Republicans should take the lead in cooling down heated rhetoric
They are right to call for greater civility in politics, but they should start by cleaning up their own house.
In the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump a chorus of Republicans has called for toning down political rhetoric.
“We’ve got to dial it back,” said Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate David McCormick.
Some even blame Democrats for demonizing Trump.
They are right to call for greater civility in politics, but they should start by cleaning up their own house.
To condemn the attack on the former president while saying nothing about the continuous threats against election officials is, at the very least disingenuous and at worst, hypocritical.
Republicans must also consider where the violent rhetoric began and who made it a feature of mainstream political discourse.
In March 2010, former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin posted a map of the United States with target circles on 20 House of Representative seats her political action committee was focused on in the next election, along with the names of the Democratic representatives who held them.
She also tweeted, “Don’t retreat, Instead — RELOAD!”
One of the representatives on Palin’s list was Gabriella Giffords (D-Ariz.) On Jan. 8, 2011, Jared Lee Loughner shot Giffords and 18 others, six of whom died, at a Tucson area supermarket where she was holding an event.
Palin was roundly criticized for her inflammatory rhetoric, but her defenders insisted she was speaking metaphorically and that the map markings were “crosshairs,” not targets.
Biden offered the same defense for saying that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye,” but Republicans cut him no slack.
Biden apologized; Palin insisted she had done nothing wrong.
After the Tucson massacre, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik spoke out against the “vitriolic rhetoric” that might inspire unstable people to act violently.
Neither the sheriff’s call for moderation nor the horror of the attack on Giffords, which left her permanently disabled, had any effect on political discourse.
Spread by social media, the rhetoric became more vitriolic.
In what now appears the last iconic gesture of civility in American politics, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) defended Barack Obama against a woman who called him an Arab and said she did not trust him.
“No, ma’am,” McCain corrected her. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Then came the election of 2016.
With his keen ability to sense what sells, Donald Trump brought violent rhetoric into mainstream politics.
He told the crowd at an Iowa rally to “knock the crap out of hecklers” and offered to pay their legal bills should they be charged or sued.
He demonized his opponent Hillary Clinton, did little to restrain some of his supporters calling for her “execution” and did not chastise crowds at his rallies for chanting “kill the bitch” or “hang the bitch.”
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” Trump boasted, “And I wouldn’t lose any voters.” He may have been right.
Any hope that Trump would moderate his speech after being elected evaporated in the summer of 2017,
In response to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., at which neo-Nazis chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” he said, “You had some very fine people on both sides.”
Trump vilified Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) for not opening up the state during the pandemic and failed to condemn armed militiamen who entered the state capital.
On the night the FBI revealed that it had foiled a plot to capture, try, and perhaps execute Whitmer, the president said, she had done “a terrible job.”
As the election of 2020 approached, Trump’s rhetoric became more heated.
During the second debate with Joe Biden, he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
They viewed the statement as a call to arms and displayed it on their merchandise.
Then came Jan. 6.
Trump refused to accept the election results and told his supporters to descend on Washington, promising things would be “wild.”
On the morning of the insurrection, he told the crowd to “fight like hell.” They did.
In the aftermath of the attack on the capitol, during which five people died and many more were rounded, Trump’s supporters either denied that the violence had occurred or insisted Antifa members had perpetrated it to discredit Trump.
Until the assassination attempt, the former president continued his violent rhetoric.
“If I don’t get elected,” he told supporters at a March rally in Ohio, “It’s going to be a bloodbath.” Past experience indicates we should believe him, especially since he has all but declared that the only way he can lose is if the election is rigged.
It is impossible to link specific statements to violent acts.
Sarah Palin did not encourage Jared Laughner to shoot Gabby Giffords, Donald Trump has not openly incited violence and Joe Biden did not plant the idea to shoot the former president in the mind of Thomas Matthew Crooks.
But as the Pima County, Ariz., sheriff warned us after the Giffords shooting, vitriolic speech creates an environment that encourages unstable people to act on the anger they hear in political discourse.
An October survey revealed that 23 percent of Americans believe “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” as compared to 15 percent in 2021.
That statistic suggests that approximately 77 million Americans would be willing to use a gun to achieve political change.
Following the attempt on his life, Donald Trump has moderated his rhetoric somewhat, but his address to the Republican National Convention suggests that his moderation may not last, and he is not restraining his supporters.
“Political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” Biden told the nation in an Oval Office address Sunday night. “It’s time to cool it down,”
Truer words were never spoken. We can only hope everyone listens.
Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat ."