The shooting of a political leader was an atrocity waiting to happen... a near inevitability since gun-toting Tea Partiers, urged on by Sarah Palin and her sidekicks, stormed Congressional town hall meetings in summer 2009.

Emboldened in the 2010 election cycle, Palin, Sharron Angle and other Tea-Party Republican candidates used ever-more provocative words and imagery evoking gun violence, including:

• Gun cross-hairs imposed on specific Congressional districts and for specific elected leaders (see right)
• Threats of "second amendment remedies"
• Exhorting Americans to "reload" and to "aim for" Democrats

But over and over, history has proven that a political dog-whistle call to abstract violence isn't heard just by zealous acolytes, but also by the trigger-happy mentally unbalanced.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords prophetically observed when Sarah Palin published her "cross hairs" targets image:

"We are on Sarah Palin's targeted list. The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of the gunsight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action.

"Some of my colleagues have served 20, 30 years, and they have never seen it like this... "

Sarah Palin and Hotbed Arizona
Sarah Palin is popular in Arizona. In Tucson on March 26, 2010, the former Alaska governor appeared with Sen. John McCain to stir up Tea Party support for his reelection campaign.

Last month, eldest daughter Bristol Palin of "Dancing with the Stars" fame purchased a five-bedroom home in Maricopa, Arizona. Maricopa is 98 miles from the site of yesterday's murderous shooting spree at Rep. Gifford's outdoor town hall.

Southern Arizona is a hotbed of conservative political rage, often violent and much of it aimed at immigration reform supporters. When Rep. Giffords voted to support passage of health care reform, the glass doors of her Tucson office were smashed by gun fire.

When Rep. Raul Grijalva from the neighboring Congressional district voted for the bill, a bullet and shattered glass window were found in his home office. Giffords and Grijalva have been leading voices in support of immigration reform.

Seven-term Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik lamented after the shootings:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.

"And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Mix one unbalanced young white man with access to a semi-automatic weapon into the boiling stewpot of hotbed Arizona immigration fervor plus overt imagery and words by popular, charismatic political leaders of gun violence toward Democrats... and yesterday's murderous rampage in a Tucson strip mall seems almost inevitable.

Words matter. As Rep. Giffords said, "... there are consequences" to the action of depicting "the crosshairs of the gunsight over our district."

Gabrielle Giffords now lies in coma in a Tucson hospital, fighting for her life after an assassination attempt by Jared Loughner. Six women, men and a child are dead, including Federal Judge John Roll, who faced death threats over his 2009 ruling on a civil rights claim filed by immigrants against an Arizona rancher.

Leadership demands responsibility and concern for public safety. The provocative, dog-whistle use of gun violence imagery as campaign fodder by any political candidate is irresponsible and hateful.

Sarah Palin is an attractive and influential political provocateur, but her reckless disregard for public safety is contemptible and irresponsible. Had a Muslim American of Middle Eastern descent authored Palin's placard of rifle crosshairs over 20 Congressional districts, he or she would undoubtedly be dogged as a dangerous domestic terrorist.

Sarah Palin publicly gunned for Gabrielle Giffords, urging citizens to "reload" and "aim," and yesterday, Rep. Giffords was literally gunned down.

As a direct result, Sarah Palin's viability as a political candidate has been destroyed... and not a day too soon for rational U.S. political discourse.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Sarah. You and your ugly diatribe won't be missed.

Suggested Reading

• New York times - 9-Year-Old Victim Was a 9/11 Baby, a 'Face of Hope'
• Fox News - DHS Memo Suggests Shooter May Be Linked To Racist Organization
• Washington Post - Jared Loughner's college instructor: I was worried he might have a gun in class
• Daily Beast - The GOP's Long, Hot, Racist Summer

I Recommend

• The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting - Irony & Coincidence, Integrity & Foreshadowing
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Environmental Leader, Shot in Arizona
• House Delays Health Reform Repeal Vote After AZ Shooting

• Bluster, by the House's sneering, smarmy Republican majority leadership team that has spent the past few weeks preening for cameras, bragging about how they'll repeal health care reform, cut $100 billion from spending, and "defeat Obama" at every turn.

• Disappointment, by Tea Partiers when they realize that Republicans must govern as serious adults, not as childish ideologues hellbent on punishing the President and anyone in the country who is not wealthy.

  Disappointment also by liberal progressives when they realize that President Obama, desperate to be reelected in 2012, will push Senate Democrats to vote DINO ("Democrat in Name Only") on many, many policies and issues.

• Bipartisan achievement, on passing improved free trade deals, raising the U.S. debt ceiling, implementing much-needed cost controls into healthcare reform, and on support of the small business community. These synergistic accomplishments will strengthen the U.S. economy for hard-working Americans.

112th U.S. Senate
Democrats continue as the Senate majority party, although with six less seats than in the 111th Congress. In the 112th Senate, Democrats and liberal-leaning Independents hold 53 seats, while Republicans hold 47 seats.

While the new Senate Democratic Leadership includes a few senators in new roles, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada will continue to lead as Senate Majority Leader. Soft-spoken Sen. Reid has proven adept at supporting President Obama's agenda, and is a crafty, smart legislator. Although progressives would opt for a more overtly liberal chief, Reid is the right Democratic choice to pragmatically lead the Senate through the next two years.

112th House of Representatives
In the 112th House, Republicans will hold 242 seats, while Democrats will occupy 193 seats, a whopping drop of 62 seats for liberals. Republicans therefore take majority control of the House from Democrats, who were the House majority party for the last two terms.

