-elected.) Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat, ran a TV ad calling GOP opponent Daniel Webster "Taliban Dan." (Webster won.)

Amid the escalating verbal attacks, concerns about security have been building. During the health care debate last year, chaotic protests led some members of Congress to stop holding town hall meetings. The FBI reports that death threats to members of Congress tripled in the second half of 2010, mostly tied to the issue of health care.

"I don't think there's any doubt but my colleagues are very concerned about the environment in which they are now operating," Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation. "It has been a much angrier, confrontational environment over the last two or three years than we have experienced in the past."

Some representatives said limits on interacting with voters could make their jobs difficult. "I'm concerned about putting up more walls between me and the people I represent," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said on Fox News Sunday.

The nation's angry politics is distressing many Americans. Nearly three of four voters polled in November called the fall election one of the nastiest they had seen, according to a survey by the Allegheny College center. Nearly two-thirds called the negative tone of politics bad for democracy.

The Tucson shootings feel "like a significant moment" to a nation bruised by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and the bitter mid-term elections in November, said Kirk Hanson of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

"Americans are trying to cope with diminished expectations. We will not be the richest and most successful country in the next 25 years," he said. The shootings reinforce "a soul-searching that many in Washington and around the country have been engaged in. The questions about violent rhetoric were already being asked even before the first shots were fired on Saturday."