Posted on 01/21/2006 11:13:45 PM PST by CHUCKfromCAL
It's hard not to listen to the reviews of the Democrats' performance in the Alito hearings and come away thinking that much of our party is living in a parallel universe.
Most of the political establishment has concluded that the Democrats were: (a) ineffectual; (b) egomaniacal; (c) desperately grasping at straws; (d) downright offensive; or (e) some combination of the above. The American people, outside of those living in deep-blue enclaves, either were not paying attention or concluded that Sam Alito seemed like a pretty decent guy who was more than qualified. And if they saw anything about it on TV, they couldn't figure out why those pompous Democratic senators were trying to slam Judge Alito for being racist (and making his wife cry).
Yet the liberal blogosphere is agog at the way the Democrats let Judge Alito off the hook. And they're stupefied as to why the Senate Democrats are signaling that they won't risk triggering a nuclear confrontation with a filibuster. Postings on Daily Kos were typical. First, this comment from Georgia10: "Don't tell me a filibuster isn't warranted when 56% of this nation says Alito SHOULD be blocked if he'll overturn Roe. . . . I keep hearing . . . that we need 'angry' Dems, we need Dems with courage. We need Dems with courage. Well guess what--we HAVE angry Dems, we HAVE courageous Dems. Look in the damn mirror, people. WE are the party. WE are the Democrats. We're angry, we spit fire, and our time has come."
Then there was this response from one DHinMI: "Alito is a judicial radical and far from the national mainstream on numerous issues. . . . And with his anemic numbers, [Bush] wouldn't be able to count on much support from the country in ramming through the nomination."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
How can anyone who thinks that clearly be a lib? I don't get it...
"alternative universe"
Sound familiar?
Mr. Gerstein is a former communications director for Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman.
"Don't tell me a filibuster isn't warranted when 56% of this nation says Alito SHOULD be blocked if he'll overturn Roe"
And yet only 18% of Americans believe he will. God, how stupid can these people be?
Even within the Democrat Party there is one person who understands what's going on. There's no need to boot him out, nobody listens to him.
The Dummie Funnies exposes this mania..No one listens to sanity like this author's on DU..I don't want to give Kos hits so I don't read it.
His point is well taken. Let's be honest, the Republican House and Senate haven't covered themselves with glory on the ethics front. That the Democrats got a share of the goodies, too, is beside the point; we expect corruption from them.
But GOP legislators went to Washington and wallowed in the mud and spent like drunken sailors. Something they were elected NOT to do.
Both sides of the aisle could stand a flushing.
If this is news to Gerstein, he must have returned from the parallel universe in a transient moment of lucidity.
Keep in mind that the KOS'ers and DU'ers only count their like-minded buddies as Americans, anyone who dares challenge Marx and Chomsky is just some stupid cow. To them, almost 100% of "America" supports rabid liberalism. We just don't count.
Agreed.
It's just a matter of time...how long before the children of the Left, desperately aching for structure in their private lives and acceptance in their public lives, begin to convert to Islam as "the only way find peace and justice," or some sort of similar delusional claptrap? Worshipping Mother Gaia won't get it for them, because there is no self-discipline there. They hunger for someone who will promise them all the answers, if only they will do what they're told. They WANT to drink the cool-aid...
No kidding. Did you hear Taliban Johnny Walker's dad pleading for his "tortured" son this week? The kid literally RAN AWAY from his moonbat parents (gay dad, pseudo-Buddhist hippie mom) to jump into the arms of Osama Bin Laden!
This is a message that needs to be conveyed to the FReepers who regularly post here that defending traditional values is a losing strategy. In fact, it is THE strategy that accounts for the GOP's current success.
Appointing Dean spokesman was a mistake. He was chosen for his fund-raising abilities. The expected funding hasn't materialized and he's become a liability. The Ohio vote in 2004 was emblematic of how the Dims have lost their way. They hired people to bug potential voters. The Republicans organized voluteers to approach fellow parishioners, friends, etc. The Dems spent all that money and lost.
They would be better served to reexamine their prolonged slide and address the real problem - their guiding principles have been sold away wherever they collided with a power center. Their one "success" since 1980 was Bill Clinton. He forced them to repudiate one principle after another:
That leaves abortion as the last bastion, their Alamo. To chase the "women's vote", they sided with some extraordinarily repugnant spokewomen. The country, including women, is split on abortion. But then Democrats embrace people like the NARAL Nazis. They opposed a bill that says a baby born alive is a human being with full rights. That's extreme to 90+% of us.
Is "embrace" too strong a word? Let's remember the spectacle of NOW and NARAL lecturing the 2004 Democrat presidential candidates on what they were to do if a pro-life judge were nominated. Not one of them stood up to them. None said there are other points of view on the issue. None said their votes are their own to decide. They appeared to be wholly owned by this very extreme special interest group. Tort reform is similar. Lots of us see the legal system as badly broken but any attempt to reign in the excesses is opposed because they're beholden to lawyers for their campaign contributions.
Underlying all that is the problem that an amalgamation of grievances is not a set of principles. People who want civil rights to ensure racial equality really don't see gay marriage as analogous. In fact, it turns them off. Many Democrats, like Toby Keith, vigorously support our military. Many think the United States is a force for good in the world. They don't view our principles as equivalent to Nazism which killed tens of millions or Communism which killed over a hundred million. But for them to embrace the modern Democrat party means yukking it up with Dean and worse. They have to hear how the United States is evil and our military are a bunch of baby-killers. I'd stay home or "defect" to the Republican party too.
To illustrate how batty these folks really are, they excoriate christina matthews as being a tool of the vrwc. Now if your view of the media is that chrissy is a right winger, every day must bring a migrane headache of immense proportions. Drugs and alcohol would be required just to make it through noon.
They are so twisted and unstable that the political prism through which they view the world is so warped that logic and reason simply cannot be considered. Pity that so many are unsaveable.
And that's the heart of the problem with our party and its angry activist base. It's not so much that we're living in a parallel universe, but that we have dueling conceptions of what's mainstream, especially on abortion and other values-based issues, and our side is losing.
We think that if we simply call someone conservative, anti-choice and anti-civil rights, that's enough to scare people to our side. But that tired dogma won't hunt in today's electorate, which is far more independent-thinking and complex in its views on values than our side presumes.
This episode [the Alito confirmation] shows we don't have any leader in power who will tell our base that we're not going to become a majority party again by telling the majority they're out of the mainstream. We do badly need leaders with courage--the courage, that is, to push our party (to borrow a phrase) to move on, to accept that we can't win with the same lame ideological arguments in post-9/11 America
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