A really shocking moment from CNN's piece on the attack that left Senator Rand Paul with serious injuries.
"He's a deep believer in his own thoughts," Skaggs said. "And he believes his own thoughts are right -- and they are right 100% of the time."
That is the same, sometimes cantankerous, attitude that Paul displayed in Washington during fights over civil liberties, health care and taxes.
"Can you imagine living next door to that guy?" said one congressional colleague who has regularly tangled with Paul over policy. "I'm pulling for the neighbor."
The "colleague" goes unnamed, but he's described as a "congressional colleague". So presumably he's a Senator. And probably a Dem.
The CNN story, which tries to find excuses for the attack, is bad enough. But it just casually mentions that a Senator is cheering on the attacker of a colleague. If the party identification were reversed, then there would be massive outrage. And that massive outrage would be right.
Maybe we can't agree on much, but at this point we can't agree on not violently assaulting people. And that is a really bad sign.
A Bernie Sanders supporter opening fire on Republicans at baseball practice was passed off as apolitical. Now we've got another violent attack. And whether or not the attack was political, a Senator reacting like this is political as hell.
We get a lot of lectures about divisiveness from the media. But this is the reality of that divisiveness.