Smearing the Tea Party

What makes Biden’s denial so implausible is that liberals and Democrats have been flinging the “terrorist’’ slur across the aisle for weeks. Do you remember President Obama’s call, after the deadly shooting in Tucson last January, for “more civility in our public discourse?’’ Remember how he deplored the urge “to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do?’’ Many on the left have apparently forgotten, to judge by their zeal for linking the Tea Party’s views on the debt ceiling to the extremism that leads fanatics to kill.

Listen, for example, to former Obama administration official Steven Rattner, speaking on MSNBC last week: “These Tea Party guys are, like, strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour and saying, ‘Either you do it my way, or we’re going to blow you up, ourselves up, and the whole country up with us.’ ’’

Or to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, warning that “if sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission.’’

Or to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House minority whip, talking about “Russian roulette’’ with loaded chambers, and how House Republicans “want to shoot every bullet they have at the president.’’

Or to former Ted Kennedy aide William Yeomans, now an American University law professor, who says labeling Tea Party Republicans “hostage-takers’’ doesn’t go far enough, since “they have now become full-blown terrorists.’’