A provocative speaker makes a powerful speech; “Don’t retreat, reload”, says Sarah Palin… and someone did.

Violent threats have consequences. Dire consequences.

On Saturday, Jared Lee Loughner, a 22-year-old resident of the Arizona city went on a shooting spree at a grocery store that killed six and seriously wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The evidence recovered from the gunman’s house and compiled from several social networking sites he had contributed to, suggests that this was a politically motivated, premeditated, attempted assassination.

Ms Giffords, from President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, was meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday when the gunman shot her at point blank range before spraying bullets at the small crowd.

Ms Giffords, who had only narrowly defeated a favourite of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement in the recent mid-term elections, had faced threats before. As had veteran federal judge John Roll who was among the six killed.

Also among the slain was a nine year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, born in 2001, September 11.

Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, sent a memo to members and supporters:

“The hard left is going to try and silence the Tea Party movement by blaming us for this. Clinton used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to “blame conservative talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh.”
“The tactic worked then, backing conservatives off and possibly helping to ensure a second Clinton term.”
“The left is coming and will hit us hard on this. We need to push back harder with the simple truth. The shooter was a liberal lunatic. Emphasis on both words.”

Wrong.

Many Tea Party supporters in Tea Party Facebook groups have sickeningly applauded the shooter, venerating him as some sort of hero. A hero? Shoot 20 people, kill a federal judge, a nine year-old girl and 4 others and you’re a hero?

The GOP and Tea Parties indiscriminately use rhetoric like “put them in our sights”, “don’t retreat, instead reload” and similarly provocative phrases. They use them to inspire hatred of the Left in the same way that the same rhetoric was used against the “communists”. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Sharon Angle, Michelle Bachman, they are all guilty of using this hate-rhetoric to inspire voters to take action.

Michele Bachmann recently said, “I Want People Armed And Dangerous over Obama Tax Plan.”

All it takes; no, all it took, was a mentally ill or unstable individual to take action in their own way and “BOOM”. Lines of decency have been crossed, and Sarah Palin has a responsibility in the wake of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and all of the slain, and all of the injured.

Take heed, Republicans/Conservatives/GOPs and Tea Parties, people are listening to what you demand. You demanded action, someone took action.