In April 2009, the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security
released a report warning that this would happen. “Rightwing Extremism:
Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” warned that “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.” It also predicted that the possibility of new gun restrictions and the return of “military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities” might mean “emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.” The report called this convergence of factors the “most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”
Conservatives
went ballistic.
Michelle Malkin blasted it as “one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS.” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)
said the administration was “awfully willing to paint law-abiding Americans, including war veterans, as ‘extremists.’” Then-Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) — the top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs committee at the time — called it “
inconceivable” that some veterans could pose a threat.
Most notably, then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
attacked Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano for releasing the report at all. “[T]he Secretary of Homeland Security owes the American people an explanation for why… her own Department is using [‘terrorist’] to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation,” he demanded.