Never responsible, always the victim - update.

$arah Palin, of course.

As others quicker off the mark than I these days pointed out, Palin and her sycophants produced this map, as well as reams of political eliminationist discourse directed at ideological opponents.

Palin has a history of evading responsibility for her actions, as well as shirking her obligations. Over and over, she's blamed others for everything that shines a spotlight upon her intellectual laziness, her egotism, the fabrication of her image and her greediness. Couric allegedly ambushed her; though she (and family members) preened in clothing and luxury items bought by the Republican party during the presidential campaign she refused to wear the issue; she abandoned her job as Governor of Alaska to pursue lucrative proposals yet said it was the media's fault she quit, etc. etc. etc.

Some political observers think Palin's bid for the presidency will be damaged by the Tucson carnage, others believe she'll bounce back.

Andrew Sullivan:

"There is no way to understand the politics of this without Palin. She has long been the leader of the movement that drapes itself in military garb, that marinates in violent rhetoric, that worships gun culture, that has particular ferocity in the state of Arizona, and that never ever apologises for anything." He adds: "My hope is that this horrifying momentary conflation of politics, guns and mental illness will lead responsible figures on the right to eschew the path of Palin."

David Frum:

[...] Palin's response – condolences to the victims and a simple denial of any responsibility – was perfectly fair in reply to opponents who suggested the crosshairs contributed to the shooting. But if she wanted to be a leader, she had to go beyond that, he said. He called on her to express real grief and sincere compassion, be visible, engage in the debate, and challenge opponents [...] "Palin is splashed by that history [the build-up to the Tucson incident] and the challenge is to find something big and generous to speak of in a larger way. So far, she has opted not to do so."

Expect the usual whining from Palin and her die-hard supporters. It will be difficult for Palin to spin that she is - not Gabrielle Giffords and the citizens killed or injured by the shooting - the "real" victim of this tragedy. Nonetheless she'll exploit her own brand of truthiness in her favour.

And also, go read Dr Dawg, Audrey II, Buckdog and Simon.

Update: Palin responds, not as Frum suggested, but in her habitual 'Pit Bull with Lipstick' attack form. Republican Jewish leaders choose to remain silent on Palin's opportunistic appropriation of the term "blood libel".

Grand merci to Jymm.

Eliminationism: Interview with David Neiwert

Good read. Longish interview with David Neiwert, author of The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right at AlterNet.

The intro:

In April, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report (PDF) warning that the shifting political climate and tanking economy were spurring a resurgence of violent right-wing extremism (known as "terrorism" when applied to those holding other political views) in the United States.

At the time, a number of right-wing commentators lambasted the report as a politically motivated attack on mainstream conservatism rather than what it was: an early warning on the dangers posed by a violent, fringe minority within their movement. Under pressure from GOP lawmakers, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano apologized for the report.

But in the short weeks since, the department's warnings have proved prescient. An abortion provider who had been a frequent target of Fox News' bloviator Bill O'Reilly was gunned down during a church service in Kansas; a mentally disturbed man who believed the "tea-bagging" movement's contention that the Obama administration is destroying the American economy -- and who reportedly owned a number of firearms -- withdrew $85,000 from his bank account, said he was part of a plot to assassinate the president and disappeared (he was later captured in Las Vegas); and this week, a white supremacist who was deeply steeped in far-right conspiracism entered the U.S. Holocaust Museum and opened fire, killing a guard before being shot and wounded by security personnel.

The three incidents share a common feature: All of these men thought they were serving a higher moral purpose, that is, defending their country from an insidious "enemy within" as defined by the far right -- a "baby-killer," the Jews who secretly control the world and a president who's been accused of being a Manchurian Candidate-style foreign agent bent on nothing less than the destruction of the American Way.

David Neiwert, a veteran journalist who has covered violent right-wing groups for years, calls the worldview that informs this twisted sense of moral purpose "eliminationism." It's the belief that one's political opponents are not just wrongheaded, misinformed or even acting in bad faith. Eliminationism holds that they are a cancer on the body politic that must be excised -- either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination -- in order to protect the purity of the nation.

As eliminationist rhetoric becomes increasingly mainstream within the American right -- fueled in large part by the wildly overheated discourse found on conservative blogs and talk radio -- Neiwert's new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, could not have come at a more important time. In it, Neiwert painstakingly details how the rise in eliminationism is a very real threat and points to the dangers of dismissing extreme rhetoric as merely a form of "entertainment."