Posted on 07/28/2005 9:04:48 PM PDT by Nascardude
Hillary's cease-fire is, like, so not going to happen So Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) wants to make peace between centrist Democrats like those in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), who helped her husband win election, and then reelection, to the White House — the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Delano Roosevelt — and the world of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, the coalition of MoveOn.org, liberal bloggers, Michael Moore, Air America radio and others on the left who helped John Kerry win election to the White House.
Okay, strike that last part.
Anyway, Sen. Clinton has decided to step into the growing war between the Democratic Party’s center and its left.
“Now, I know the DLC has taken some shots from some within our party, and that it has returned fire, too,” she said Monday at the DLC’s conference in Columbus, Ohio.
“Well, I think it’s high time for a cease-fire. It’s time for all Democrats to work together based on the values we all share. ...”
It sounded nice, but if Mrs. Clinton actually believes she can make peace between the DLC and the VLWC — well, she’d better think again. As they say, that is, like, so not going to happen.
Just look at the reaction to Sen. Clinton’s speech from one of the most accomplished strategists of the VLWC, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos website.
“The poor, poor DLC forced to ‘return fire?’” Moulitsas wrote this week. “Please. The DLC has always been at the forefront of intra-party mud-slinging. They’re just finally being called on it, and suddenly it’s time for peace?”
No way, said Moulitsas. In addition to opposing centrist Democrats on a wide range of issues, Moulitsas and his Daily Kossacks are incensed that one prominent DLC type, Marshall Wittmann, had the temerity to suggest that the Daily Kos home base — Berkeley, Calif. — is a bit, uh, way out there on the left.
It seems Wittmann, writing in his own blog, disparaged those living in “the daily kosy (misspelling intended) confines of Berserkely.” The Berserkelyites, Wittmann suggested, are obsessed with ideological battles and puritan purges, while “here in Columbus constructive committed crusaders for progressivism are discussing ways to win back the hearts of the heartland.”
In the world of the VLWC, them’s fightin’ words. And Moulitsas is in a fightin’ mood.
Sen. Clinton “plans on working with the DLC to come up with some common party message yadda yadda yadda,” Moulitsas sniffed.
Well, she can forget about that, Moulitsas continued. The DLC has “smeared” not only progressives but an entire city — that would be Berkeley — and shouldn’t expect cooperation from anyone.
“Notice how he slams everyone in Berkeley?” Moulitsas said of Wittmann. “No good vital-center-seeking Democrats there! They’re all ‘berzerk,’ ha ha! I bet he called up his old friends at the Christian Coalition and his current friends at PNAC [the neoconservative Project for a New American Century] to share that gem. Cease-fire, DLC style!”
“It’s truly disappointing that this is the crap Hillary has signed on to,” Moulitsas concluded. “More of the failed corporatist bullshit that has cost our party so dearly in the last decade and a half.”
By the “last decade and a half,” Moulitsas apparently meant the period in which the DLC helped jettison the Democratic Party’s soft-on-crime, soft-on-defense, soft-on-everything image, allowing Bill Clinton to win the White House.
Now that’s some failed corporatist bullshit.
But that was long ago. These days, the activists of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy are fighting new battles.
Battles over causes like “media reform,” which means freeing the media from its corporate ownership and control.
Battles over causes like “election reform,” which means the continuing search for the mythical voter fraud in Ohio that gave George W. Bush his margin of victory in 2004.
Battles over causes like Wal-Mart, which means the left’s ongoing assault on the nation’s largest retailer.
They’re all electoral losers, but they greatly, greatly excite those in some circles of the left.
And now Hillary Rodham Clinton finds herself in the position of trying to straddle the worlds of the VLWC and Democratic centrists.
If you’re a Republican, you’ve got to be smiling about this.
A full-scale war among pro-Democratic activists has got to be good news for a GOP heading into 2008 with no clear successor to George W. Bush. It’s almost as delicious as the prospect of Jane Fonda going on a nationwide anti-war tour in a vegetable-oil-powered bus. The anti-war movement would never live it down. All its legitimate objections to the Iraq war would be drowned out by 35-year-old images of Fonda in Vietnam.
Whatever happens, the next Democratic presidential candidate probably can’t afford to be on the wrong side of the VLWC. The movement is simply too big, too rich and too organized to be ignored safely.
So let Sen. Clinton continue her calls for a cease-fire. It’s probably an impossible task — when one side has gone, well, Berserkely.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: byork@thehill.com
Like, the Democrat party is coming apart at the seams, for sure!!! :)
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And another way of say that is. "WHY DOES A LIB HAVE TO LOOK LIKE A CONSERVATIVE TO GET ELECTED??"
The 'Rat Party isn't a party anymore - it's a lunatic asylum.
Hehehehehe....
Never interfere when your enemies are in the process of destroying themselves.
Break out the popcorn and enjoy the show, instead.
Oh, I am. I am. I'm also smiling about this article. Well done!
MORONS...If they follow her, they deserve, extinction...She'll use them, like Bubba used Monica.
..already got an case (of popcorn. :) watching THE EVIL RED QUEEN "moving" to the right.
He doesn't sound happy. Heh heh heh........
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