Imagine if Democratic leaders Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were viciously assaulted and Republican politicians behaved as though they deserved it, citing everything from their positions on abortion to healthcare. Democrats would be outraged, and rightfully so.
When Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced Monday that he had surgery over the weekend to remove part of his lung, a result of his 2017 assault from his neighbor, many wished him a speedy recovery.
And many didn’t.
“I cannot in any way shape or form … feel any sympathy for you,” wrote “Spring” on Twitter, sympathizing with Paul’s neighbor. That tweet had 112 likes as of this writing. “Snake Oil Demagogue” wrote, “Thoughts and prayers, take the rest of your life off,” garnering nearly a thousand likes. One commentator accused Paul of being a pro-Second Amendment Russian dupe, with 139 likes. “Afraid to show your face?” jeered Emmy-award winner Melissa Jo Peltier, with over 200 likes.
It’s easy to dismiss social media commentators. But the senator’s announcement came just one week removed from actor Tom Arnold (who joined a host of other celebrities who have cheered Paul’s assault) basically saying that Paul got what he deserved from his neighbor.
It was just one week ago that an elected official, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, retweeted Arnold’s insult about Paul.
One might say, and some liberals do, that Omar or anyone else is justified in promoting violence against a fellow congressman given Paul’s recent comments about what he perceived as her negative attitude toward America, or even the senator’s position on gun laws or healthcare. Just as someone on the Right might justify violence against Pelosi or Schumer because they support taking the lives of the unborn or letting illegal immigrants with violent criminal backgrounds into the country.
No sane person with a conscience would accept these as excuses for violence, yet these attitudes are rampant on the Left toward Paul in ways that would never be considered acceptable if talking about most other elected officials, particularly Democrats.
Nor should we ignore that the assault itself arguably had political motivations given what we know about Paul’s attacker, Rene Boucher. One of Paul’s neighbors described Boucher as a “socialist” and it was reported that the two often had “heated discussions.” The senator’s wife, Kelley Paul, chalked up the violence as a product of our current political divide in a CNN op-ed.
It’s a lot easier to believe Boucher’s attack was more about politics than lawn clippings, as his lawyers argued. Most who were gleeful about Paul’s assault certainly made it about politics.
Paul’s attack also came one year after he and other Republican members of Congress were fired upon during a congressional baseball practice by an anti-Trump Bernie Sanders supporter.
What Paul has suffered doesn’t compare to the tragedy experienced by the victims and families of the lives taken at the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend. But as many right now rightly ask President Trump and Republicans to change their rhetoric as to not encourage violence, shouldn’t that work both ways?
“The hatred and even outright condoning of violence needs to stop,” Sen. Rand Paul’s chief adviser Doug Stafford told me in an email. “Political disagreement shouldn’t ever – ever – lead to violence.”
“And people online should never be laughing, condoning or even inciting as we have seen all too often,” he added.
Too often, indeed. Both sides do this. Both should stop.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
