Five years ago, a crazed gunman inspired by the strident ramblings of Sen. Bernie Sanders and his leftist ilk decided to take public policy change into his own hands.
James Hodgkinson, a Sanders campaign volunteer, traveled from Illinois to Alexandria, Virginia, and lived out of his van and a local YMCA until he was able to put his plan into action. On June 14, 2017, he showed up at the Republicans’ practice for the annual congressional baseball game and opened fire, seriously wounding a congressional staffer, two Capitol Police officers, a congressional lobbyist and Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise, then the House Majority Whip.
According to The New York Times, Scalise was forced to crawl toward the outfield after being shot in the hip until the gunfire subsided. He was in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital, although he made a full recovery.
On the five-year anniversary of the tragic event, a climate activism group with links to George Soros wants to turn the bipartisan Congressional Baseball Game into a protest against Republican agenda items and Democrats unwilling to do what’s necessary to stop them. Not that they mention that they’re using the same event Hodgkinson chose to do what he believed was necessary to stop the GOP. Don’t expect this group to do so, either.
For one, they’d be pilloried into the next century for exploiting the shooting. For another, they don’t even have to mention it. As the archetypal mafia protection-racket enforcer might say, it’d be a shame if something were to … disrupt the game. You know full well what the implication is, but it doesn’t behoove anyone to spell it out.
(At The Western Journal, we’ve spotlighted the mob violence the left has tacitly approved of, both during the long, hot summer of 2020 and the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. We’ll keep documenting how the left refuses to disavow the hooliganry its base indulges in. You can help us by subscribing.)
The group behind the protest of this year’s game, the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday, is a far-left climate activism group called Now or Never.
The Free Beacon reported that the group “unveiled a three-part plan that starts with shutting down the annual game to force action from Democratic leaders, who the group says are guilty of refusing ‘to act boldly’ on issues like climate change, abortion and voting rights ‘for fear it will be too ‘polarizing.’”
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“On July 28th, we will converge en masse on the Congressional Baseball Game. If our politicians have failed to deliver, we will shut it down,” a statement on the group’s website reads.
“We will not stand by, watching them play games while the world burns. Everything we love is at stake. Our safety, our future, our one and only home. It’s time to leave everything on the field.”
The three-part plan also includes two other occasions on which they’ll be harassing Democrats.
The group said that if they “don’t have strong climate legislation by August 5” — the last working day that the Senate will be in session — they’ll harass the Dems when they return to their home states. Finally, if they don’t get that legislation by Sept. 30 — the final working day before a recess that lasts until the November midterms — they say they’ll “organize a highly disruptive, mass direct action that fundamentally disrupts business-as-usual in DC.”
Minatory as those may sound, they have nothing on an implied threat that involves the Congressional Baseball Game. While Now or Never’s putative targets are Democrats, they certainly can’t control fringe elements inspired by their action — and, either way, a repeat of the Scalise assassination attempt re-enacted on any legislator, regardless of party, would be reprehensible.
And just look who’s the man behind the curtain, yet again: “Now or Never’s parent organization, the Action Network, is located at the same address as a group funded by liberal multibillionaire George Soros,” the Free Beacon reported.
This comes after one of the closest calls in terms of a political assassination in many a year.
In early June, a California man armed with numerous deadly weapons, including a firearm, was arrested near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Nicholas John Roske, 26, told police he was “upset” after a leaked Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade and “stated that he began thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided that he would kill the Supreme Court Justice.” He’s been charged with attempted murder in the case.
Roske’s arrest came after numerous groups posted the home addresses of Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices — including Kavanaugh — online, all in the name of “protest.” They didn’t tell Roske to do anything as drastic as what he’s accused of doing, of course. That didn’t stop them from protesting outside Kavanaugh’s house the next night as if nothing had happened.
“Hey Hey, ho ho! The rapist has got to go!”
Tonight activists continued to march outside of Kavanaugh’s house.
Higher police presence after this morning’s unrelated incident where an armed man called police on himself here and was charged with attempted murder of the Justice. pic.twitter.com/TDRcX3A3ve
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) June 9, 2022
And now, less than two months later, Now or Never is planning a protest that can charitably be described as vigorously disruptive — at an event that, five years prior, nearly led to the highest-profile assassination of a sitting American politician in decades. And Dems are completely quiet.
That’s just a coincidence, though. Nice baseball game you’ve got going there, Congress. Shame if anything were to … happen to it.
