WILL PALIN URGE HER SUPPORTERS TO COOL THE INCENDIARY RHETORIC?

Giffords tragedy could be a defining moment for Palin

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... some believe that incendiary rhetoric like Palin's bears some responsibility in the tragedy. Giffords herself had previously raised concerns about Palin's map: "The way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action."

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... Palin has become a focal point in the debate over heated rhetoric, and her response is likely to be a defining moment in her political career. One informal but telling sign of the potential stakes for Palin: According to Facebook, the top question dominating debate on the site over the weekend was "Is Sarah Palin to blame?"

So far, Palin's team, angry that the former governor is being linked to the shooting, has struggled to contain the controversy. On Saturday, the map citing Giffords was abruptly pulled from the SarahPAC site — even though it remained on Facebook. Rebecca Mansour, a Palin aide, said on Twitter that the map was pulled because it "was no longer relevant" since the 2010 campaign was over.

In a subsequent interview with GOP radio host Tammy Bruce, Mansour defended the map. They weren't gun sights but "surveyor's symbols," Bruce suggested, according to Alaska Dispatch, and Mansour agreed. But that contradicted Palin's own prior characterization of the map's symbol as a "'bullseye' icon."

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Palin is hardly the first politician to use gun or military imagery in campaigning. As the Palin's supporters on the right noted, even President Obama has used similar metaphors, ...

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But the bigger question is whether Palin will seek to passionately defend her comments and political ground — as she has been known to do during past controversies — or whether she, like other political figures in recent days, will urge her supporters to cool the rhetoric.

As Politico's Jonathan Martin says: "Whether she defends, explains or even responds at all to the intense criticism of her brand of confrontational politics could well determine her trajectory on the national scene — and it's likely to reveal the scope of her ambitions as well."