Quote Originally Posted by Mr. E View Post
You can't blame a political party for the actions of a fringe violent extremist in the same way that you can't blame a religion for its fringe violent extremists.
I find this blindingly naive.

If the religion or political party is making statements that DIRECTLY refer to violence, and actively telling people to go out and do these things, they can absolutely be blamed.

I don't know how that fits in this case, admittedly. But, let's say a guy pulls a gun on Harry Reid or even Obama and yells "This is for you, Sarah!", after which we find he was an avid conservative with a browsing history of nothing but GOP websites and a wall of posters lined with quotations from Palin et al encouraging "second amendment solutions"... would you still say what you're saying now?

Again, I'm not specifically referring to the incident with Gifford. This is a hypothetical. I'm challenging your notion that you can't blame a party for the behaviour of the fringe. You can think of another example with, for instance, a radical Muslim whose walls are lined with violent passages from the Qu'ran.