Biden Blamed Bush, Gingrich for VT Shootings

[cwo_ghwebb]

It was President Bush's fault. And Newt's.

When a student went on a rampage and killed 32 students at Virginia Tech in April of 2007, then-Senator Joe Biden, at the time running for the Democrats' presidential nomination, knew exactly who to blame. He pinned the blame squarely on the man in the Oval Office. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Now Vice President Joe Biden is silent on the topic of presidential responsibility for the mass murders in Binghamton and Pittsburgh. Nor has he laid blame at the feet of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

/snip

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding through the streets of Dallas, Texas, in November 1963, the finger of blame was pointed quickly. At the nascent conservative movement in general and at the politically conservative city of Dallas in particular. In spite of overwhelming evidence, never successfully refuted to this day in spite of countless conspiracy books and director Oliver Stone's Hollywood fantasy, JFK's assassin was in fact a left-wing Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet the media of the day treated the story as if the American right had killed the president. Worse still, the entire city of Dallas stood accused of creating an atmosphere where it was OK kill the president. The accusation grew even more bizarre when it was discovered that Oswald, an activist in a group called "Fair Play for Cuba" and who believed JFK was too hard on Cuba, was also responsible for taking a shot at the retired right-wing General Edwin Walker a few months before. The then unknown assailant sent a bullet crashing through the window of the ex-general's home, just missing him. Walker, a Dallas resident, was no liberal. He was about as high a profile right-winger as existed in 1963, having been fired by JFK's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for allegedly pushing his right-wing politics on his troops. In Oswald's fanatical mind he was targeting men he perceived to be two right-wingers, the genuinely far right-wing Walker, and Democrat JFK, who was just a year over his success at forcing the removal of Soviet missiles from Castro's Cuba.

None of this made an iota of difference to the media of the day. They were determined to shift responsibility from the individual who actually pulled the trigger -- Oswald -- and place it elsewhere. Story after story poured forth about all the right-wing hate in Dallas, insinuating when not claiming outright that the popular JFK was now dead because of it. The goal: political suppression. To smother the infant conservative movement in its political crib.

As the sad weekend of mourning for Kennedy unfolded, no less than CBS anchor Walter Cronkite told Americans that Kennedy's famous conservative critic of the day, his potential 1964 challenger Senator Barry Goldwater, would not be paying his respects to the murdered President because he was too busy giving a political speech in Indiana.

A stunned Goldwater, who in fact counted the liberal JFK as one of his best friends in the Senate and was heartbroken at his death, was in fact tending to some sad personal business of his own. Wrote a still-furious Goldwater decades later of this incident: "The inference was clear. I wasn't showing the proper respect to the slain President and the office. I was never so angry in my life, and I phoned Cronkite to say, 'Mr. Cronkite, I don't know you. I've always respected you. But you just told CBS viewers a blatant lie. I'm not here in Indiana to make a political speech, but to help bury my mother-in-law." In fact, JFK and Goldwater, in a tale common to the Senate, had developed a warm friendship across ideological lines. With an eye to creating a modern version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the two friends had discussed traveling together in the 1964 campaign were Goldwater to win the nomination against Kennedy. Instead, Goldwater was portrayed on national television as the angry conservative who took cold glee at the murder of Kennedy. And was, in some sort of undefined way attributable to his beliefs and words, perhaps responsible for the whole thing.

This pattern of following a particularly horrific act of public violence with accusations vague or specific against a popular conservative figure of the day has continued apace from 1963 down to recent times, expanding as, no coincidence, the conservative movement has grown. Biden is not alone in using it. In 1992, the South Central Los Angeles riots were blamed not on the individuals who rioted. No, the riots were the fault of then-President George H.W. Bush. In 1995, then-President Clinton tried to pin responsibility for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh not where it belonged -- on McVeigh -- but on Rush Limbaugh, attacking the "purveyors of hatred and division" on the "airwaves of America." In August of 2008, a crazed man shot Arkansas Democratic State Chairman Bill Gwatney to death before being shot and killed himself by police. Liberal bloggers immediately jumped to pin the blame for Gwatney's murder on conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and Fox TV and radio talk show host Sean Hannity. As this is written, both Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos and the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan are pinning the Pittsburgh murders on…wait for it…Fox's new star, radio host Glenn Beck.

The American Spectator : Biden Blamed Bush, Gingrich for Virginia Tech Shootings

The gift that keeps on giving.

On a serious note, the media's attacks on conservatives has been documented since 1963. At least documented since that time. It's probably been going on since the Communist Manifesto was published.

[Zguy28]

Originally Posted by cwo_ghwebb

The American Spectator : Biden Blamed Bush, Gingrich for Virginia Tech Shootings

The gift that keeps on giving.

On a serious note, the media's attacks on conservatives has been documented since 1963. At least documented since that time. It's probably been going on since the Communist Manifesto was published.

Each side has its media idealogues that criticize one side or the other with partisan rhetoric.