In a vacuum, Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.’s incendiary comments yesterday, firing up supporters at a rally in Detroit, would be utterly uninteresting.
“We gotta keep an eye on the battle that we face, a war on workers, and you see it everywhere in the tea party,” he told a crowd of union members at an event where President Obama would appear shortly afterward. “And there’s only one way to win that war; the one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what, they got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner, it’s going to be the workers up in Michigan and America. We’re going to win that war.”
“President Obama, this is your army,” Hoffa declared. “Let’s take these sons of bitches out and take America back to where America we belong.”
Yes, the remarks were a bit over the top. Normally this wouldn’t be a concern. It is merely campaign politics.
However, we don’t live in a vacuum. Since a crazed gunman shot Democratic Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, the left has mounted a campaign to suggest that ordinary campaigning by Republicans is tantamount to inciting violence.
For instance, Democrats latched on to a 2010 midterm election map put out by Sarah Palin that featured cross-hair targets over particular districts, including Giffords’. Of course, no serious person could possibly believe Palin was calling on people to actually target those districts with violence. It was an obvious and common way to indicate the districts in which Palin was pushing Republicans to engage, to defeat those Democratic incumbents she saw as vulnerable. Democrats have often used the same imagery to get their political message across.
Nonetheless, like robots, the left sang in one voice how wicked and evil the map was and some even suggested it may have incited Jared Loughner’s Arizona massacre. Loughner, who inhabits a different world from ours, may not even know who Sarah Palin is, much less have been inspired to violence by a stupid map with targets on it.
But given this ridiculous standard, how can the left not condemn Hoffa? In fact, the more I think about it, his eliminationist rhetoric sounds an awful lot like Muammar Gaddafi’s when his troops were on the move on the outskirts of Benghazi several months ago. Perhaps President Obama should consult with our NATO allies to see what steps should be taken next against Hoffa. I imagine the first step would be for the president to condemn him, which he has not yet done.
All kidding aside, Hoffa’s comments are even worse than they first appear given the left’s new political speech standards. Hoffa used the phrase “let’s … take America back.” This phrase has been used by the tea party as well. But when the tea party uses it, Chris Matthews, David Remnick, Ed Schultz and a chorus of others on the left have a hissy fit and suggest the phrase is racist.
Never mind that Barack Obama spoke at a conference titled “Take Back America” when he was a senator, where he himself demanded that the liberal attendees “take America back.”
Considering the left’s recent branding of the phrase as out of bounds, will the left now condemn Hoffa for suggesting that the tea party is un-American? For Pete’s sake, Chris Matthews has commercials running on MSNBC saying that Republicans refuse to recognize that Obama is within the American political landscape. Hoffa just indicated tea partiers aren’t. I’m waiting for your next commercial, Chris, demanding Democrats recognize the humanity and American-ness of the tea party.
Media Matters for America, among the most transparently partisan hacks on America’s political landscape, tried to justify Hoffa’s comments by suggesting that Fox News, which was first to report Hoffa’s speech, took his words out of context. The only context in which it is imaginable that Hoffa’s message could have been distorted would have been if his speech was proceeded by the following phrase: “Today is opposite day.”
Needless to say, Hoffa didn’t say that. What Media Matters pointed out, feebly, is that Fox omitted the bolded part below in their footage:
“Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!”
This, of course, doesn’t clarify or exonerate Hoffa — not by the standards used by Media Matters and other liberal interest groups to tarnish conservatives.
I admit the story itself is asinine. But it was liberals themselves who made it newsworthy by starting this over-the-top anti-“vitriolic rhetoric” campaign.