“I wish he was {expletive} dead.” That new era of unity didn’t last very long. A now-fired Nebraska Democratic party official links healthcare reform to last week’s Alexandria shooting, and there’s audio. Oddly enough, you have to dig down to local news to find the story:

An audio recording was posted on YouTube Thursday with Phil Montag, a technology chairman, voicing how glad he was that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., got shot last week at a GOP baseball practice. Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb confirmed to FOX 42 News Thursday it was really his voice.

“His whole job is to get people, convince Republicans to (expletive) kick people off (expletive) health care. I’m glad he got shot,” said Montag in the audio recording.

 …

“I wish he was (expletive) dead,” said Montag in the recording.

The official has since been terminated. Police and the DNC were notified. Can you imagine the national news media hurricane that would have ensued had a Republican official, even at the state level, said they wished Rep. Giffords had died after being shot by Jared Lee Loughner? Every Republican in the country would have been asked to denounce it. This? Meh, it’s a local news story.

This comes after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggests Republican rhetoric is to blame for violence. This comes after CBS News’ Scott Pelley mused that perhaps Scalise shot himself:

It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress, yesterday, was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.

Too many leaders, and political commentators, who set an example for us to follow, have led us into an abyss of violent rhetoric which, it should be no surprise, has led to violence.

Republicans have been held to this media double-standard for years where they are reflexively accused of violence that they had nothing to do with. The uneven treatment is even more unacceptable where Republicans are the victims of a crime. The FBI, in the meantime, is protesting like Baghdad Bob that this guy, who had a history of anti-Republican rhetoric and a list with the names of six Republican congressmen, did not set out to kill Republicans.