http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/02/capuano_urged_u.htmlBy Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
US Representative Michael E. Capuano, who decried violent political rhetoric after last month’s shooting of his Democratic colleague, Gabrielle Giffords, used some belligerent language of his own at a union rally in Boston yesterday.
"Every once in a while you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Capuano told about 1,000 union workers who were protesting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at a raucous rally outside the State House.
The union crowd greeted Capuano’s exhortation with cheers, whistles and applause.
But his remark raised eyebrows elsewhere because Capuano was among the lawmakers who were calling for cooler political rhetoric after Giffords was shot in the head in a rampage that killed six other people in Tucson last month.
At the time, Capuano had said the shooting was probably inevitable because of the nation's increasingly heated political rhetoric.
“Many of us were afraid for a long time that something like this would happen, with the level or the tone of the discourse over the last several years," Capuano told WGBH on Jan. 22. "It's gotten violent and personal.”
The Somerville Democrat echoed that sentiment in a Jan. 9 interview with the Globe.
“Everybody knows the last couple of years there’s been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse,” he said. “If nothing else good comes out of this, I’m hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things.’’
Capuano ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate last year and is considering a run against Republican Scott Brown in 2012.