There’s a New Sheriff in Politics
By TOBIN HARSHAW
The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.Tags:
In his speech in Tucson Wednesday night, President Obama called on Americans to expand their “moral imaginations” and “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Well, never hurts to aim high. For now, at least, the president seems to have put an end to the endless blame game over whose political rhetoric apparently forced a violent lunatic to shoot a woman he’d been fixated on for years.
The speech also marked the beginning of the next stage in the news media narrative of the Tucson shootings, the one where we all look ahead and make informed projections or wild guesses about how the tragedy will change our politics, laws and culture. Gun control efforts are certainly going to get a boost, if not necessarily among members of Congress personally. We can expect political campaigns to ratchet down the vitriol, either voluntarily or through force of law. Arizona’s public image in Blue America is, well, going to remain about the same. Ditto for Sarah Palin. Colleges are going to face even more scrutiny over how they deal with disturbed students. Psychiatrists and lawyers well-versed in the insanity defense will be cashing lots of checks from the cable news channels. And, above all, this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona.
“The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh ‘irresponsible’ for continuing the vitriol,” reported ABC News’s Sarah Netter. “ ‘The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information,’ Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said today. ‘[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences.’ ”Is Clarence Dupnik the hero of the Tucson shooting or a grandstander who might set back the case against Jared Lee Loughner?
For the left, a hero was born. “He’s certainly an authoritative voice for how his own state, Arizona, has been affected by the hate,” wrote Joan McCarter at Daily Kos. “If anyone has a right to speak out, it’s a law enforcement official who has seen directly the results of the violent rhetoric, including being threatened himself.” “God bless Sheriff Dupnik,” added Blue Texan at FireDogLake. People for the American way started an online petition for supporters to thank him for his “forthrightness.” John Cole at Balloon Juice insisted the sheriff had no political angle: “there was nothing partisan about Dupnik’s statements. He pointed no fingers at any specific group- he merely pointed out that public figures are receiving a lot of threats and that as a lifelong resident of Arizona, he has noticed a change in the political atmosphere, which DIRECTLY impacts his ability to do his job, which is keeping the peace.” (Cole apparently wrote this about before Dupnik made his comments about Limbaugh; no word on whether he still finds the sheriff nonpartisan.)
Conservatives, needless to say, have now found a lawman they won’t support. Here’s David Riehl at Big Government:
A look at Dupnik’s official, public bought and paid for website reads more like someone auditioning for a TV talking head gig, or job in Washington, than it does a law enforcement official. But then, what responsible, professional law enforcement official would seize upon every media opportunity afforded him to discuss, in intimate detail, such a horrific crime still under investigation and obviously headed for the courts? The answer is none.
If it’s possible to any more compound the tragedy of an obviously deranged mass murderer, Jared Lee Loughner, seemingly incapable of rational and consistent political thought in line with any one ideology, it’s that a clueless and seemingly worthless political hack like Clarence Dupnik appears so intent on milking the tragedy for every despicable drop of public relations fodder it’s worth to him.
And Michelle Malkin:
Within hours of the bloody spree, Dupnik mounted more grandstands than a NASCAR tour champion. A vocal opponent of S.B. 1070, the popular state law cracking down on illegal immigration, Dupnik immediately blamed Arizona for becoming a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” To date, there is no public evidence that massacre suspect Loughner was in any way motivated by the national rancor over illegal immigration and the Arizona law (though open-borders extremists from the Justice Department on down most certainly wish it were so). When he complained about non-English-speakers, Loughner’s nonsensical diatribes were aimed at illiterates in general – not illegal aliens — and “grammar control” by the government.
“Say this for Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik,” added Jim Geraghty at National Review. “He certainly didn’t bother to assign any deputies or other police personnel to the Congress on Your Corner event that turned into a massacre, despite his apparent belief that his state and the community he serves ‘have become the Mecca of prejudice and bigotry. But when it comes to policing our airwaves, he’s on the case!”
Geraghty’s colleague Andrew C. McCarthy, a former Federal prosecutor, thinks Dupnik’s loquaciousness may set back the case.
While I’m sure we’re all very impressed with Sheriff Dupnik’s thoughtful views on gun policy and right-wingers, his day job is law enforcement. A large element of that job is to maximize the chances that the guilty will be convicted (to say nothing of the duty to avoid prejudicing the jury pool). How does it help matters for him to be telling the media that, in his vast experience as an investigator, he has learned that we can never really know what motivates people to act? That motive evidence is sheer speculation? That in his opinion, Loughner is “a very troubled personality” — a statement that will surely be used by the defense to argue that even those running the investigation concluded that the defendant was insane?
If Loughner was non compos mentis, it will be his counsel’s job to establish that, and she will be given every opportunity to do so under criminal due process rules — rules that are especially generous in capital cases. Sheriff’s Dupnik’s role at this point is to keep his mouth shut and collect evidence, not run off at the mouth for the benefit of the defense.
Pat Dollard thinks Dupnik is the cutting edge of an effort to selectively thwart the First Amendment.
