Jonathan Freedland guardian.co.uk
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...It's not exactly fair. Palin didn't pull the trigger that killed six people, including a nine-year-old girl, in Arizona and left a member of Congress fighting for her life. But politics isn't fair. The cold reality is that the individual most politically damaged by the Saturday shootings is the former vice-presidential candidate turned reality TV star, bestselling author and all-round media phenomenon.
For proof, just imagine how a Palin presidential campaign would now unfold. Her fellow Republicans might steer clear of the Arizona killings in the primary phase of the contest but, if she somehow became her party's nominee, she would be challenged constantly about a single image: the map she posted on her website last autumn dotted with 20 gunsight-style crosshairs over 20 congressional districts occupied by Democrats who had dared to vote for Obama's healthcare reform – among them one Gabrielle Giffords.
Palin might try to argue that she wasn't really targeting Giffords and the others, echoing the absurd attempt by one of her closest aides at the weekend to pretend those rifle sights were really "surveyor's symbols". But that won't wash, not when Palin herself referred via Twitter to the "'bullseye' icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin' incumbent seats". More importantly, there would be a potent witness ready to testify against Palin: Giffords herself. The most important 13 seconds of videotape could prove to be the clip, already running on a loop on American television, of Giffords complaining last autumn about that crosshairs ad, warning those behind such violent imagery to "realise there's consequences to that action". That statement, full of poignant prescience, can't help but point a finger at Palin...
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...Even if Loughner is shown to suffer from extreme mental illness, he did not exist in a vacuum. Instead he lived in a climate that pervades today's United States, and that exists with particular intensity in Arizona, in which political violence is glorified. Last year, Giffords' Republican opponent held an event encouraging voters to join him and "shoot a fully automatic M16" to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office". Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said she wanted voters to be "armed and dangerous" against Obama's energy policy. On Fox News, Glenn Beck speaks daily as if on an underground resistance network, urging his audience to rise up against the wicked dictatorship that has somehow usurped power.
This is in a different category from Lib Dem talk of decapitation. First, it is taking place in a society in which many millions carry real, rather than metaphorical, guns. Second, it is not generalised rhetoric but directed at specific, named individuals: that Republican candidate urged voters to shoot an automatic weapon to get rid of Giffords. In this context, it is not hysterical to suggest some of this will have rubbed off...
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/11/sarah-palin-presidential-hopes-arizona-shootings
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