It's time to play "imagine if a conservative had said it." For today's edition, we present Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.:
If they [Republicans] think it's okay to raise taxes for the embattled middle class because they're gonna pout if we don't give more money to millionaires, it really is time for people to take up pitchforks.
Phrased differently, McCaskill essentially claimed that if Republicans refuse to support the class warfare codified by Democratic tax proposals, a populist revolt would be an appropriate response on the parts of the American people.
We don't have to look hard for a clue as to how the media would react if this had been a Republican making that statement - or, heaven forbid, someone associated with the Tea Party. Reporting on another lefty issuing a call for violent revolution, I wrote last month:
Remember, when Sharron Angle suggested we find "Second Amendment remedies" to the nation's problems, the media went nuts. ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Las Vegas Sun, Politico, Newsweek, and scores of liberal blogs all piled on, bemoaning Angle's thinly-veiled call for violence.
But it didn't even take a supposed call for violence to get the left and their media cheerleaders all worked up over the "extremist" Tea Party inciting Americans to "anti-government" revolt.
Michelle Bachman's tirade against the current "gangster government" drew accusations from former president Bill Clinton that she would spark the next Oklahoma City bombing. Those claims were dutifully parroted by a number of media outlets without challenge.
"Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right" blared the New York Times on the front page in a February headline. The single example of a politician seeming to advocate violence was a statement by a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, who said he was "cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show" in case the GOP lost the election.
Rachel Maddow used the statement to bemoan "the deep consistency of how much we‘re hearing and seeing about violence against the government on the right."
Maddow and fellow MSNBC host Chris Matthews have both devoted entire episodes of their respective shows to painting the Tea Party as approving of or even promoting violent revolution, often invoking these examples of Tea Party candidates.
And as Maddow claimed, what troubled her was not fringy elements calling for violence, but what she called the "mainstreaming" of those calls, and the tacit approval of violent rhetoric by establishment figures.
So one has to wonder whether Maddow will also bemoan McCaskill's statement, or whether anyone in the media will do so. Will McCaskill get the same treatment as Tea Party-affiliated politicians? Or will her statement today simply pass by without mention?
