Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is saying the Senate healthcare bill is paid for with “blood money,” and that “American lives” will pay for tax cuts. Rolling Stone writer Jesse Berney tweeted, “Trump and the Republicans want to pass a bill that would kill far more Americans than ISIS and al-Qaeda could ever dream about.” The National Abortion Rights Action League tweeted, “Let’s be crystal clear: the Senate GOP #HealthcareBill is a direct attack on the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of Americans.”
Both Democrats and Republicans issued calls for unity in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and three others at a Republican baseball practice. When Senate Republicans released their version of healthcare reform, the supposed unity went right out the window.
Partisanship over legislation is nothing new. Politicians, writers, pundits and talking heads making partisan statements about politicians, political appointees, and legislation is nothing new either. However, what has changed is not so much the tenor of what people are saying, but where they’re directing it and that, in an of itself, has the potential to be dangerous.
Ugliness as part of the political process goes back to the presidential election in 1800. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were bitter rivals. Jefferson said Adams had a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Adams was no better, saying Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia, mulatto father.”
Lyndon Johnson once said of Gerald Ford, “He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”
Abraham Lincoln once said of Stephen Douglas, “His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”
The common thread running among the nastiness is that it’s personal. The politicians are directing their rhetoric towards each other, and while it may be ugly, third parties are not involved. It’s possible for people to be turned off by ugly rhetoric, but it still works. The reason politicians still use attack ads against their opponents is that it’s effective.
By taking political insults and saying electing a particular person or passing certain legislation will cause catastrophic harm to people, it’s not difficult for some people to feel as though they need to do something. It also reveals how embedded the government is in our daily lives.
When politicians promise they can make changes to our lives by flipping a switch when elected, it carries possible real-world consequences. When people are told over and over their very lives depend on who gets elected to a political office — whether it’s the White House, a seat in Congress, or a Governor’s mansion — it’s easy to see how some people may get scared or worse, angry. And some, angry enough to the point of violence.
When politicians of either political stripe are engaging in political rhetoric that attempts to center the attention around the average citizen and how harm will come to them, one cannot be surprised when a person decides to take matters into their own hands as a result.
Is this to say the rhetoric from Bernie Sanders or other Democrats about healthcare or President Trump are responsible for what Hodgkinson did? Not at all. However, it is possible for Hodgkinson to have believed that based on that rhetoric, he was doing the right thing.
If politicians want to be nasty to each other, have at it. But leave the rest of us out of it. Debate policies on the merits instead of resorting to fear mongering.
Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the assistant managing editor at RedState, as well as a contributor to National Review and The Atlantic.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