Interestingly, most House Democrats who lost their 2010 elections were Blue Dog moderates, almost entirely white, and usually from the south or midwest. As a result, the body of remaining House Democrats is more liberal, more cohesive, and boasts a higher percentage of racial minority members than ever before.

Thus, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California is an appropriate choice to continue as House Democratic Leader: she is highly representative of Democrats in the 112th House, perhaps more representative than she when she served as House Speaker from 2007 to 2010.

The House Democratic Leadership for the 112th Congress is largely unchanged, which pleases most Democrats, as the 111th House led by Speaker Pelosi was one of the most prolific in U.S. history. Observed Time magazine last month:

"... the 111th Congress has been almost unprecedentedly prolific... Nancy Pelosi was flawless in getting the right number of votes for big ticket items, even as it became apparent that the Senate would stall or squash much of what she passed and a brutal midterm election season for many of her more conservative members loomed... "

Outlook for the 112th Congress
Today, on Day One of the 112th U.S. Congress, the outlook for the House is continued hyper-partisanship by both parties and endless Republican bluster, as Democratic members are more liberal and Republican members are more conservative than in any session in recent memory.

For better or worse, the nation's business will be debated and legislated mainly in the U.S. Senate, which includes a handful of newly elected ultra-conservative Republican members.

Sadly for Democrats, the Senate no longer includes many great, outspoken liberal lions stalwarts: Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who lost reelection in 2010, and the late Senators Robert Byrd of West Virgnia and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

And I predict that President Obama, who apparently thrives on adversity and competition, will work more comfortably with the 112th Congress than he ever did with the Democratic-led 111th Congress.

I fear that because of their laser focus on D.C. political-process wrangling, the Obama administration will continue to overlook issues and policies that most affect young adults. Without high-energy motivation, U.S. college students historically don't show up to vote. And that would be devastating to Obama's 2012 prospects, just as it was for Democrats in the November 2010 elections.

The student vote was crucial to Barack Obama's 2008 victory. Wrote the student newspaper of Carnegie-Mellon University about Obama's election:

"... students who cast a vote in Tuesday's presidential election (or mailed in an absentee ballot) were part of the largest ever group in their age bracket to support a single candidate, and the second largest youth voter movement in American history...

"Sixty-six percent of young voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age group. Young people preferred Obama to John McCain by a two-to-one ratio, according to a survey of young voters conducted by Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to youth voters...

" 'Young people absolutely made the difference in this election,' said Erika Johansson, a project coordinator for Declare Yourself. 'Without them, he would have lost the election.'... oting increased in comparison to the last election by particularly large margins in precincts on college campuses."

At the beginning at 2011, the issues students and young voters most care about have been largely ignored, or poorly handled, thus far by the Obama administration, including: Read More...

But for basketball aficionado Obama, winning the game in 2012 will require more than a last-gasp surge of fancy footwork, dazzling shooting, and a greedy, principle-free meltdown by the Republican competition.

To win the 2012 presidential race, President Obama must correct three fundamental flaws of his game play:

• Obama must connect more warmly and personally with everyday Americans, not just with political, academic, Wall Street and entertainment/sports elites, and

• Unemployment must decrease from well over 9% nationally, to less than 8%, at minimum. Additionally, the unemployment rate must drop substantially in certain fiscally-ailing battleground states as Nevada, Florida and Michigan.

• Obama must make demonstrable progress in reforming harsh U.S. immigration laws into more humanitarian policies for undocumented immigrants and their children who have lived and worked in the United States for years, even decades. For more, see Latino Voter Discontent Could Cost Obama 2012 Reelection

President Obama's string of important lame-duck session legislative victories is politically impressive, including:

• Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which requires gay military members to hide their sexual orientation, was finally repealed to the surprise of most pundits, and to the great joy of the liberal community

• Obama's tax cut package, which extended all of the Bush-era's rich tax cuts for two years, passed to the apparent approval of that prized demographic, political moderates
  
• The 9/11 Responders Health bill, which passed largely thanks to The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, to the profound relief of all Americans with a sense of morality

• The landmark START treaty, the renegotiated extension of a vital arms reduction treaty with Russia, which passed to widespread admiration by everyone except paranoid war hawks.

Also, the Obama administration has recently made remarkable, albeit unheralded, progress in promoting U.S. trade abroad, including thoughtful negotiation of a U.S.-South Korea trade agreement. The new pact will be the first U.S. trade agreement with a major Asian country, and the largest American free trade agreement enacted since 1993. The new 112th Congress will undoubtedly pass the trade pact early in 2011.

But as important and politically impressive as Obama's sharp-shooting results were just before the final buzzer of the 111th Congress, his sensational December 2010 moves do not guarantee final victory on November 6, 2012.

As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Debra J. Saunders wrote in The silliest stories of 2010:

"The Obama comeback. I'm not saying it won't happen; it well may. But can't the pundits who wrote about the Dems' shellacking a month ago at least wait until the next Congress convenes before they declare President Obama this year's political winner? Can't the chattering class wait until major polls show that Obama's approval rating is above 50 percent?"

Basketballer Obama's exciting scoring just before the 2010 half-time break is not necessarily a comeback that presages victory at the game's end in 2012. But it's an excellent start.

To help ensure that voters reelect him to a second term in the White House, player Obama must up his game considerably in the fundamentals of unemployment, immigration reform, and personal likability and warmth.

(Photos: Pete Souza/Getty Images)