Tim Profitt, the man who stomped on the head of the woman trying to hold up a sign outside the Paul / Conway debate last night, wants the woman he stomped to apologize to him.

I am not making that up.

When we spoke to Profitt, he asked that his face not appear on camera, but he wanted to defend himself. “She’s a professional at what she does,” Profitt said, referring to the MoveOn.org activist, “and I think when all the facts come out, I think people will see that she was the one that initiated the whole thing.” …

As for Profitt, he remains defiant. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Profitt said.

And when asked if he would apologize to Valle. “I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you,” Profitt said.

Yeah, that damned hippie, actually having the gall to come to a public pace and hold up a sign! She’s lucky nobody shot her dead. She should be grateful that Profitt stomped her head while she was pinned to the ground. She should man up and apologize for making him work through his horrific back pain to restrain her from exercising her free speech.

Okay, in case it’s not already blindingly obvious, nobody had any right to so much as touch the woman. The Paul supporters were already pushing the limits by blocking her from going where she wished. Just because she was going to do something they didn’t like did not give them license–but at least just standing in her way was inside the law, if somewhat dickish.

But when they laid a hand on her, that’s assault. Restraining her physically was way beyond what they had any right doing. Tackling her was asinine, and even more illegal.

But while the woman was on the ground, two large, grown men pinning her there, immobile and not even under any circumstances imaginable a threat to anyone, to put your foot over her head and neck and then stomp down–that is, as previously pointed out, crossing a major line. Back pain has nothing to do with it–even if there had been reason to pin her to the ground, she was pinned. Profitt’s actions were, to say the least, gratuitous.

But it should not be forgotten that touching the woman in any way, shape or form was also unacceptable. Plain and simple, you don’t touch someone who is doing nothing but exercising the same rights as anyone else. She had as much right to be there as the man who stomped her or the man who tackled her–another Rand campaign worker named Mike Pezzano–is also guilty of assault.

And the Rand Campaign is being classy about this. Although they eventually condemned the attack and disassociated themselves from the stomper (though not, as far as I can tell, from Pezzano–the condemnation and distancing was in reference only to one person, presumably Profitt), the campaign and Paul himself first attempted to not condemn what happened, but to instead blame the woman as much as the man who assaulted her. Paul, speaking himself on Fox (naturally) specifically about the incident, did not apologize or even condemn the act at first:

We want everybody to be civil. We want this campaign to be about issues. I will tell you that when we arrived, there was enormous passion on both sides. It really was something where you walk into a daze of lights flashing, people yelling and screaming, bumping up. And there was a bit of a crowd control problem. And I don’t want anybody, though, to be involved in things that aren’t civil. I think this should always be about the issues and is an unusual situation that so many people, so passionate on both sides jockeying back and forth and it wasn’t something that I liked or anybody liked about that situation. So I hope in the future it’s gonna be better.

“Both sides.” The men who tackled and stomped the woman were at fault, but so was the woman because she wanted to hold up a sign within sight of Paul. More right-wing false equivalency.

The thing is, this is not new. When I was going over the videos of the town halls last year for the previous post, I was reminded of what we saw then. Angry mobs of people screaming, chanting, shoving–acting like snotty, spoiled brats, unwilling to act in a civil manner, people whose only purpose was to snuff out the ability of the opposition to say anything without being shouted down.

In short, what happened yesterday was not exactly an isolated incident. We have the politicians themselves–not just people volunteering for their campaign–actually talking about “Second Amendment Remedies” and “violent uprisings” in the event they don’t win power at the ballot box.

These people are not about Democracy. They are not even about a Republic. They are about power, in their hands and nobody else’s. They are, in a word, thugs.