Holding an Arizona flag emblazoned with a snake and the words “Bite Me,” Arthur Olivas, 73, a native Phoenix resident, suggested the gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was a liberal extremist who turned on one of his own.
“The tea party does not put out an any outlandish or rhetorical threats to anybody or any party,” said Olivas, leader of the Hispanic American Latino Legal Tea Party Patriots. “That assassination attempt – it was one of their own people who did that. She [Gabrille Giffords] was a Republican-turned-Democrat with a lot of Republican ideals that did not sit well with many of these Democratic radicals.”