Diane Sawyer Again Links Tea Party and Sarah Palin to Rep. Giffords' Shooting

by: warner todd huston | published: 11 17, 2011

In her exclusive interview with Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ), ABCs Diane Sawyer began with a retrospective of the terrible crime committed against the Congresswoman by a mentally disturbed, a-political gunman. But true to her left-wing agenda, Sawyer could not resist illicitly linking Tea Party activists, anti-Obamacare sentiment, and even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to what was perpetrated against Rep. Giffords on that terrible day.

Yes, even though these calumnies against conservatives and Sarah Palin have been thoroughly discredited, Sawyer links them anyway to the shocking crime that took the lives of six people, injured others, and delivered a debilitating head wound to Representative Giffords.

It was only hours after the shooting occurred on January 8, 2011, that left-wing activists, purported journalists, and Democrat operatives alike began blaming the shooting of Rep. Giffords on "Tea Party hate" and the "violent rhetoric of the right."

The false narrative was picked up by nearly every Old Media outlet and disgorged from their talking points sheets over and over again. It was days before everyone learned that the killer, one Jared Lee Loughner, had been stalking Giffords for several years before the Tea Party, Obamacare or Sarah Palin became national news.

In fact, killer Loughner was not interested in politics at all. He was just a sick-minded, lunatic that had a crazy infatuation with Rep. Giffords.

The media ultimately stopped bandying about its discredited theory that the shooting was spurred by conservatives, the Tea Party and Gov. Palin, but no apologies were ever uttered by the spinmeisters in the press.

At least we thought that the discredited theory that the Giffords shooting was the fault of conservatives had disappeared. Now, with Sawyer's new interview, we are once again treated to scenes of Tea Partiers unhappy at townhall meetings in the days before the shooting. We also get a brief scene of Gov. Palin addressing a crowd. So, once more we are visited with the lie that conservatives are at fault for Giffords shooting. Sawyer didn’t say so directly, of course. She's too slick for that. But by showing Tea Partiers, conservatives, and Palin and painting them as a hostile force against Giffords, Sawyer was obviously linking them to the crime. Sawyer slyly floated irate conservatives as the reason the "atmosphere" of the days before her shooting was so filled with portent of the dangers to come.

Only it’s all a lie. The Tea Party, the dislike the nation has for Obamacare (which is still extant, by the way), and the political activism of Governor Sarah Palin had precisely nothing to do with Giffords’ shooting. Giffords was in Jared Lee Loughner's gunsights regardless of the political situation in the country in the days leading up to his crime.

In fact, it is more sensible to blame Obama and Democrats for the enflamed political environment then and now. Such levels of vitriol didn't exist until Obama and Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress. Dispensing with our proper legislative process, the Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and President Obama pushed through a bill that was not actually even written, a bill we had to "pass to know what is in it." In fact, it is a bill that still has high unfavorables that run across party lines.

That Giffords' shooting is not the Democrat's fault should go without saying. The enflamed political environment had nothing at all to do with the crime committed that January morning. Democrats aren't at fault for it. Certainly, neither are Tea Partiers, conservatives, anti-Obamacare activists, or Governor Sarah Palin.

The report is not without its nearly tear inducing moments, though. It is heartwarming to see Rep. Giffords on the road to recovery. It is wonderful to see her speaking clearly, even if she is sometimes reaching for the right words. Sadly Diane Sawyer sullies these wonderful moments by bringing into her report a partisan, left-wing bias against conservatives. But despite Diane Sawyer's gauche effort to smear America's conservatives by pushing discredited talking points, Giffords' pluck and determination shines brightly through the smear job anyway. That is a triumph.

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