"Oddballs and misfits" are part of politics, says state Republican Chairman Chris Healy.
"When I worked for Congressman Gary Franks in the early 1990's, there was a fellow from Newtown who would write and call all the time about his theories on the International Monetary Fund, the Notch Babies and currency manipulation," Healy writes on his blog, Make Blue Red.
More recently, Linda McMahon had a visitor who would stop by her West Hartford headquarters shouting profanities "and other incoherent rantings against the candidate,'' Healy said.
Most of the time, Healy notes, these folks are merely harmless pests, annoyances that are part of a free and open society. "The risks of a representative democracy are of little solace here,'' he writes. "But it is the way it is as long as we treasure freedom of speech and assemble. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, an exercise in civics turned into an afternoon of terror."
"In the meantime,'' he concludes, "say a prayer tonight for Giffords and the rest of those who fell on an afternoon in Tucson doing their jobs."