"Clinton-hating wasn't pretty when it was The American
Spectator leading the pack, or Jerry Falwell hawking the Mena
Airport video "documentary" that purported to show Bill
Clinton was a drug smuggler and murderer. It's no prettier
watching the Democrats descend into the fever swamps of Bush-
hatred either."
And Crazy, too
Posted by: Dale Franks
The QandO Blog
Monday, June 20, 2005
Richard Baehr observes that Democrats appear to have collectively lost their minds.
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In the past few weeks, the obsessive hatred of President Bush by the left has led to some extraordinarily stupid and vicious comments by Illinois Senator Richard Durban and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, among others. Dean claimed that Republicans do not need to work (62 million trust fund loafers apparently voted for President Bush in November), and that Republicans are evil. Durban's comments were worse: that the treatment of a few detainees in Guantanamo was so abhorrent, that it brought back memories of the Nazis in the concentration camps, or Pol Pot's murderous Cambodian killers. Trivializing the holocaust is a mainstay theme of the left, from PETA's ad campaign comparing the holocaust to Americans eating chicken for dinner to the constant attempt by university professors to argue that Israel is behaving like the Nazis. Now Dick Durban has joined this slanderous troop.
Democrats, to judge by recent events, appear to be losing their collective minds in some form of shriek therapy. Being out of power may do that to a party used to having its way for many decades in Congress. But there is one other possible explanation for the apparent insanity. With so much money concentrated in the hands of some hard left advocates (think George Soros, Hollywood, trial lawyers, Internet millionaires and some union bosses), the Democrats may feel the need to feed the beast - to protect and cater to their hardcore base, so as to keep the money flowing into the political coffers for future campaigns. So the strategy is for Democrats to be completely over the top in their attacks - trashing Bush, America, our military, Republicans, and Israel, all of whom are targets of the activists, to keep the moveon.org and Dailykos crowds happy.
>>>
Clinton-hating wasn't pretty when it was The American Spectator leading the pack, or Jerry Falwell hawking the Mena Airport video "documentary" that purported to show Bill Clinton was a drug smuggler and murderer. It's no prettier watching the Democrats descend into the fever swamps of Bush-hatred either.
I don't believe we've been this polarized politically since the era prior to the Civil War. It's hard to believe that, only 20 years ago, Ronald Reagan could sit down with Tip O'Niell after the workday had ended, and they could joke, and enjoy each other's company, despite their political differences. Those days are long gone. It's inconceivable to imagine that Howard Dean would get together for drinks with Ken Mehlman. It's gotten too personal for that.
One of the reasons, I think, that so many of the statements from leaders of the Democratic Party have gotten so much more vicious and outrageous is that the Democrats are finally saying publicly what they've been saying privately to each other. And, increasingly, as they continue talking only to each other, the statements will not become any less unhinged from reality over time.
We're coming up on a very important "cusp period" of American history. I believe that the New Left that came up during the 60s, and is now taking leadership of the Democratic Party is pushing us toward a choice about whether we will abandon, to a large extent, the idea of American exceptionalism and the historical American public ideology that celebrates individual liberty over equality. They are offering us the choice to become, in essence, Europe; socialized and decadent. And if we choose that path, it will kill us just as surely as it's killing Europe.
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