Anti-Trump protests reminiscent of 2009 tactics

Left-wing protesters succeeded in shutting down a Donald Trump rally in Chicago last week. Protest leaders admitted that their goal had been to shut down the event, not just protest it, and claimed victory. In fact, their admitted plans were to storm the stage when Trump appeared and overwhelm security by their numbers. Violence.

Democrats and the mainstream media (I know, that’s redundant) are hyperventilating. They are charging Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, with encouraging mob action at Trump rallies. Democrat front runner Hillary Clinton accused Trump of “political arson.” A Washington Post columnist blamed Trump for the “anger his divisive rhetoric has generated among the demonstrators,” accusing him of “reaping a whirlwind of his own creation.” Ezra Klein regaled in Trump’s alleged “ideology of violence.”

But, remember when the shoe was on the other foot, when Democrats in general, and the Obama Administration in particular, really did inspire actual violence against their political opponents? Let me refresh your memory.

It was 2009, the first year of the Obama Administration and the birth and rapid emergence of the Tea Party movement. Conservatives attended congressional town hall meetings in droves to question and challenge Democrat representatives over their support for Obamacare, “cap and trade,” and other left-wing initiatives. Protesters were vocal, but peaceful. They attended events they were entitled to attend, as members of the public. Embarrassed Democrats tried to rig the audiences by filling the seats with their own stooges before opening the doors to the public. In August of that year, the regime went on a counteroffensive, coordinating verbal attacks designed to demonize citizen dissent. The Democratic National Committee aired a television ad depicting town hall audiences as “angry mobs.” Democrat House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer wrote an op ed piece in USA Today (which has since been scrubbed from the newspaper’s web site), condemning the protesters and calling them “unAmerican.” Former Sen. Jean Carnahan penned a piece in the left-wing site Fired Up! Missouri in which she characterized Obamacare protesters as “hordes that take up pitchforks,” accusing them of “mob hysteria” and “remarks that border on treason.” Treason! And then things got physical. Channeling then-candidate Obama’s remark the year before , “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” the President’s deputy chief of staff Jim Messina encouraged supporters to “punch back twice as hard” against critics. Less than 24 hours later in south St. Louis County, SEIU members did just that, savagely beating Kenneth Gladney, an independent vendor of patriotic flags and anti-Obamacare buttons, outside a packed town hall meeting of Congressman Russ Carnahan. Another person there assaulted Kelly Owens, a woman with a video camera who was documenting the crimes, breaking the camera when smashing it against Ms. Owens’ face.

Whether or not Trump is the Republican nominee, expect things to get rougher as the campaign proceeds. When Democrats’ control is threatened, they get desperate. And violent.

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