The Other McCain

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UPDATE: New Rand Paul Statement Condemns Kentucky Head-Stomping UPDATE: Stomper Tim Profitt Identified, Apologizes, Banned by Paul Campaign

Posted on | October 26, 2010 | 18 Comments

Official statement:

“The Paul for Senate campaign is extremely disappointed in, and condemns the actions of a supporter last night outside the KET debate. Whatever the perceived provocation, any level of aggression or violence is deplorable, and will not be tolerated by our campaign. The Paul campaign has disassociated itself from the volunteer who took part in this incident, and once again urges all activists — on both sides — to remember that their political passions should never manifest themselves in physical altercations of any kind.”

We’re still awaiting law enforcement reports of (rumored) arrests in the incident, but note this New York Times account:

Lexington police are searching for the suspects. Sherelle Roberts, a public information officer with the Lexington police, said they were looking for “at least two men, one who grabbed her and threw her to the ground, and one who stepped on her head.” She said they would be charged with assault. . . .
[B]y the time the police got to the site of the incident, Ms. Roberts said, the suspects had slipped away and disappeared into the crowd.
“Our search is focused locally, but if someone in Nebraska or New York knows who these men are, give us a call,” Ms. Roberts said. The number to call, she said, is (859) 425-2006.
The protestor, Lauren Valle, 23, from New York City, is a volunteer for MoveOn.org and was trying to give Mr. Paul a satiric antibusiness “award” and have her picture taken with him when he emerged from his car to go into the debate.
Ms. Valle was described as having pushed her way forward when the two men grabbed her, yanked a blonde wig off her head and then shoved her to the ground. An unidentified man is heard yelling, “Get the police out here! Get the cops.”

In other words, police weren’t in the immediate vicinity where this altercation took place — Valle may have been trying to avoid police scrutiny — but once the melee began, somebody had the good sense to call the cops.

I’m half tempted to drive to Kentucky myself. Wouldn’t be the first time. What do the readers say?

UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, we find that at least one left-wing blogger has used the term “Brownshirts.”

Wait: Libertarian fascists?

Never mind that nonsense. My plan for the final week before Nov. 2 had been to drive to Florida to cover the triumphs of Allen West and Marco Rubio. But I suppose a detour through Kentucky is feasible, if readers wish to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund.

UPDATE II: A liberal blog says the man who did the stomp on Valle was Tim Profitt, a Bourbon County coordinator for the Rand Paul campaign, who signed a full-page ad endorsing Paul.

If true, that’s gonna leave a mark.

UPDATE III: Tim Profitt has admitted his role and apologized in a statement to the Associated Press:

Paul supporter Tim Profitt said video of the scuffle made it appear worse than it was and he chided police for not stepping in. Lauren Valle, the 23-year-old activist with the group MoveOn.org, said her face was swollen and her neck and shoulder were sore after she was wrestled to the ground by Paul supporters Monday night when she tried to give the candidate an “employee of the month” award.
Valle was roughed up before the debate between Paul and Democrat Jack Conway. The race is one of the most closely watched and hotly contested in the midterm elections.
“I’m sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand’s safety,” Profitt told The Associated Press.
Paul’s campaign dropped Profitt as campaign coordinator in Bourbon County in central Kentucky and banned him from future events.
Profitt said he was interviewed by a Lexington police detective Tuesday, but that he had not been charged.
“A friend of mine went up to three policeman before Rand got there, and told them about the girl who was standing there with that wig on and that she was getting ready to do something,” Profitt said. “The policemen looked at him and said that’s not our job.”

Great: Preventing a potentially violent incident is “not our job,” say the police, thus permitting a situation where the Left now gets to hurl “Brownshirt” slurs at libertarians.

Heinrich Schliemann would need years to excavate the layers of irony.

