Targeting political foes just deepens the division

It was a little over a year ago that Maxine Waters encouraged activists to target conservatives who favored a “zero tolerance” on immigration policy.

She said that there should be “no sleep, no peace” for the people she said were responsible for separating children from their parents during the identification process at the southern border.

“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station,” you get out and you create a crowd, Waters said. “You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”

It didn’t take long for leftist radicals to begin carrying out those marching orders. Two prominent conservatives, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and communications director Candace Owens, who is black, were attempting to eat breakfast at a restaurant in Philadelphia when a group aligned with Antifa gathered outside and aggressively harassed them.

Video on Owens’ Twitter page showed the protesters shouting obscenities and blowing whistles. The video also shows one of the protesters dumping a bottle of water on Kirk.

Not intimidated, Owens, who is black, responded to the crowd: “We love the police, we love America, we love the USA.”

Kirk later stated if roles were reversed and it was a conservative mob hurling horrific insults or doing the assault, the left would have been screaming “hate crime” and nearly every major news outlet would be demanding condemnation.

There were other attacks on conservatives. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ and Fox News personality Kat Timpf were harassed while socializing at restaurants. Both left their respective public places to discourage their antagonists and defuse the situation.

Conservatives and Republican lawmakers are also targets of anti-conservative bias by social media companies.

The latest case of a liberal double standard involved Sen. Mitch Mitch McConnell. The Senate Majority Leader was resting at home after fracturing his shoulder in a fall when left-wing protesters gathered outside his Kentucky home. One demonstrator shouted someone to stab McConnell “in the heart” and for McConnell to break his “raggedy” neck.

After McConnell’s re-election campaign posted the hostile videos, Twitter responded by suspending McConnell’s account.

“This morning, Twitter locked our account for posting the video of real-world, violent threats made against Mitch McConnell,” the senator’s campaign manager Kevin Golden said in a statement. “This is the problem with the speech police in America today.”

Democratic Rep. Julian Castro, a presidential hopeful, posted a list with prominent donors in San Antonio who contributed to President Trump. The list, sought to link them to a “campaign of hate” in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, was posted on Twitter by Castro, who is the campaign chairman for his brother.

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump,” Castro tweeted. “Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’ ”

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro remains active on Twitter, even after he posted the names of San Antonio residents who donated to Trump.

A number of those Trump donors described Castro’s actions as a ridiculous stunt which was actually fueling a campaign of hate against Hispanics. Wayne Harwell, the owner of a local real estate development company whose name appeared on the list, was one who fumed at the claim that Trump donors are complicit in spreading hateful rhetoric against Hispanics.

In just the past year, the drum beat against anything conservative or pro-Trump has gotten louder, thanks to Trump haters like Maxine Waters and Julian Castro and a complicit liberal press and social media companies.

Giving radicals a license to harass political opponents, posting hostile videos or hit lists only creates a deeper chasm in a nation already fractured along party lines.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com