Flutterby™! : Civility in Politics

Just a few reminders about civility in politics.

• When Protesters Bear Arms Against Health-Care Reform
• Gas line cut at US Representative Tom Periello's brother's house after the address was posted on a Tea Party web site
• Bart Stupak received threatening messages for health care vote
• Protests outside Steve Driehaus's house
• Vandals attack Democratic offices nationwide
• Erick Erickson is sorry about some of the things he said

Erick Erickson, the forty-one-year-old right-wing radio host and political pundit whom The Atlantic described in 2015 as “the most powerful conservative in America,” has made a career of online provocation. He became the editor-in-chief of the influential conservative blog RedState in 2006, a position he held for nearly a decade. In a 2008 blog post, he dubbed Michelle Obama a “Marxist harpy.” In a 2009 tweet, he called the retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter “a goat fucking child molester.” Later that year, Erickson argued that President Obama won the Nobel Prize because of an “affirmative action quota.” The 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Texas, Wendy Davis, was, in due time, “Abortion Barbie.”

Which is not to decry these techniques, merely to point out that in the face of "when they go low we go high", these are the techniques that worked.