Oh, right. Dems are regular sweethearts.
Posted on 07/04/2003 5:08:13 PM PDT by Pokey78
Some time very soon, President George Bush is expected to sign a $400 billion bill adding a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare -- and he is sure to be flanked not only by Republicans but also by Democrats, perhaps including that arch-liberal, Senator Ted Kennedy. It's an image that is apt to drive former President Bill Clinton around the bend. The Democrats have, in effect, agreed to hand to Bush precisely the kind of politically precious legislative victory on health care that the Republicans went to any lengths to deny to Clinton back in 1994. Could it be that the Democrats are constitutionally incapable of acting as single-mindedly -- as ruthlessly, as unfairly -- as the Republicans? If so, is this the kind of Christian virtue that leads to being eaten by lions?
The difference between the two parties is not simply ideological. It is also temperamental. For all the talk about the tainted legitimacy of Bush's Supreme Court-inflected victory in the 2000 election, the Democrats have never sought to discredit Bush's presidency. Clinton, on the other hand, won fair and square, but many Republicans treated him as an illegitimate figure from the outset, and from the time of the 1994 election, which brought the Republicans to power in both houses and made Newt Gingrich speaker of the House, the G.O.P. practiced a politics of holy war that culminated in the impeachment proceedings.
Republicans have been bitterly complaining recently about the filibusters Democrats have mounted to block two of the president's nominees to the federal bench. But this obscures the historical facts. During the last six years of Clinton's presidency, the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee blocked fully one-third of Clinton's nominees to the federal appeals courts. When the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 2001, however, party leaders agreed to rapidly process all but the most controversial candidates in order to fill the vast backlog created by Republican obstruction. The judicial vacancy rate is now lower than it was even in Clinton's first two years, when the Democrats controlled Congress, and the bench is, of course, increasingly Republican and conservative.
Why are the Democrats so much more willing than the Republicans to make political sacrifices in the name of procedural fairness or of good government? Maybe Democrats are just nicer, but a more philosophical view is that liberals are committed to, are in fact bedeviled by, ideals about process that do not much preoccupy conservatives, at least contemporary ones. Liberals put their faith in such content-neutral principles as free speech, due process, participatory democracy. Is that too lofty? Then maybe we should say that today's liberals, unlike today's conservatives, don't believe in any particular set of ends ardently enough to blind themselves to the means they are using to achieve them.
This became patent during the endgame of the 2000 election, when Al Gore refused to sanction a range of promising legal approaches and Joe Lieberman felt called upon to concede the fairness of a critical Republican claim about the validity of absentee military ballots. Several months later, I asked Lieberman how in the world he could have handed that weapon to his opponents, and he said, ''In spite of the fact that on the other side they were being partisan, there was no reason for me not to say what I saw.'' It's impossible to think of any instance in which the Bush-Cheney ticket acted comparably.
Gentlemen like Joe Lieberman are inclined to think that voters will think the better of them for their fair-mindedness. But is that really so? Many voters were plainly put off by Newt Gingrich's relentless personal and political assaults on Clinton; and Clinton, the one Democrat willing to sacrifice practically anything (possibly including his principles) in the name of victory, brought the party briefly out of the woods by running against Republican extremism. But Gingrich is no longer the face of the G.O.P. And while George Bush may well be the most conservative president in American history, he is more popular than, say, his conciliatory father was for most of his presidency. Maybe voters like politicians who know what they stand for even if they don't agree with what they stand for. (Or maybe they just like George Bush.)
There are Democrats who would like the party to get down off its moral pedestal and start fighting dirty, or at least dirtier. The journalist Eric Alterman, author of ''What Liberal Media?'' has complained that liberals need their own Fox News, their own talk radio -- their own unleashed attack dogs. Put Michael Moore behind a desk, and watch the right-wingers squeal. The problem is that many Democrats would squirm as well. It is just a fact that the Republicans are now the party of passionate convictions, while the Democrats are the party of grave reservations. The Democrats are essentially devoted to tempering the harm caused by the Bush administration, which is not much of an agenda at all, though it certainly makes a virtue of moderation. Ruthlessness is just not in the party's DNA.
It's an odd reversal, if you think about it. The Republicans used to be the party of the First Methodist Church, and the Democrats of the great unwashed. Now the Republicans are the hellions, and the Democrats are the ones you want to bring home to mother. The G.O.P. is making such inroads among younger voters for the same reason that Fox News is making inroads among younger viewers. We live in a culture that values brazen certainty and loud conviction, no matter how wrongheaded. Pity the Democrats, stuck with the wrong set of virtues.
What universe is this guy living in?
Oh, right. Dems are regular sweethearts.
I love it when they scratch their heads and can't come up with the real reasons they are losing! What? They can't call us Nazis and have anybody believe them anymore? They can't stifle free speech and delude themselves that they stand for the will of the people? They can't lie and get away with it anymore because of the internet? Awwww, shucks anyway!
Glad to see that attitude is moving into Congress otherwise some of those wishy-washy guys in the Rep leadership would be giving away the show to "my good colleague" as Trent Lott used to call them.
Never give a Dem a break.
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The reason Ted Kennedy is willing to stand with the president on things like the education bill and prescription drugs for medicare is because they are LIBERAL BIG GOVERNMENT bills.
If you were to compare Democrats *handing* a win like this to Bush, you'd have to compare it to Republicans *handing* Clinton a win on welfare reform, a bill that the left felt horribly about.
As for Democrats being nice guys and allowing the military vote to count in Florida in 2004, well, gee, I guess the military *ought* to have their votes count shouldn't they? After all, when Democrats bleat that convicts and illegals and nameless dimpled chads should have the right to vote, you'd think our men and women overseas could possibly be afforded the same right. And they think this should count in the Democrats' favor?
Then, as to obstructing judges, the difference here is that the Republican *have* a majority of the Senate with which to get these nominees passed. That's not the same thing as when Republicans were the majority party and blocked Clinton nominees. The Democrats are trying to exercise the rights of the majority, while not holding a majority. Therein lies the difference.
I truly wish the Republicans were as mean, nasty and devious as the moral midgets at the New York Times would have you believe. If they did, maybe we could have some conservative measures accomplished rather than liberal measures. It's beyond time they stood up and bared their teeth instead of being the Rodney King battered spouses they act like most of the time.
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