EDITORIAL: Incendiary political rhetoric is a bipartisan problem

The brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband last week has triggered the usual partisan recriminations. Perhaps both sides need to check the mirror.

Paul Pelosi, 82, remains hospitalized from injuries he suffered after he fought with an intruder who broke into the couple’s San Francisco home. Police arrested 42-year-old David DePape and charged him with a number of crimes, including attempted homicide. The suspect appears to be mentally ill and had apparently been attracted to right-wing conspiracy theories after previously being “more affiliated with left-leaning causes,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In response, many Democrats blamed Republicans for the attack, arguing their dangerous discourse encourages violence. Some went so far as to blame Donald Trump for promoting “MAGA extremism.”

But to imply that political violence is the exclusive domain of GOP fanaticism is to willfully ignore the facts. The names Rand Paul and Steve Scalise and the city of Portland, Oregon, come to mind.

The United States — founded on revolution and preserved by civil war — has a long history of political violence, including the assassination of four presidents. But extremism has noticeably increased in recent decades.