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Michelle Malkin: Welcome to the Democratic Party’s Civil War
It seems like only yesterday the Washington establishment had proclaimed the death of the Republican Party. Pundits churned out public autopsy reports faster than the Los Angeles County medical examiner. Liberals gloated over the supposedly irreparable fissures between right-wing populists and Beltway Republican elites. Conservatism, we were told, was suffering brain death and heart failure. My, how quickly things — ahem — change.
Social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, the Republican leadership, Sarah Palin’s heartland supporters, conservative think-tank intellectuals, D.C. and Manhattan conservatives, Big Business and small-business conservatives, Joe the Plumber conservatives, and every stripe and flavor of conservative in between are all united against the Democrats’ proposed government takeover of health care. All.
It’s the left, not the right, cracking up. It’s the party donkey, not the elephant, now in a rabies-crazed frenzy. Funny, though, how internecine rancor on the right always puts conservatism in its last, final, permanent death throes (again and again), but internecine warfare on the left is merely a matter of healthy, principled disagreement.
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean went on the “YEARRGGH!”-path again — dressed in Tea Party-esque drag — and exhorted the majority to “Kill the Bill” and start over with a public option. White House senior adviser David Axelrod — echoing criticism of Dean more commonly heard on the right — promptly pronounced the Vermont liberal’s rantings “insane.” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed Dean as irrational. And this was just the left-wing Punch and Judy show preview.
“Progressive” blogger and Hollywood producer Jane Hamsher declared war on Sen. Joe Lieberman’s wife, Haddasah, to punish him for his opposition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s massive Medicare expansion “buy-in” plan. Best known for disseminating an online image of Lieberman in blackface to support failed liberal challenger Ned Lamont in 2006, and for issuing a death threat to conservative author Kate O’Beirne, Hamsher demanded that the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation fire Haddasah Lieberman from her role as a “global ambassador.”
“Progressive” documentarian Michael Moore one-upped Hamsher’s attack by threatening to boycott the entire state of Connecticut until it started a recall of Lieberman. “People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we’ll boycott your state,” Moore wrote on his Twitter account. Recalls, alas, are unconstitutional in Connecticut. Not that “progressives” would ever let any state or federal constitution get in the way of a bloody ideological vendetta.
President Barack Obama’s BFF and most frequent visitor, SEIU president Andy Stern, threw Obama’s own words back at him in a cri de couer to Big Labor’s brothers and sisters: “President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign. His call of ‘Yes We Can’ was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself.”
And moving toward the middle, moderate Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is having his own Joe Wilson moment. On Thursday, he announced he couldn’t support his colleagues’ abortion language “compromise,” which he said failed to restrict government funding for abortion services. By Saturday, however, he was fully back in the Democratic Party fold, however.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are blaming Senate Democrats and the White House for the legislative meltdown. The Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief himself has come under fire. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., carped that “the Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines.” Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., accused the White House of selling out to the insurance industry.
It all feels very 1990s — the period of 1992 to 1994, specifically — when liberals smugly declared the premature death of the Republican Party only to be walloped by the midterm conservative backlash. The ruling majority got greedy, overreached and lost touch with average Americans. With the support of the public, Republicans united to slay President Bill Clinton’s stimulus monstrosity and Hillary Clinton’s health-care monstrosity. And the core differences between the parties could not have been clearer.
Then, as now, Republican strategists flirted with hapless “rebranding” programs in the wake of failed presidential campaigns. They bought into the public autopsy reports of their friends in New York City media green rooms and Georgetown parlors.
Then, as now, it took a grassroots conservative groundswell to remind the Beltway bubble boys and girls that adhering to the core principles of fiscal conservatism — lower taxes, less government, more freedom — was the key to party unification and would open the door once again to power.
And then, as now, conservative talk radio helped galvanize the revolt against a Democrat-spearheaded attempt at a government health-care takeover. Local Seattle talk-show host Kirby Wilbur’s huge protest against Hillary Clinton’s visit in July 1994 was the turning point. National media outlets could not ignore the public booing of the first lady in the liberal Emerald City and the legislative doom it portended.
One major difference now is the vast proliferation of alternative media — through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Fox News — that has facilitated the spread of information about Democrats’ big-government designs and given rise to Tea Party activism. The right’s ability to change the narrative is greater than ever. The Democratic crackup reminds us that there are no faits accomplis in politics. Political coroners, take heed.
— Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Click here for more information. She can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
» wrote on 12.21.09 @ 05:50 AM
This whole “opinion” is abusive, defamatory and libelous attacks, and vulgar and discriminatory language.
» wrote on 12.21.09 @ 08:06 AM
Please provide an example of “abusive, defamatory and libelous attacks, and vulgar and discriminatory language”, Ron because I don’t see any. Or is it that you just have a problem with Michelle because she doesn’t see the world the way you don’t?
» wrote on 12.21.09 @ 09:07 AM
Dear Realist,
Use your own name and I will answer you.
Michelle does.
» wrote on 12.24.09 @ 10:42 PM
Ron Dexter cannot honestly answer your question, so he uses one of the left’s favorite tactics, distraction
» wrote on 12.27.09 @ 03:35 PM
I’ve gotta say that most of the things I read that Ron Dexter writes about Michelle Malkin is abusive, defamatory, libelous, vulgar and/or discriminatory. How’s that for the pot calling the kettle black?
» wrote on 12.28.09 @ 11:12 AM
Ron Dexter sounds very much like Rob Egenolf. Both claim to be war vets and both are huge DNC contributors (Robby is an operative, so be careful around this guy). They both possess a demonstrated quality for venting angry epithets at other commenters or anyone not a lefty loony liberal. They are very fun to play with and it is really easy to spin them up and get under their skin and I have done both of them very well.
To Robby and Ronny, please try not to get so angry (yeah like I should listen to my own advice, huh?). We on the right unlike you, do not hate you for your ideology. Yes we hate your ideology for sure. It is one of the most destructive ideologies every concocted by human beings purely for its subtleness. It is a sneaky ideology that promises safety, security and a whacky form of liberal “fairness” where fairness is measured by how equally wealth is distributed, not created. But it is to politics what morphine is to pain. It never cures the cause of the pain and indeed because it masks the pain usually makes the underlying cause worse. And then there is the dependency of course.
When the left realizes it has hitched itself to a mental disorder rather than a legitimate form of politics then we might see an improvement in attitudes and the political landscape as a whole.
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