Bachmann’s Baby
I think this can go all the way back to Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Her anti census rhetoric and scare tactics took such deep roots that Karl Rove came out of his cave to urge Americans to get on board with it. A far right wing radio hate monger that CNN for some reason has given credibility and a forum said back in April:
ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.
It looks like the Palin/Bachmann/Right Wing Fear & Anger Machine ™ did its job. From the Sacramento Bee:
Woman Killed After Confronting Yuba City Police With Shotgun
A routine visit by a U.S. Census Worker on Thursday evening turned deadly when Yuba City police officers shot and killed a woman they said had first threatened the worker with a gun, then later confronted officers with a shotgun.
I wonder where she got that idea? To pull a shotgun on a census worker? You can read the piece for what few details it provides. I would bet dollars to donuts though that these people were daily consumers of right wing hatriot rhetoric.
But as I said, this can probably be traced all the way bach to Bachmann’s scare talk about the census. Palin jumped on that bandwagon as well. In fact it was one of those fear de jour things for the entire GOP. Just throw some fear out there. The census is a tool for Obama to put us into concentration camps (no…really), unleash the socialist, muslim antichrist agenda and whatever else. Just have a few of the plausibly deniable extremist of the party get it started and then let the echo chamber carry it on the wind…
Of course, this may have just been some crotchety old couple that would have pulled a gun on a girl scout selling cookies. But I doubt it.
