Dianne Capps' story should be a cautionary tale for all Tea Party activists. At the Asotin Tea party rally a couple of weeks ago, Capps made what she believed was a clever allusion to the movie "Lonesome Dove." She laughingly said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray should be hung. It was clumsy, but no reasonable person seeing the video could seriously believe Capps was actually trying to incite a lynch mob. But that's the impression that those who feel threatened by the Tea Party are trying to promote. If you have 10,000 Tea partiers at a demonstration and one person shows up with a sign that might be interpreted as racist, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post will all highlight that one sign and use it to smear the entire movement. It's not hard to imagine media-savvy leftists infiltrating a rally with just such a sign knowing full well the prominence it will be given. And so what happened to Dianne Capps should have been predictable/Michael Costello, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: What do you make of columnist Costello's point that Dianne Capps of the Tea Party movement was victimized by her own clumsy words about U.S. Sen. Patty Murray?