Blame Conservative Fury for Giffords Shooting

Were you really shocked when you heard that Gabrielle Giffords had been shot? Paul Krugman wasn’t. “I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign,” when hatred was thick in the air at McCain-Palin rallies, he writes in the New York Times. There’s been a spate of “eliminationist rhetoric,” and “it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.”

Gifford herself saw the danger, notes EJ Dionne of the Washington Post. In a March interview with MSNBC (see video), Giffords fretted over the mounting rhetoric and Sarah Palin’s now-infamous map. “When things get too fired up,” she said, political leaders must “say ‘Whoah, let’s take a step back here.’” Let’s take that step now, Dionne says. “Violent talk and playacting cannot be part of our political routine.” For an opposing view, click here. (More Gabrielle Giffords shooting stories.)