Will The Real Sarah Palin Please Stand Up?

—Bill Clinton, reflecting on the confluence of inflammatory political rhetoric and the terrorist bombing of Oklahoma City in 1995.

“Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead—RELOAD!’”

—Sarah Palin, reflecting on the confluence of inflammatory political rhetoric and fundraising for her political action committee.

Six people dead. Fourteen wounded. And somehow, a former governor from Alaska is to blame for an attempted assassination in Arizona. Riiiiiight.

Make no mistake, Sarah Palin is no saint. Her political perspectives are uninformed, paranoid and, at times, straight-up xenophobic. In Palin World, there is liberal, elitist, “lamestream media” America and then there is “Real America,” dominated by people who presumably agree with her positions. Do you believe that undocumented immigrants deserve a chance to earn their American citizenship? Well, then you’re almost traitorous. Perhaps you support extending universal health care to all Americans? Well, you can just hop, skip and jump on over the Bering Strait to Russia for all she cares. In Palin World, you’re either with Real America or you’re against it. And if you’re against it, then she’s going to take you out.

Politically speaking, that is. That was the point of a now much-maligned webpage that placed gun-sight icons on a map of targeted congressional districts. Borrowing on her reputation as a Barracuda/Pit Bull/ Mama Grizzly (she sure does love those bestial nicknames) from rough-and-tough Alaska, the imagery of Sister Sarah aiming her political ammo at Democrats who supported comprehensive immigration reform and President Obama’s health care efforts was meant to drum up cash for Palin-supported candidates.

And it worked. In 2010, her political action committee, SarahPAC, raised over $2.5 million despite the fact that she wasn’t even up for election. And that particular webpage would have been forgotten amongst the upheaval that was the 2010 midterm elections if not for the fact that one of the districts targeted by the website is represented by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the primary target in the recent Tucson shooting. As a result, many are now openly wondering if Palin doesn’t hold some responsibility for the gunman’s actions. On Sunday, “Is Sarah Palin to blame?” was the number one question being asked across Facebook.

Senator Dick Durbin, a senior leader within the Democratic Party and a staunch ally of President Obama, told CNN that “putting cross hairs on congressional districts as targets—these sorts of things, I think, invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that can lead unstable people to believe this is an acceptable response.” And Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, is planning to introduce legislation that would make such “language or symbols… threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official” a federal crime.

It looks like the “us-versus-them” mentality of Real America has taken up residence in liberal America, too.

Whether you believe that this was simply the act of a lone gunman driven only by mental disease or the sad consequence of a political climate in which the conservative Right routinely demonizes the progressive Left is really of little to no consequence. And why is that? Because both viewpoints serve a narrow set of priorities. The first serves a distinct conservative narrative that individual responsibility trumps collective responsibility (unless, of course, you commit a crime and your name happens to be Muhammad; then the whole of Islam is to blame) and so there must be no need for policy changes to prevent such tragedies. Such soul-searching might lead to a reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban that outlawed the extended magazine that enabled the Arizona shooter to kill so many people without having to reload. Conservative Republicans allowed this law to expire in 2004.

The second view is even more baldly political, as it serves as an opportunity for Democrats to ascribe so much sin to Palin that she becomes a toxic asset to Republican candidates for office. As a proud Democrat,

here is where I must
stand up and ask my party to please stand down. For the most important
question we can ask, that which will do the most good for the most
people, is not what did Palin say and do in the past but what can she do
now?

For
a political figure who has embraced Twitter and Facebook as a rapid
(and often vapid) way of communicating with her supporters, Palin has
been noticeably muted in her response to both the shooting and those who
link her online presence to it. To date, her website has been updated
to include a message of condolence to the victims of the shooting and an
appeal for justice. She has also sent an email to Glenn Beck in which
she professes her disdain for violence and war. Does this muted moment
present an opening in which the liberal Left can engage Palin and, by
proxy, the conservative Right?

In a Jan. 10 article in the New York Times, one
of the doctors who treated victims of the Arizona shooting, Dr. Peter
Rhee, compared the scene in Tucson to mass shootings he witnessed on the
battlefields of Iraq. As coincidence would have it, last week also saw
the return of Moqtada al-Sadr to his native Iraq, where he will
integrate his political movement into the newly formed government. You
may recall that al-Sadr is the influential cleric who inspired, through
rhetoric, many an act that resulted in the deaths of scores of fellow
Iraqis and American troops. Our government repeatedly put pressure on
the Iraqi government to sideline the fiery critic of the United States.
Were we wrong to point out that his words placed others in danger? Is
Iraq wrong in engaging al-Sadr as a partner in stability, rather than a
voice for armed resistance?

Closer
to home, during the same weekend that saw six Americans killed by gun
violence, 30 people were found killed by drug gangs near Acapulco,
Mexico. According to data from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and
Firearms, three out of four guns used to commit crimes in Mexico are
originally sold in the United States. Arizona, which has some of the
loosest gun purchasing standards in the U.S., is the highest per capita
source of these guns. Do we not owe our neighboring country, and one
of our most important economic partners, an exploration of how better
gun control policy on the state level can save lives internationally?
And even if you care little for Mexico, consider that weaker gun laws
in states like Virginia have been linked to the export of guns used in
crimes in states with tougher laws such as New York.

We
as a nation have an opportunity to dial back the rhetoric and engage
in a grown-up debate that actually leads to effective gun control laws.
Such steps will take leadership not just from elected leaders in
Congress and the White House, but also those who, like Sarah Palin, hold
sway over the hearts and minds of real Americans. Key advisers to
Palin have already voiced their opinion that to link Sarah to the
shootings is unfair. But then again, that’s one of the hallmarks of
leadership: taking responsibility and even ownership of problems and
challenges that are not necessarily of your own making. After all,
Barack Obama did not help create the centuries-old systems that
enslaved Africans and later led to victimization by a brutal
totalitarian regime known as Jim Crow (or Riker’s Island), but when a
black Harvard professor was arrested, the president was expected to
hold a summit on race in America. As much as he may not want his
presidency associated with the problems of race, he has taken
definitive steps to address those problems. His “Race to the Top”
education reform program can be seen as a direct assault on what many
view as the greatest impediment to the advancement of colored folk:
educational disparity. And despite the fact that these education reform
efforts have come at great political cost to Obama, threatening the
decades-old bonds between the Democratic Party and teachers’ unions,
the president has pressed on.

So we wait for Palin to
exhibit, through her words, the type of leadership on this issue that the
country, quite frankly needs. But which Palin will we see? The common-sense
saint her supporters view her as? Or perhaps the trigger-happy sinner that her
detractors see? Hopefully, it will be a more realistic Sarah Palin that will
stand up and acknowledge to her supporters that gun control is a real and
necessary tool in keeping all Americans—the serious and delirious alike—safe
from violence. 

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Jamaal Young is a
Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and
Co-chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee for Democratic Leadership for the 21^st Century.