A top Tea Party leader is accusing the left of using the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others in Arizona this weekend for political advantage, and said he thinks it’s “genuinely revolting.”
“To see the left exploit this for political advantage — some people have no conscience,” the Tea Party Patriot’s Mark Meckler told The Daily Beast. “It’s genuinely revolting…I think it sinks to the level of evil.”
“[I]f these scumbags want to play it politically, let it be on their conscience,” he said.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: TPM Retraces Shooting Suspect’s Steps]
Shortly after the shooting, many pointed to Sarah Palin’s inclusion last year of Giffords’ district on a map that put 20 Democratic congressional districts under crosshairs. Rebecca Mansour, a Palin aide, told an interviewer this weekend: “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps.” At a press conference Saturday night, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik spent several minutes criticizing the “vitriol” he said comes from radio and television personalities. Since then, many in the media have taken up a discussion of political rhetoric’s relationship to violence.
According to The Daily Beast, Meckler thinks MSNBC’s coverage has been particularly bad.
“Honestly, I guess I had more faith in humanity than to believe they’d politicize a tragedy of this magnitude,” he said. “They’ve been trying for two years to use any smear they can to damage the movement taking place on the right.”
