For Dean: Republicans Behaving Badly

In a previous post, I commented on a list of atrocities committed by Democrats against Republicans, as reported by Michelle Malkin. Several people chimed in on this. One of the seriously shocking ones was Power Line who went so far as to throw the Nazi flag:

"Al Gore complained that Republicans on the internet are "digital Brownshirts." It's time to start getting concerned about real Brownshirts, all of whom are Democrats."

(Bold emphasis mine.) I also mentioned Dean (of Dean's world) requesting information about instances of Republicans getting into similar trouble. Dean is definitely one of the less shrill people knocking around the blogosphere, and seems to give any valid story a fair shake. Since he asked so nicely, I thought I'd take the time to dredge up a couple of samples for him from past Republican antics. (Mind you, Democrats are no better, but it sadly seems that nobody has clean hands in this fight.)

First up, we have... the Sept. 9, 2004 GOP rally at Colmar, PA.



Doesn't the young lady Democrat appear to be having a fabulous time as she is dragged out of her chair and down the aisle by her hair at the hands of one of the Republican faithful? And just look at the look on the guy's face. Even if you could excuse this kind of treatment to remove some person who is non-violently protesting, he's simply enjoying it.

Moving along... if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million. (Open that in IE. It doesn't play in Netscape for some reason.) This ABC video shows a valiant young Republican man kicking a female Democratic protester while she is being held down on the floor by Secret Service agents at the GOP convention in NYC. Here's a photo of our stalwart young man after he was busted by TalkLeft.




The party tried to distance themselves from the young man afterwards. Strangely, the Secret Service guys were too busy dragging the girl out of the building to arrest this fellow, and he was able to get back to enjoying the festivities.

I'll pause here for a moment and allow myself a guilty bit of caveman scorn by making an observation. At least when the Democrat in Malkin's story punched somebody, it was another man - and a younger, stronger one at that who proceeded to beat the tar out of him. When our big, burly Bush/Cheney supporting men decide to get physical, I wonder how it is that they wind up beating up girls?

Back to the news. Sadly, no pictures on this one, but out in Denver, we find a devout Christian Bush supporter punching some veterans who are marching for John Kerry. Isn't that just lovely?

A member of a Christian group has been fired after allegedly punching several veterans marching for presidential candidate John Kerry in Monday's Harvest Festival parade in Windsor, Colo.

Russell Laughlin, 40, of Nunn, was a member of the northern Colorado FamilyLife Marriage Conference and was walking ahead of 175 members of Veterans for Kerry.According to police, Laughlin was handing out pamphlets for his group while making loud insults about Kerry to the crowd gathered to watch the parade.After about a mile, the veterans group asked Laughlin to go back to his own group, but he refused and instead stood in front of the Kerry group, refusing to move, according to a Chris Humphries, an Army veteran and Kerry campaign employee.
That's when a fight erupted and Laughlin grabbed a veteran by his shirt and started swinging, according to Gary Fedel, a Lakewood, Colo. member of Veterans for Kerry. Humphries said Laughlin then turned around punched her in the mouth.

(Emphasis added, mine.) I don't want to sound like there's a recurring theme here, but again we see a male Bush supporter punching two veterans and one of them happens to be a woman.

We could go on with this all day. The point is, there is no sense in trying to act like only Democrats do bad things. It is no more sensible than saying only Republicans do. But compared to these three guys, Malkin's story of some cardboard signs being ripped up by angry Democrats and letters being dumped on floors suddenly doesn't seem quite so horrendous, does it?