Op-Ed Columnist
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 27, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged - NYTimes.com
What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a Tea Party terrorist. But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stacks credo rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, even rationalized Stacks crime. Its sad the incident in Texas happened, he said, but by the same token, its an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., its going to be a happy day for America. No one in Kings caucus condemned these remarks. Then again, what King euphemized as the incident took out just 1 of the 200 workers in the Austin building: Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran nearing his I.R.S. retirement. Had Stack the devastating weaponry and timing to match the death toll of 168 inflicted by Timothy McVeigh on a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, maybe a few of the congressmans peers would have cried foul.
It is not glib or inaccurate to invoke Oklahoma City in this context,