Oh, That Leftwing Projection

Tom Johnson of NewsBusters spots an American Prospect contributor wondering if the GOP can refrain from “Fantasies about torturing and killing her?”

The louder and more desperate those charges get, the more they reflect poorly on the ones making them. As I wrote earlier today over at the Washington Post, the single greatest challenge for Republicans in 2016 could be whether they can control their infinite loathing for Hillary Clinton. Because there will be outbursts, and ones much more shocking than this. Some Tea Party congressman is going to indulge his fantasies about torturing and killing her. Some right-wing radio host is going to go off on a rant so misogynistic and vulgar that even Republicans are going to have to distance themselves from it. Some surrogate for the GOP nominee is going to whip up a crowd into a frenzy of snarling faces and shouts of hate. There will be a drumbeat of sexism and violent rhetoric and appalling signs waved at rallies. The question is how far it all goes, and how good a job the wiser Republicans do at containing it.

Funny, the only example I can remember from 2008 of those wishing death upon Hillary was Keith Olbermann, then still with MSNBC, who suggested, “somebody who can take her in a room and only he comes out,” in order to force Hillary out of Democratic primary race with Barack Obama, only a few months after David Shuster was suspended from that same network for suggesting that “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”

It was also around that time that leftwing talk radio host Randi Rhodes referred to Hillary as a “big f***ing whore” and Hillary surrogate (and liberal icon) Geraldine Ferraro as “David Duke in drag” (both within the same rant).  And the late author, screenwriter and director Nora Ephron wrote in the Huffington Post that the Pennsylvania Democratic primary (which Hillary would go on to win) “is an election about whether the [Democrats] of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women.” It was also in 2008 that the left happily flung the R-word at Hillary, accusing the wife of the man whom the New Yorker had previously dubbed in the mid-1990s “America’s first black president,” of racism. Not to mention this savage anti-Hillary rant from Rev. Wright acolyte, Michael Pfleger, a Chicago-based priest:

[jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”73333″]

As in 2007 and 2008, if a viable opponent to Hillary emerges on the left between now and the spring of 2016, expect similar rhetoric to emerge from the left — and if Hillary goes on to win the nomination later that year, expect it all to be tossed down the memory hole, including the vicious anti-Hillary remarks from the left from 2008.