This is going to be the Left’s tactic to enforce a clampdown on the Right’s speech: they will push for censorship legislation (aka hate speech legislation) based not on Jared Loughner being a ginned-up Conservative, because he wasn’t and they can’t, but based on “tone”. You will see Leftist propagandists doing “mea culpas”, pretending to take blame for being part of the “tone problem” in order to snooker the American people into supporting censorship legislation designed to censor the Conservative voice.
Allahpundit at Hot Air had a counterintuitive take, that Dupnik is a blessing to the right:
As annoyed as you are at this tool for being a ludicrous political hack and a disgrace to his office, please do understand that he’s inadvertently a huge asset to conservatives. Just watch him answer Diane Sawyer’s question about whether it’s appropriate for an investigator to tie his pet theories about talk radio to this case without any evidence. Answer: “Well, that’s my opinion. People can have their own opinions.” We’re talking about a horrific murder spree here, an international news event, with political tensions between left and right terribly inflamed because of it, and the lead fact-finder on the case is yakking to broadcast news about Rush Limbaugh because “that’s my opinion.” Naturally that’ll make him an instant hero to the left, but I can’t believe there’s a cop anywhere who won’t watch this and cringe all the way through. I’m also trying to imagine the reaction in the county D.A.’s office as this imbecile does his level best to prejudice the trial they’re eventually going to have to conduct. But then, what does a conviction of a mass murderer matter when Diane Sawyer’s sticking a mic in your face?
Plenty of liberal bloggers let the sheriff know they had his back. “It’s not entirely surprising the right wouldn’t care for the sheriff’s concerns,” wrote Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, “but (a) they hardly seemed excessive, under the circumstances and they weren’t partisan in the slightest; and (b) if conservatives are really concerned about intemperate rhetoric from Arizona sheriffs, Dupnik is hardly Exhibit A.”
Paul Rosenberg at Open Left detected a pattern:
Conservatives never take responsibility for anything: slavery, segregation, racism, coddling Hitler, Central American death squads, pollution, mass incarceration, three decades of budget-busting deficits, 9/11, Katrina, the Iraq War, the Wall Street meltdown & the Great Recession–the list goes on and on. So why would their reaction to the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords be any different? …
No single political battle was more politically beneficial for conservatives, more mendacious, more incendiary, and more directly responsible for inciting threatening words and actions than the battle over healthcare reform last year … They stopped at nothing. Neither did Jared Loughner. I wonder where he got that idea.
And so it might have gone on endlessly, until this jolt came along. “The police were sent to the home where Jared L. Loughner lived with his family on more than one occasion before the attack here on Saturday that left a congresswoman fighting for her life and six others dead, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday,” reported The Times’s Jo Becker Kirk Johnson and Serge F. Kovaleski on Tuesday. “The news of police involvement with the Loughners suggests that county sheriff’s deputies were at least familiar with the family, even if the reason for their visits was unclear as of Tuesday night.”
“Sheriff Dupnik doesn’t seem like a very good law enforcement officer,” responded Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller. “Or person. Every day we’re finding out more and more about his ineptitude. Sheriff’s deputies paid repeated visits to the Loughner home. The killer had made previous death threats, and Dupnik knew about them. The killer’s classmates and teachers were terrified of him. He was throwing off lone-gunman vibes everywhere he went. And yet he was able to buy a gun and ammunition. How did all that happen right under Dupnik’s nose? How did somebody that screwed up fall through the cracks? Are we supposed to believe Sarah Palin is the one who missed all that? Did Glenn Beck somehow prevent Dupnik from doing his job? Was he too busy worrying about Bill O’Reilly?”
Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin had a “theory“: “A mentally deranged young man was never treated or effectively prevented from buying guns. The sheriff didn’t pick up on anything, despite repeated contact with the shooter. Six people then died. Well, that bears some semblance to the facts, and, moreover, explains why the sheriff would rather cast blame elsewhere. Maybe it’s time to cut out the blame game and at least have discussion that is related to the facts — about treatment of and institutionalization rules for the mentally ill, for example. And yes, we need to look at how mentally unstable people still manage to get access to guns. Meanwhile, the people of Pima County can decide if they are being well served.”
Well, they got at least some of the information they needed to make that assessment on Wednesday afternoon, when after some stonewalling the sheriff’s department released the records on the visits to the Loughner home, and then Pima County Community College opened its files on the alleged shooter. “As evidence mounts that Jared Lee Loughner exhibited disturbing behavior months before the rampage in Tucson, it’s increasingly clear that Arizona authorities could legally have detained him for psychiatric evaluation and treatment — and potentially have been able to avert the tragedy,” inisisted Andrew Longstreth of Reuters. Interesting, but no bloggers on either side of the Dubnik debate seemed to find any ammunition in the released documents — nothing to prove that the sheriff’s office dropped the ball; nothing to indicate Loughner was a right-wing radical inflamed by Tea Party zealousness. Instead, we got a view into the mundane life of a troubled man who robbed six people of their lives.
