Losers Weepers

The Conning Tower ^ | Jan. 13, 2004 | Trentino

[Davis]

The shrill denunciations have abated. Jane Smiley's public tantrum, her indictment of 60,000,000 of her countrymen for the crime of electing George W. Bush is largely forgotten. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Clinton family counselor called to active duty during Monica-gate was able to rally only about 400 souls to protest Mr. Bush's certification by the Electoral College. Senator Barbara Boxer's outpouring of tears at the same event was more ceremonial than effective.

Still, the Left hasn't recovered from its defeat last November following their defeats in November two and four years ago. Small wonder, since the usual excuses availeth not.

The Left's message wasn't squelched for lack of funding. Funding of the two parties and their 527 allies was about the same.

The Left's message wasn't blocked by a Conservative media monopoly. To the contrary, as Evan Thomas, Jr., Newsweek executive estimated that the media gave a 15 point advantage to the Democrats. All this without counting the considerable contribution of Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks.

The Dems' failure on November 2 cannot be blamed on a flawed candidate. Sen. Kerry won the nomination fair and square, didn't he? beating out such other Democratic notables as Dennis Kucinich, Dr. Howard Dean, Rev. Al Sharpton, and William Jennings Bryan.

Mr. Kerry was handsome, athletic—a splendid figure whether wearing his bicycle-racing suit, his windsurfing wet suit, or his ermine robes while tossing baked beans to the adoring throngs at his Beacon Hill mansion. He was intelligent, nuanced, don't you know, an agile gent who could find a foothold on every side of any question without noticeable strain of his vast cognitive apparatus. And he was a war hero, to boot.

True, Kerry wasn't perfect. But then, neither was his Republican opponent, the evil, illiterate moron presiding over an unpopular war and a faltering economy.

Since under these entirely favorable circumstances, the Dems still lost decisively (though not overwhelmingly), you can see why loyal Blue-staters are so upset that they're crying in public, consulting grief counselors and other psychic defectives, contemplating secession, and checking out the availability of Canadian residency permits. Mighty discouraging when your hated adversary absorbs your best shot and then proceeds to beat the crap out of you.

•••

There had been intimations on the Left at least two years ago that factors other than funding and candidate/marketing were involved. It was then that Frank Rich, former play boy, now Assistant Dean of the Jayson Blair J School on West 43rd Street, demanded that the Democratic Party present a "unified vision" for consideration by the electorate. Alas, Mr. Rich did not specify just what that vision ought to be.

Peter Beinart, The New Republic editor noted recently that despite Rich's advice, the Left was fractured into a grassroots majority stalled at September 10, 2001 and a minority having a passing acquaintance with reality. The change advocated by Beinart was for the minority to cast out the majority. He detected no other doctrinal failure on the Left.

A year-and-a-half ago, Bill Moyers revealed that he had penetrated the secret of Conservative electoral success. They had deluded the public, and supine Democrats had allowed "...a resurgent conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system..."

Yeah, by selling the working class on the "theology of markets as a transcendental belief system" Republicans have been able to capture the White House and add to their majorities in the House and Senate. Mr. Moyers and others on the Left display a theological, transcendental fondness for collectivism. They yearn for the return of an earlier time when collectivism was cool and Marxism a faith beyond intellectual challenge.

They still can't grasp that we Conservatives prefer free markets and free men and free speech and a free press, too, but not because we worship the "wisdom of the market."

We know that in a free market for speech, for instance, stupid and vicious and yes, hateful things will be published. We are likewise aware that in a free market for ideas, rank and rotten theological, transcendental (even quadrilateral) notions will pass as profundities, for example, Mr. Moyers's polysyllabic bleating.

For very down-to-earth reasons, for sensible, rational reasons, we prefer freedom. We prefer peaceful consent and exchange to the system of ever expanding coercion the Left dogmatically promotes and whose candidates' defeat at the polls sends them into a blue funk.

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[rllngrk33]

Mighty discouraging when your hated adversary absorbs your best shot and then proceeds to beat the crap out of you.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!