“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, radicalized and indivisible.”

So wrote a Rolling Stone writer in a blistering June 19, 2017 editorial. The touchstone was the slaughter of nine black worshipers by a white supremacist at a South Carolina black church.

A little more than one year later, on October 24, 2018, pipe bombs were mailed to:

• Former President Barack Obama
• Former President Bill Clinton
• Former First Lady and United States Senator Hillary Clinton
• Former Attorney General Eric Holder
• Congresswoman Maxine Waters
• Billionaire George Soros
• Former Vice President Joe Biden
• Actor Robert De Niro
• Former CIA Director John Brennan
• Former Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz

All of these intended victims had one thing in common: All of them had been brutally and repeatedly attacked by President Donald Trump. 

Donald Trump

But the proof of Republican culpability in political violence goes back much further.

Gabrille Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly wins re-election in November, 2010, against a Republican Tea Party candidate.

Her support of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law has made her a target for violent rhetoric–-especially from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

In March, 2010, Palin releases a map featuring 20 House Democrats that uses cross-hairs images to show their districts. In case her supporters don’t get the message, she later writes on Twitter: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”

As the campaign continues, Giffords finds her Tucson office vandalized after the House passes the healthcare  overhaul in March.

At one of her rallies, her aides call the police after an attendee drops a gun.

On January 8, 2011, Giffords is shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. She survives and vows to return to her former Congressional duties, but is forced to resign for health reasons in 2012.

Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent—-and violence-arousing—-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.

Republicans like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.

If a “nutcase” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked—-shocked!—that such a thing could have happened.

And if the attempt proves successful—as the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings did—then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.

The difference is that, in this case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.

Consider the following:

• Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) yelled “baby killer” at Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor.
• Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West, referring to his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ron Klein, told Tea Party activists: You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
• Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tea Partiers had “every right” to use racist and homophobic slurs against Democrats, justifying it via Democrats’ “totalitarian tactics.”
• Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration.
• Sarah Palin told her supporters: “Get in their face and argue with them.  No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!”
• Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
• Senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) “We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
• Rep. Louisa M. Slauter (D-NY) received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.

Steve Schmidt, a former Republican campaign strategist for President George W. Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarznegger, summed up Trump’s responsibility for this latest wave of political violence.

Steve Schmidt 

Josh Sam, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

In a series of tweets on the day of the attempted bombings, Schmidt wrote:

“Trump has stoked a cold civil war in this Country. His rallies brim with menace and he has labeled journalists as enemies of the people.

“That someone would seek to kill their political enemies is not aberrational but rather the inevitable consequence of Trumps incitement.

“The targets are political not coincidental. Trump, the greatest demagogue in American history has celebrated violence over and over again. It looks like someone finally took Trump both literally and seriously. The WH will feign outrage when this obvious point is made.

“No journalist or commentator should be intimidated from making this point. The stoking of hatred and sundering of the American people was always going to lead to terrible consequences. Chief amongst them would be the initiation of partisan or sectarian violence within our country.”

Schmidt is one of the few commentators to courageously lay responsibility for this latest wave of political violence on the man who instigates it: President Donald Trump