Page: Republicans should give shame a chance

Former President Bill Clinton sees parallels between today's harsh conservative rhetoric and the toxic politics that led up to the Oklahoma City bombing. Conservative commentators responded, alas, with more harsh rhetoric. That reaction reveals a problem in today's conservative movement: Harsh rhetoric seems to be all that they have.

I know from experience that the conservative movement has more than angry words in its arsenal, but it's not letting much of it show. Too many thoughtful conservative voices that produced an abundance of ideas in President Ronald Reagan's 1980s are allowing themselves to be drowned out by today's version of what Teddy Roosevelt appropriately called "the lunatic fringe."

Ample examples are offered by the right-wing punditocracy's reaction to Bill Clinton's thoughts on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. In a speech at the Center for American Progress and in a New York Times op-ed, Clinton reiterated what he said as president after the bombing. We need to speak out, he said, and "assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."

Conservatives took this as a thinly veiled attack at conservative bloggers, talk show hosts and the tea party movement. If the shoe fits, wear it, I say. If not, condemn those who are making your movement look bad.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told a Chicago crowd Saturday that, because she called the Obama administration a "gangster government," Clinton wanted to "take her out." She apparently was talking about a gangster-style hit.

Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio show that Clinton's remarks "set the stage for violence" because he "gave the kooks in this country an excuse." As if they needed one.

Sean Hannity, interviewing Bachmann, said "there seems to be a coordinated effort to intimidate, silence and demonize any critic of this administration, this House of Representatives, this leadership." If so, the effort has not been very effective. Bachmann can be seen almost nightly on somebody's talk show, either speaking or being ridiculed. Quotability takes you a long way, if you don't mind embarrassing yourself.

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