Posted on 09/30/2009 4:19:49 PM PDT by markomalley
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman a “nut job” on Thursday for suggesting that current fury in among the conservative grassroots is creating the “same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin assassination.”
After being read Friedman’s comments during an interview on CNN’s “American Morning,” Steele lashed out at the Times’ columnist.
“Where do these nut jobs come from?” Steele said. “I mean, come on, stop this.”
Asked by host John Roberts if Steele was calling Friedman specifically a “nut job,” the RNC chairman responded: “I’m just saying to make those kinds of equations, you know, examples, and put that out there that way, to me is just crazy.”
“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to approach this discussion, approach it from a rational position, you’re saying because you disagree with the president on policy, that all of a sudden we’re going to make this leap into, you know, assassinations and all this other stuff,” Steele continued.
“I mean, at the height of all this stuff on Bush and people complaining and protesting, and jumping up and down, you didn’t have this kind of conversation,” he added. “Now all of a sudden you’re going to color it because of a public policy debate...because the president is black.”
Steele then defended recent conservative protests, and warned Friedman and others against drawing a connection between outrage at the president’s policies and implications of racism or threats of violence.
“We need to be very smart and very careful about jumping, making these leaps on race and connecting dots that may or may not exist there,” Steele said. “We are engaged as a country right now in a very important public policy debate, whether it’s the war in Afghanistan or health care, cap and trade or what it happens to be. There are passions that run deep and long on both sides of the aisle.”
“Don’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that, because someone says something vitriolic or hot that that’s necessarily from the right or necessarily from the left,” he said. “It’s reflecting deep-seeded frustrations that people have.”
Ahhhh, yea I would agree with that assessment.
They are criticizing Steele for calling the guy a “nut job” when the nut job just called all conservatives and republicans and for that matter anyone who disagrees - assassins and murderers.
Thomas Friedman seems overly focused on little more than assassination and murder. Wonder what he's up to in his spare time? Anyone been over to his house to check out his closets lately?
Hey Steele, when the Day Old Media hates you you must be doing something right. In your case, its your color.
Pray for America and Our Troops
Steele must have seen the tea leaves at Amazon and B&N, concerning Sarah’s book.
Does anyone but me notice the drip, drip, drip of the notion that dissent leads to violence and assassination that the left has been discussing lately? First Pelosi, then Kennedy now Freidman, I am sure there are others that I have missed. Is this a politically inspired talking point or are these people really a-holes?
If I say, “Friedman is a tool,” am I being offensive? Because he is. He’s a tool of the liberals. I’m sure he’s proud.
Gotta understand the liberal mind. Little Tommy Friedman is chumming the water for an epoch making prediction as a "journalist."
If Obama were assassinated, no one in this country, not the most virulent racist, not the most psychotic white supremacist, would be more overjoyed than Thomas Friedman of the New York Slimes.
Plus he'd be the world's greatest get for all those uptown cocktail parties. I mean, we're talking liberals here, right?
Their motives are two fold...
1. They hope to freak out conservatives, which are lawabidding, into calming down and dropping the issue
and 2. They may actaully hope to encourage someone into doing it (maybe even a very ‘for the party’ dem)... Because if it happens, the 0ne will be elevated and whatever the left wants, they will get. (if I were 0bama I would be concerned about my dem ‘allies’)
Does anyone know if Friedman has made contact with Arthur yet?
There is a major post over at DU talking about the “violence of the right wing”, and then associating some of the nut cases that have committed atrocious murders to the conservative side of the aisle. A lot of the posts have references to “right wing violence” in the threads as well. I don’t know if they’re setting up something, or if they’re just that crazy.
They must have gotten hold of the Rush and the VRWC lead to the Oklahoma City bombing meme from Clinton’s playbook.
The problem is that we don't know how Plugs and the Hildabeast would feel about succession. /sarc>
Cheers!
Does anyone but me notice the drip, drip, drip of the notion that dissent leads to violence and assassination that the left has been discussing lately? First Pelosi, then Kennedy now Freidman, I am sure there are others that I have missed. Is this a politically inspired talking point or are these people really a-holes?
Rush said it best, it’s as if these people want for there to be violence.
Poor Steele, he wants to be a man of steel but he knows he doesn’t have it from within. He’s faking outrage again.
I am starting to like Steele.
All the political violence that occurred in the last few months have been by libs. The finger-biter in Caliornia, the attack in St. Louis etc.
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