{"id":5781,"date":"2011-09-04T00:07:36","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T07:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5781"},"modified":"2011-09-04T00:07:36","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T07:07:36","slug":"gop-the-party-of-glock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/04\/gop-the-party-of-glock\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP: The Party of Glock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who can forget how Sarah Palin placed bullseyes on Democratic congressional districts, possibly inspiring a madman in one of those districts, Pima County Arizona, to kill six people and wound thirteen more, including the woman Palin targeted, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  To raise money in Pima county, the Republican party is raffling a Glock pistol, identical to the one Jared Lee Loughner used.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"4GOPGlock\"<\/p>\n

We could fill this space with adjectives that describe what we think of the Pima County Republican Party’s decision to raffle of [sic] a Glock gun, three 12-round magazines and a case.<\/p>\n

\"4PalinsBullseyes\"<\/a>Jared Lee Loughner used a Glock to gun down six people and injure 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who he shot point-blank through the head while she was meeting with constituents on Jan. 8.<\/p>\n

Yet, it comes as a complete surprise to the Pima County Republicans’ interim leader, Mike Shaw, that anyone might object to raffling off a gun to raise money to defeat Democrats in the next election.<\/p>\n

But it shouldn’t be a shock – and given the publicity the Pima County GOP has received from its galling decision, it’s perhaps not an unwelcome surprise.<\/p>\n

So about that list of adjectives:<\/p>\n

Crass, insensitive, vulgar, displaying a lack of empathy or compassion, dumbfounding, offensive, callous, boorish, thoughtless<\/strong> – all words that would fit.<\/p>\n

But, that’s its right.<\/p>\n

If the Pima County Republican Party thinks the best way to sell its message to voters is to raffle off a Glock and feign surprise that others think it is, at the very least, in bad taste then that’s their prerogative.<\/p>\n

The Pima County party is doing voters a service by showing that it won’t reconsider whether this is the wrong time and place for a political fundraiser featuring a gun. It won’t back off and acknowledge that its actions may have been hurtful. No, it’s sticking by its guns, so to speak, even expanding the auction to include a deer rifle<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Arizona Daily Star<\/a>><\/p>\n

This is so symptomatic of the Republican love affair with guns and political violence.  I agree it\u2019s their right to do it, but it\u2019s mine to call it the hateful tactic it is.<\/font><\/p>\n

Hey boys, maybe you can raise more hate money if you bring in Bullseye Barbie to pick the winning ticket!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who can forget how Sarah Palin placed bullseyes on Democratic congressional districts, possibly inspiring a madman in one of those districts, Pima County Arizona, to kill six people and wound thirteen more, including the woman Palin targeted, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  To raise money in Pima county, the Republican party is raffling a Glock pistol, identical […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}