When the Department of Homeland Security released their report (PDF) on the threat of domestic terrorism, many on the Right took offense and actually self-identified with the right-wing extremist groups described in the document. Take, for example, this account from the New American (emphasis mine):
On April 7, when President Barack Obama was winding up an overseas tour that included bowing to Saudi King Abdullah and expressing mea culpas for America’s past sins, his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was unleashing the dogs of war against his political opposition at home: Americans alarmed by his radical policies on gun control, abortion, illegal aliens, nationalizing the economy, and more. A secret 10-page DHS document sent to law-enforcement agencies nationwide is stirring up a political firestorm.
An attack on the Holocaust Museum, the murder of a prominent OB-GYN, and a killing spree in Pittsburgh soon followed. Were these right-wing terrorists part of the ‘political opposition at home’ normally known as the Republican Party? If not, why was the Republican Party identifying with them when the DHS report came out?
Update [2009-8-17 14:50:46 by BooMan]: I regret my reporting of the episode detailed immediately below. It was unfair, presumptuous, and inaccurate to say that Sam Stein thought he had suckered Clyburn, or even that he ever intended to. It also was unfair to say that he fervently wanted to be linked by Drudge. He was excited to have a piece that he knew would be well-linked, but Drudge never links to Huffington Post and he made that comment in jest. I apologize to Sam Stein for painting him in a distorted and unfavorable light.
On Thursday night at Netroots Nation, I encountered a giddy Sam Stein of the Huffington Post who had just published a story he fervently hoped would be picked up by the Drudge Report. He thought he had suckered House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn into going off message. Here’s what Clyburn said:
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Rep. James Clyburn, (D-S.C.), said that there was “absolutely” an analogy to be drawn between the horrid experience that he went through as a civil rights leader and the boisterous conservatives who have disrupted health care forums.
“I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before,” he said. “I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon.”
“This is all about activity trying to deny the establishment of a civil right. And I do believe that health care for all is — a civil right,” the House Majority Whip argued. “And I think that is why you see this kind of activity. This is an attempt on the part of some to deny the establishment of a civil right.”
Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement, said he was particularly appalled by the use of the Swastika symbol at some of these town hall events. Noting that one had been painted on the office of Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), an African-American, Clyburn insisted that was proof enough that some of the protests were racially motivated.
“There is no question in my mind,” he said.
High-level Democratic aides were in general agreement that Clyburn had gone badly off-message and were calling Clyburn’s staff to reprimand them for letting their guy go off the reservation. The Democrats wanted to go after Rush Limbaugh for making Nazi analogies, and now the senior black member of Congress had gone and compared teabaggers, shouters, birthers, deathers and swastika painters to the segregationists of the 1960’s. So much for elevating the discourse, or so their reasoning went.
There is definitely something to be said for keeping Congressional leaders on message. Rep. Clyburn isn’t some bankbencher who can free-lance and just provide a stream of consciousness on the events of the day. In that respect, his comments were distinct from Rep. John Dingell of Michigan. As Sam Stein rightfully noted, Clyburn wasn’t the only member of Congress to see a similarity between the town-hall disrupters and the white opposition to civil rights.
Earlier this week, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) told “The Ed Show” that the last time he had confronted such charged protests, it was during the days of “Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets.”
John Dingell, of course, is white. And, for some reason, even Democratic operatives (themselves white) seem to take for granted the legitimacy of a double standard. When a white Democrat compares the tactics of the Right to the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, that’s just hot rhetoric. But when a black Democrat does it, it’s lowering the level of discourse and comparable to Rush Limbaugh calling us Nazis. That’s bullshit. If there is a legitimate distinction between what Dingell and Clyburn said, it isn’t in the content but the context. The Majority Whip has an obligation to push a message and not to make the story about something other than that message.
Still, I was disturbed to see these white operatives being so critical of a civil rights hero who was responding to seeing a swastika painted on one of his black colleague’s office sign. And, the Republicans? They’re still self-identifying with these racists.
National Review Online accused Dingell of playing the race card. Pat Toomey, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, accused him of “wildly insulting ordinary, honest, decent, hard-working American people.”
A few of these protestors fit Toomey’s description. A few of them fit Dingell and Clyburn’s. The truth is that the truth is the first casualty in Washington DC when the operatives go about their strategizing.