UPDATE IV: Explaining my very first reactions to this incident:

  • Make a joke.  Relieve the tension with humor. Many people find this habit of mine obnoxious. Neverthless, Shakespeare always included at least one comic scene in his tragedies.
  • Find a source. I linked Lisa Graas, who is (a) in Kentucky, and (b) fought her own battles with the Paulistas during the GOP primary campaign.
  • Acknowledge ambiguity. “I’m hesitant to jump to conclusions about what actually happened in this kind of made-for-TV publicity stunt.” When such an event is first reported, it can be very tempting to make an instantaneous judgment based on partial information. But I was not even sure that the Rand Paul supporters were legit. Still less did I presume to know what led up to the incident.

And once the story was updated to report that police were investigating, I said: “OK, so a police report has been filed, and the people involved in the incident are now suspects in an assault case. . . . Louisville police are now investigating the incident. The man who stomped Valle will be identified, and we’ll see how the story develops in coming days.”

It is not my habit to explain why I do what I do or why I write what I write. But Eric Boehlert of Media Matters and certain other left-wing nuisances have tried to portray me as somehow inciting or endorsing the actions of The Kentucky Stomper.

Once you get past my sarcastic humor, however, you see that my treatment of the incident was responsible, especially in urging that we wait to “see how the story develops.” Perhaps I should try harder to resist my instinctive sarcasm.

Send the Punchline to Glenn Beck!

Or maybe not.

UPDATE V: Of course, no moonbat ever accepts responsibility:  “I wasn’t running at the candidate, I was simply trying to escape those evil Nazi teabaggers!”

Look: I accept complete responsibility for my jokes. Nobody forced me to write obnoxious sarcasm, and I sincerely apologize for anyone injured by my tasteless humor. So if you can offer evidence that you suffered injury due to my joke, please let me know.

Reader contributions to the Sarcasm Defense Fund are sincerely appreciated, and I wish to express gratitude to Angela T. in Mississippi, Michael B. in Pennsylvania, Robert M. in Texas, Michael M. in New York and Jeff in Walla Walla for their recent contributions. Also, thanks to the “secret foreign donor” — in Canada! — who mailed a check while I was in Massachusetts.

UPDATE VI: Donald Douglas likes the Squeaky Fromme analogy. Allow me to point out that such is the Left’s tolerance of free speech that, when Ann Coulter gave a speech in Las Vegas in March, security was so tight that I nearly got thrown out by two cops who frisked me for weapons.

Category: Crime, Election, Kentucky, Senate

Comments

18 Responses to “UPDATE: New Rand Paul Statement Condemns Kentucky Head-Stomping UPDATE: Stomper Tim Profitt Identified, Apologizes, Banned by Paul Campaign”

  1. Largebill
    October 26th, 2010 @ 6:29 pm

    Well, Adjoran beat me to this point, but let me second his comment. In no way am I advocating violence or approving how rough the guy was with the Move-on clown. Having said that, it was not a stomp. The first picture I saw looked awful. However, watching the video it is obvious he just push down on her shoulder once or twice. If he had stomped on her head, as some alleged, she would not have gotten back up.

    I do have to disagree with his assessment that Paul threw the guy under the bus. Nope. The guy screwed up and he knows it. The campaign can’t self-destruct over a supporter.

  2. Dave C
    October 26th, 2010 @ 7:55 pm

    If I was writing the headline: “Person in disguise charges candidate with unknown object in her hand.”

    Yeah, stole it from Rush this afternoon.

    It was worth repeating.

  3. Svoracek
    October 28th, 2010 @ 12:34 am

    What, we, as humans have come to is incredibly upsetting to watch. Weither or not the man hurt the women is not my debate. Rather I debate why, in our own counrty- a GREAT country, we must be inhuman to our brothers/sisters. Whichever a person believes, we all stem from the same seed that planted the tree (so to speak). We a humans with this increadable ability to learn, and educate ourselves and others our being held back by our own misguided inhumanity toward eachother. When will it stop? It weakens my heart everytime I here of these negitive things happening which are in our control to end.