- The Washington Times - Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Most people, when they want their congressional members to hear their dissenting voices, send a letter, drop an email, leave a voicemail.

Democrats? They threaten violence.

The FBI just arrested a Tucson, Arizona, man named Steven Martan for leaving messages on Rep. Martha McSally’s congressional voicemail service in which he warned that her days “were numbered” and that he was planning to shoot her. He also said, according to Hot Air and other media outlets: “Martha, our sights are set on you, right between your [expletive] eyes.” Court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson, allege Martan was reportedly upset McSally voted in support of President Donald Trump.

This is not an anomaly.

Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett Jr. has reportedly received at least three death threats in recent times, all over his views of Obamacare and health insurance reform. According to Garrett spokesman Andrew Griffin, one male caller making threats allegedly said that if his health care plan was taken away, then so would the congressman’s life. Another hater sent a message to Garrett’s Facebook page from his campaign days with explicit details on plans to kill the congressman.

Go south, and it’s more of the same.

Florida Rep. Ted Yoho reported his district office in Gainesville was vandalized. He also reported a female voter leaving a voicemail message for the district director that went like this: “Next time I see you, I’m going to beat your f—ing ass.”

For the last several weeks, protesters have filled Yoho’s front office lobby, causing as much chaos and mayhem as they could. The congressman, fearing for staffers’ safety, finally made visitations off-limits at the Gainesville office, except for those who called ahead and made appointments.

“They’re mad to the point where they’re cussing at my staff, [they] pushed one of them, poured stuff on one of the staff’s car,” Yoho said, in an interview with The Hill.

This is crazed behavior. And it’s all coming from the left, aimed at the right.

Just recently, the daughter of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry found a sign on the family’s front yard at their Nebraska home that read, “Traitors put party above country. Do the right thing for once, shithead.”

Really? As if Fortenberry’s going to read the sign and have some sort of epiphany that goes like this: “My gosh, you’re right. I am a shithead. I will change my vote.”

But the irrational logic goes on.

Earlier this month, an angry constituent went up to Rep. Kevin Cramer at a North Dakota town hall meeting and tried to shove dollar bills into the congressman’s suit pocket, according to the Bismarck Tribune. Why?

The voter was angry at the way the health care discussions were progressing.

And of course, there was the widely reported constituent car chase of Rep. David Kustoff — in which an angry female voter forced Kustoff into a driveway and banged on his windows — as well as the many ongoing verbal shout-downs suffered by Republicans trying to hold town meetings whose main claim to offense seem to be voting Republican.

Rep. Dave Brat from Virginia, for instance, said he tried to hold a town hall just a week ago in his district, but could not get very far because of all the booing. What the protesters were booing, however, was ridiculous.

“They booed God,” he said, The Hill reported. “They booed the pastor. They booed the prayer. They booed the name of the church. They booed when I said rights come from God. That’s a fundamental tenet of western civilization. I mean, I didn’t think that was partisan.”

Seriously, who would think it partisan to speak of America’s basic guiding government compass of rights coming from God?

Only a loon — which is apparently what the left has become.

These are somewhat scary times to be a Republican, a conservative, a traditional-minded American patriot. One can’t underestimate the absolute force of the left’s push to impeach Trump, and once that’s accomplished, take out anyone else in the political world who’s dared to take a stand by Trump, or for the Republican Party.

Back in 2014, John A. Goodman and his Customer Care Measurement and Consulting group conducted a study of how Republicans versus Democrats express their rage. The study focused on business, not political, dealings. Specifically, researchers studied how customers who identified as Republican reacted to businesses that provided poor service, versus customers who claimed to be Democrats. But the findings were significant, just the same.

“One of the more interesting findings in the Rage survey was that Republicans and Democrats express their rage differently,” Psychology Today reported in June 2014. “Republicans report less general customer rage than Democrats (58 percent versus 69 percent for Democrats), and are significantly more trusting of the companies with whom they do business.”

But when they express anger — it’s the Democrats who really go low.

“Democrats are far more likely to curse, while Republicans are far more likely to yell,” Psychology Today reported.

Admittedly, yelling’s nothing to brag about. But cursing? That’s just a gutter response.

Yet even that’s preferable to the norm for today’s Democrats, who’ve apparently moved on from cursing as a sign of displeasure to chasing down congressmen, leaving death threats for representatives, and cavalierly ignoring the boundaries between public service and private life by planting obscene signs on lawmakers’ homes — in full view of innocent children. Stay safe, Republicans. In times like these, it’s perhaps a great comfort to remember this small fact of U.S. life: the Second Amendment is still alive and well.

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