The wife of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Kelley Paul, has had to watch as her husband survived a shooting, then help him as he recovered from an attack that broke his bones.
Now she’s gripped with constant worry as she fears for her husband. In an open letter released through CNN, Paul describes how fearful she is now that her home address has been released to the public, as well as her husband’s cell phone number:
It’s nine o’clock at night, and as I watch out the window, a sheriff’s car slowly drives past my home. I am grateful that they have offered to do extra patrols, as someone just posted our home address, and Rand’s cell number, on the internet — all part of a broader effort to intimidate and threaten Republican members of Congress and their families. I now keep a loaded gun by my bed. Our security systems have had to be expanded. I have never felt this way in my life.
Paul goes on to describe the last 18 months of her family’s life as they “experienced violence and threats of violence at a horrifying level,” as well as the insults she had seen thrown at her husband the left seemed to mock the pain Rand had gone through after his attack:
Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, recently joked about it in a speech. MSNBC commentator Kasie Hunt laughingly said on air that Rand’s assault was one of her “favorite stories.” Cher, Bette Midler, and others have lauded his attacker on Twitter. I hope that these women never have to watch someone they love struggle to move or even breathe for months on end.
Paul notes that recently, her husband was accosted in an airport by an activist mob who attempted to block his path, and got uncomfortably close to him. Her anger for this event wasn’t just with the activists, however, as she called out New Jersey Senator Cory Booker for his part in encouraging these things to happen:
Earlier this week, Rand was besieged in the airport by activists “getting up in his face,” as you, Senator Booker, encouraged them to do a few months ago. Preventing someone from moving forward, thrusting your middle finger in their face, screaming vitriol — is this the way to express concern or enact change? Or does it only incite unstable people to violence, making them feel that assaulting a person is somehow politically justifiable?
Attempting to appeal to Booker’s friendship with Rand, Paul tasked Booker with retracting his statement about confront politicians and getting in their faces in order to begin discouraging mobs from gathering and confronting their political opponents, which ratchets up the chances that something very foul might happen:
Senator Booker, Rand has worked with you to co-sponsor criminal justice reform bills. He respects you, and so do I. I would call on you to retract your statement. I would call on you to condemn violence, the leaking of elected officials’ personal addresses (our address was leaked from a Senate directory given only to senators), and the intimidation and threats that are being hurled at them and their families.
It’s easy for us to sit back and read this, but the fear and anxiety some politicians must feel in a time when mob tactics and borderline violence are encouraged is something many of us can’t relate to. For Kelley Paul, after everything her husband has been through, she must fear for him every time he steps out of the front door.
As I’ve written previously, members of the left have to begin denouncing these mob tactics when they see them. They cannot encourage this kind of dangerous mentality. At some point in time, someone is going to take it too far, and someone is going to get hurt. If that does happen, only politicians on the left will have themselves to blame.
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