Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward made national news for her promise that Republicans will “stop gun-grabber Mark Kelly dead in his tracks.”
Any Arizonan with a head and a heart remembers the horrific 2011 shooting at a Gabby Giffords “Congress on your corner” event and knows Mark Kelly, who is running for Senate, is Giffords’ husband. Ol’ Chemtrail Kelli apparently has neither head nor heart. She certainly has no reservations about using gun violence imagery in a fundraising email as a way of rallying the troops voters in the battle against the Democratic enemy, Mark Kelly.
But in Ward’s defense, she didn’t invent the idea of “targeting” Democrats with gun-laced appeals for money and votes. It’s a longstanding Republican family tradition.
Sarah Palin’s SARAHPAC posted a graphic in 2010 stating, “20 House Democrats from districts we carried in 2008 voted for the health care bill. IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STAND.” Each district is marked with a gunsight’s crosshairs.
After the Giffords shooting, Palin was criticized for the graphic. She tried to turn the blame back onto Democrats, claiming she was the victim of a “blood libel,” a term that refers to the antisemitic myth during the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood for ceremonial purposes. Palin’s mind-bogglingly stupid and insensitive misuse of the term, compounded with her clownish campaign for vice president, assured the Republican party that absurdities can pay political dividends. Hail to the current Nonsequitur-In-Chief.
A “No Satirist Could Top the Real Thing” Note: In Sarah Palin’s 2015 book, “Sweet Freedom: A Devotional,” she has a chapter titled, LOCKED AND LOADED FOR BATTLE. After a biblical quote about facing adversity, she writes,
The Bible promises trials for followers of Christ, so we’re wise to prepare for battle now. A soldier doesn’t begin his training after he’s called into battle; he’s been sacrificing and preparing for months and years before his boots hit the battlefield. So, how do we put on our armor for a spiritual battle? By studying and memorizing God’s Word. It forms a protective shield over our souls, warding off enemy attacks.
Onward Christian soldiers, marching locked and loaded.
Palin wasn’t alone in using gun imagery to target Democrats. Giffords’ 2010 Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, held a “Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly” event to get his supporters pumped up and ready for campaign action. The listing for the event on the Pima County GOP website reads,
“Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
The announcement may be punctuation free, but its overall message of targeting, removing Giffords and shooting an M16 couldn’t read more clearly. Not being a gun person, I had to look it up. The M16 is a weapon similar to the AK-47, the weapon of choice for today’s mass shooters.
Jesse Kelly’s gun prowess loomed large in his campaign. He wanted supporters to picture him as a warrior, assault rifle in hand and ready for combat.
Later in 2011, almost 6 months to the day after the horrific Giffords shooting, another Pima County GOP candidate invited his supporters to “Enjoy a picnic lunch and shoot full-auto machine guns and sub-machine guns.” The event for Pima County Sheriff candidate Chester C. Manning, publicized on the local GOP website, was titled, “Shoot With the New Sheriff.”
Jared Lee Loughner, the deranged killer at the Giffords event, chose a Glock for the carnage he created, not one of the assault-style weapons featured in the Jesse Kelly and Chester Manning events. Which makes it all the more astonishing that in September 2011, the Pima County GOP chose to raffle off a Glock handgun to “HELP PIMA GOP GET OUT THE VOTE.”
Get yourself a new Glock 23 .40 cal handgun for just 10 bucks – if your name is drawn. . . . The firearm comes with three 12-round magazines, adjustable grips, and a case.
Some Pima County Republicans like Brian Miller, the previous chair of the county GOP, did not approve of the raffle. However, he admitted he raffled off a weapon during his 2010 primary run, but it somehow no longer seemed like the right thing to do after the Giffords shooting.
Kelli Ward’s fundraising email asking supporters to “stop gun-grabber Mark Kelly dead in his tracks” is just another notch in Republicans’ gun-themed rhetorical weaponry aimed at the Democratic opposition. It certainly won’t be the last.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2019.
Kelly ward has bigger problems then mark kelly. every day in arizona 100 latinx kids turn 18 (voting age) also california democrats have followed california republicans into arizona. that is what happened in 2018 thanks to mail in ballots.
Cap, 22% (60K) of Americans moving into AZ are from Cal. If dems are about 55% of those, we’re talking 5,000 more dems eligible out of 4,000,000+ eligible voters. Or about 0.001% of the vote. This will only be relevant if Mark Kelly wins by less than 2,000 votes and it’s actually dems moving here. BTW, Texas is the 2nd largest state and Washington 3rd for people moving here. AZ being a red state though, I imagine the number leans closer to more republicans moving here from blue states as they prefer living among their own being tribal.
Lake Havasu where West Virginia Kelli, comes from, used to be a Democratic stronghold, until 1982 when Reaganites, moved in from California to turn the tide to crazy. Many of the Californians who have moved to Havasu, Prescott Payson, and Cave Creek are affluent white retirees, who ironically got their money from Democratic party produced pensions, now they want to get away from “those kind of people” and “California taxes” They get to Arizona and complain about taxes in Arizona, which are laughable how low our taxes are compared to California.
Democrats & left-wingers have very short & selective memories. It was barely 2 years ago (June 14, 2017) that left-wing activist James Hodgkinson decided to shoot up the Republican Congressional baseball team. Before the shooting he asked it it was the Republicans or Democrats. That’s the only time I can think of that a large group of Republicans was specifically targeted. It was only through quick action & a lot of luck that not more were seriously injured or killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congres…
Leave them their. Dems do have short memories and those three may help them with their problems.
MMP, After dozens of right wing terrorist attacks in the US, you found one by someone on the left, wow, so impressive. I guess that proves both sides do it, who cares if one side does it 20 times as much.
Kenneth Groves: “Dozens”? “20 times as much”?
As opposed to hundreds in the United States & thousands around the world by leftist terrorist groups?
United States: Weather Underground; SDS; Symbionese Liberation Army; Black Panthers; U. of Wisconsin Sterling Hall Bombing; 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State building; other bombings, shootings, & explosions linked to leftist groups.
Canada: Kidnap-murder of Quebec politician Pierre Laporte in 1970 by Front de libration du Qubec, a Marxist-Leninist group.
Latin America: Executions by Che Guevara & Fidel Castro; Shining Path in Peru; FARC in Columbia, etc.
Europe: Left-wing groups regularly cause problems in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Greece, France, Turkey, Portugal and Spain. Too many to list, but everybody knows about Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang & Northern Ireland’s deadly IRA attacks.
Asia: Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge; many attacks by Communists & various Red Army factions in countries outside of the already Communist China & North Korea.
I realize there are plenty of murderous tyrants among right-wingers & you’re correct to say both sides do it, but your “20 times” is a statistical lie. Murder & terrorism are traditionally more common among left-wing groups.
Snopes
In 1865, a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.
MOSTLY FALSE
Shooter: John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was a member of the Know-Nothing Party. However, some of his motivations for assassinating Lincoln (Booth was opposed to freeing the slaves) aligned with the Democratic Party at the time
@That makes it mostly false? It was the Know-Nothing-Party. What more evidence do you need?
kenneth groves every bit helps and the bigger reason is as I wrote 100 latinx turning voting age every day. Rethugliscum strategist are terrified with the demographics.