So this is how the Palin camp intends to play their obvious culpability in the national race to up the dangerous rhetoric for cheap political points, which cost six people their lives so far:
"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you'd see on maps," said Rebecca Mansour on the Tammy Bruce radio show. Moreover, there was "nothing irresponsible" about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday's shooting is "obscene" and "appalling."
Unfortunately for Palin, people aren't anywhere near stupid enough to buy the explanation. "Like you see on a map"?? I have a lot of maps, and I've never seen gun-scope crosshairs on them. Next time maybe Camp Palin will use a miniature Suunto compass if they want to claim they were merely suggesting people in a certain Congress member's district go geocaching. And they won't use words like "It's time to take a stand."
No, this was a gun image, and their pathetic explanations won't change the fact that the infamous SarahPac map has been reported universally as containing gun scope crosshairs. Far too little, way too late. It does confirm what we all expected: there will be ZERO contrition or responsibility coming from Palin or any of the other players in the major republican effort to mine fear for votes. It's too awful for them to admit to, and at least in Palin's case, her DNA doesn't permit her to explain anything except through some tale of victimization by the left. At most, she might resort to saying Democrats or the "lame-stream media" made her use gun images. But these people won't convict themselves. That's up to us.
Update [2011-1-9 11:58:16 by el fuego]: Culled from the comments. This isn't going to help their case.