Frank Rich: 'The Guns of August'

In his New York Times column, "The Guns of August," Frank Rich tries to paint the Republican Party as endorsing and excusing violence and radicalism.

Bearing arms, a Constitutional right Obama says he supports, has Rich bent out of shape.

[Sen. Tom] Coburn’s implicit rationalization for far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events — the government makes them do it! — cannot stand. He’s not a radio or Fox News bloviator paid a fortune to be outrageous; he’s a card-carrying member of the United States Senate. On Monday — the day after he gave a pass to those threatening violence — a dozen provocateurs with guns, at least two of them bearing assault weapons, showed up for Obama’s V.F.W. speech in Phoenix. Within hours, another member of Congress — Phil Gingrey of Georgia — was telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that as long as brandishing guns is legal, he, too, saw no reason to discourage Americans from showing up armed at public meetings.

Bearing arms is a right. Americans lawfully exercising their Constitutional rights shouldn't be considered threatening. How can acting within the law, simply carrying a firearm, be seen as threatening violence?

Law-abiding citizens own and carry guns responsibly.

Nonetheless, Rich wants you to believe that the very few individuals who have brandished firearms at health care meetings indicate that people in opposition to Obama's policies are a simmering band of radicals ready to lash out violently, literally with guns blazing.

Worse, Rich wants you to believe that this is what today's Republican Party is about, promoting violence.

That's absurd. Absolute fringe Leftist drivel.

Besides bashing the Right as a bunch of Timothy McVeighs, he defends the Leftist lunatics as peaceful in comparison.

Those on the right who defend the reckless radicals inevitably argue “The left does it too!” It’s certainly true that both the left and the right traffic in bogus, Holocaust-trivializing Hitler analogies, and, yes, the protesters of the antiwar group Code Pink have disrupted Congressional hearings. But this is a false equivalence. Code Pink doesn’t show up on Capitol Hill with firearms. And, as the 1960s historian Rick Perlstein pointed out on the Washington Post Web site last week, not a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era.

Speaking of "false equivalence," not a single Republican politician endorsed Timothy McVeigh's actions. Not a single Republican politician endorses the violent overthrow of the government or subversive activity.

Rich really steps in it when he brings up the Weathermen.

Given that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, founding members of the Weathermen, are fervent political supporters of Obama and his friends from the old neighborhood in Chicago, it's a bit awkward.

Did Timothy McVeigh hold a fundraiser in his home for Coburn? I don't think so.

Is it OK for the president of the United States to have personal and professional dealings with an unrepentant terrorist like Ayers?

Rich cannot dismiss the close Obama/Ayers connection while at the same time concocting ties between Republicans and the likes of Timothy McVeigh.

Rich is concluding that statements by Republicans in support of Second Amendment rights somehow are an endorsement of violence.

That's an illogical leap.

The final paragraph of Rich's column:

In last year’s campaign debates, Obama liked to cite his unlikely Senate friendship with Tom Coburn, of all people, as proof that he could work with his adversaries. If the president insists that enemies like this are his friends — and that the nuts they represent can be placated by reason — he will waste his opportunity to effect real change and have no one to blame but himself.

There's no reason for Rich to demonize Tom Coburn.

He doesn't have to make up ludicrous claims to discredit Republicans.

Rich has deemed Republicans like Coburn and "the nuts they represent" as "enemies," disinterested and/or incapable of having a reasonable debate.

When you're losing the debate, it may be easier for Rich to go off track and trash the opponent, but it's a desperate move that merely serves to highlight the weaknesses in Obama's road map to the government takeover of health care.

The fact is there's no need for Rich to engage in such foaming at the mouth attacks in order to push the agenda he supports.

Obama and the Democrats can do anything they want. Republicans do not have the power to block them. The Republicans don't stand in Obama's way.

Let's be honest: Obama and the Left don't have a Republican problem in the health care debate. They have a problem with opposition from the American people, large numbers of the American people, more every day.

Does the liberal elitist Rich think of all these good, hard-working law-abiding citizens across America as enemies standing in Obama's way, crazed violent gun-toting radicals?

I suppose he does, but he's wrong.
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Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent column that deals with liberal columnists like Rich and their complaints that Obama has been too soft on his enemies, "The fault, dear Barack, is not in our stars, But in ourselves."

He writes:

So liberals should not blame conservatives for opposing what they do not believe in and think is harmful for the country, or their own team in the White House for not waging a partisan defense (they in fact have, ad nauseam). Rather they should fault Obama himself for not offering a simple, understandable plan and for failing to explain and defend with clear language and logic something that really does seem “fishy” to the American people.

The reason support for Obama's health care plan is floundering can't be blamed on conservatives. It's really because Obama himself has failed to present a coherent, consistent, and appealing plan to the American people.