From over in the Web Briefing, Paul Krugman writes today:
Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials. [See Editor’s Note below.]
Oh really? Google “Kill George Bush” to find out how wrong Krugman is.
One of the long forgotten ones:
Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams apologized Thursday for saying she could kill President Bush, remarks that drew scorn from Bush loyalists and shook up the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas.
“My feelings now and again get way ahead of me,” Ms. Williams said. “I couldn’t kill anybody, but I must confess that I’m extremely angry with the Bush administration and what they have done. To say that was wrong.”
Or search Google for images of Bush as Hitler. . .
Shall we go on? Readers, send in your best ones.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The above quote from Paul Krugman, now corrected, was excerpted in a misleading fashion, omitting Krugman’s qualifier which limited the source of such quotes to members of Congress or senior Democratic party officials. None of the examples that follow come from members of those groups. We apologize for this serious error.
EDITOR’S NOTE II: This is not to say that Krugman’s claim is true. As Jay Nordlinger noted in these pages back in September 2009, Democrat John Kerry — who is a member of Congress and, as a former Democratic candidate for president, has to be counted among the party’s leadership — had a revealing exchange with TV talk-show host Bill Maher:
In 2006, Bill Maher had a conversation with John Kerry. He asked Kerry what he’d gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry said he had treated her to a vacation in Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” Kerry replied, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.”
This is the same Kerry who, in 1988, said, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.” Then he said, “There isn’t any press here, is there?”
We await the New York Times’s correction of Paul Krugman’s assertion.