November 03, 2022 10:17 AM UTC

Throwback Thursday: "Bring It, Pelosi!"

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the New York Times reports in the wake of last week’s attempted assassination of Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi:

The attack on Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, which left him with a fractured skull and appeared to be part of a planned attack on the speaker herself, came after a yearslong campaign by Republicans to demonize and dehumanize Ms. Pelosi in increasingly ugly ways.

For the better part of two decades, Republicans have targeted Ms. Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American politics, as the most sinister Democratic villain of all, making her the evil star of their advertisements and fund-raising appeals in hopes of animating their core supporters. The language and images have helped to fuel the flames of anger at Ms. Pelosi on the right, fanned increasingly in recent years by a toxic stew of conspiracy theories and misinformation that has thrived on the internet and social media, with little pushback from elected Republicans.

Ms. Pelosi is now one of the most threatened members of Congress in the country…

In 2014, then-Rep. Mike Coffman found then-Minority Leader Pelosi a more attractive target for his rhetoric than his opponent Andrew Romanoff. The intense campaign of vilification waged against Speaker Pelosi by Republicans, often as a proxy punching bag for other races, parallels the similar character assassination campaign conducted for many years against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Without attempting to blame any particular individual for the attempted murder of Pelosi’s husband last week other than the suspect in custody, let us just say that the “politics of personal destruction,” as practiced by conservatives against Democratic women leaders in particular, has effects that are not always immediately apparent.

When they manifest as they did last week in San Francisco, it should give everyone pause.