Would the "vitriolic rhetoric" include former President Jimmy Carter's ugly assertion that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American"?
Would it include former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean's description of the contest between Democrats and Republicans as "a struggle between good and evil -- and we're the good"?
Would it include Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's characterization of then-President George W. Bush as "a loser and a liar"?
Would it include Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow's denunciation of President Bush as "dangerously incompetent"?
Would it include the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy's assertion that the Bush administration fabricated a case for war in Iraq, or, as Kennedy put it, "week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie"?
Would the "vitriolic rhetoric" include Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel's referring to Bush as "our Bull Connor," the infamous Southern lawman who, in the 1960s, turned police dogs and water hoses on black civil rights protesters?
Would it include the declaration by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart -- a man astonishingly described as a modern Edward R. Murrow -- that former President Harry Truman was "a war criminal"?
Would it include then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's declaration made at a fundraiser that "if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"?
Would it include Hillary Clinton's telling a black audience that the then-Republican majority Congress was "run like a plantation"?
Would it include the Rev. Al Sharpton, who, long before meeting with the FCC and demanding broadcasting decency standards, called the then mayor of New York a "nigger whore"?
Would it include then-Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., who attacked a black political opponent: "He's married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn't want to be black. I said that"?
Would it include the way then-President Bill Clinton, according to aide Dick Morris, described his 1996 Republican opponent: "Bob Dole is not a nice man. Bob Dole is evil. The things he wants to do to children are evil. The things he wants to do to poor people and old people and sick people are evil. Let's get that straight"?
Would it include the unhinged MSNBC host Ed Schultz, who, days before the Tucson shooting, said: "This is an ideological war. ... I will fight these bastards every night at 6 o'clock because I know what they're up against. I know what they want to do. They want to take down American workers. ... They want to destroy the American dream, concentrate the wealth to the top and control minorities"?
