Should Obama Have Repudiated Hoffa's Rhetoric?

After the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords - and the murder of a few innocent bystanders - Sarah Palin and Republican rhetoric were blamed because of their violent imagery. A Palin ad had had a target - not on Gifford's face, but rather on a map of her constituency - and many were the people who were saying the shooter had been spurred on by this.

Of course after a few days of investigation it turned out that he'd had a previous meeting with her in which he'd been called on and asked her a question, hadn't answered it to his satisfaction, and so he decided to murder her... nothing to do with Palin or right wing rhetoric at all.

But Obama called for a "new civility."

(And then there was that infamous case during the Presidential campaign when someone introducing John McCain dared to refer to Obama as Barack Hussein Obama. And because he'd used Obama's middle name, McCain actually apologized to Obama right then and there, and the guy who'd been one of his supporters was kicked off his campaign! (Rush didn't remind us of this on his show, but Glen Beck mentioned it on his.)

Anyway, Rush played some soundbytes of Press Secretary Karney refusing to say that Hoffa had said anything wrong, or that the President should apologize for something that someone "not connected with him" had to say. (Also according to Beck, Hoffa and Obama had flown to the event on the same plane.)

Here's what Rush had to say:

'Mr. Hoffa speaks for himself, he speaks for the labor movement,' Carney added during the afternoon press conference."

Then Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said that Obama was not gonna be "the speech police for the Democrat Party." He's only too happy to be the speech police for everybody else, but he's not gonna be the speech police for the Republican Party. I mean, here's Obama -- what was it, just nine months ago? -- he goes out and delivers that great "civility" speech at the event in Tucson after the shooting of Gabby Giffords. We've gotta make everybody proud of us by the way we talk to each other and so forth? Meanwhile, since then, we've been called "terrorists," "sons-of-bitches," and we've accused of holding the nation "hostage." The list of names that we have been called -- "racists" -- and the things that have been said to characterize us is longer than I can recall.

and here's the article Rush was referencing, from HotAir.com:
Nice catch by JT. I’d forgotten about this incident from Campaign ’08, when McCain apologized for Bill Cunningham’s reference to “Barack Hussein Obama” in his intro at one of Maverick’s rallies. By comparison, not only is Hoffa not sorry for what he said, the best Carney can do by way of repudiation on Obama’s behalf is to say that no one speaks for The One (except him). Will that standard also apply to the Republican nominee next year? Of course not, but don’t expect any reporter there to challenge Carney on it later when the Democrats’ smear campaign against him/her gets going — except Tapper himself, of course. In fact, the new head of the DNC, who was one of the most adamant proponents of the “new tone” after the Tucson shooting, spent an entire segment on Fox News this morning deflecting questions about Hoffa rather than denouncing him. How soon things change.
Speaking of change, my favorite part of the Hoffa story is the left’s defense that he was talking specifically about voting when he called for taking those tea-party “sons of bitches” out. That’s super, but the whole point of the “new tone” demagoguery after Tucson was that intent doesn’t matter. Go re-read Palin’s Facebook post from March 2010 showcasing the crosshairs map that the media would make famous 10 months later. Sample quote: “This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.” Elections. Voting. And yet it didn’t matter to our liberal betters after Giffords was shot; the argument then was that the political “climate” in America had become so heated that it was irresponsible to use violent rhetoric or imagery even in service to a perfectly pedestrian nonviolent call for voter turnout. Remember? We were all going to clean up our language lest the scrambled brains of the Jared Loughners of the world derive some sort of incitement to murder from them where none was intended. Fast forward eight months and here’s the president of the Teamsters coloring his own turnout plea with a bunch of war metaphors and a call to start taking “sons of bitches” out, oblivious to the possibility that Loughners might exist on his side as well. How’s that post-Tucson rhetorical standard working out for you now, liberal friends? Is that bed you made for yourselves comfortable?

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