Peggy Noonan: They Got What They Wanted

Opinion Journal ^ | 11/08/2002 | Peggy Noonan

[Zebra]

A proponent of liberalism that evades getting tagged as leftism, this major-state senator is a tough partisan who hates the other side but has the discipline not to show it, or not often. Hillary Clinton just may be where the party is going.

She stopped worrying about idealism long ago, and she knows how to win. She also knows how to go with the flow and bend with the moment. If the party goes left and finds new roots, she'll just be returning to hers.

I hope not. Her mere presence coarsens the national discourse and is ultimately devisive and threatening. Her way is race-baiting and class-baiting. I prefer Michael Kelly's surmise in his editorial in The Washington Post yesterday:

"In an ordinary time, a politician who is persistently unattractive to a large percentage of voters -- Mrs. Clinton, for example -- cannot reasonably hope to prevail in statewide or national general elections."

Let's hope for ordinary times.

[elbucko]

What is the Democratic Party's reason for being?

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Labour Party.

[Vindibudd]

She seems to feel sorry for the vile beasts. Screw that. I hate them for trying to destroy freedom. They should always lose badly and we should crush them into the ground. Bleah, sorry my ass.

[MHGinTN]

We are at war with international terrorism. It was William the Zipper who declared that war, back when he was trying to distract us all from viewing his debauchery and throwing him out of office. In the end, the FBI files Hillary acquired kept him from expulsion in the Senate. Whne he declared that war, he had done none of the necessary things to prepare us or the military. In fact, he had been dissolving our military superiority with malace a forethought. 9/11 and a string of other murderous assaults may be laid directly at the zipper's feet ... he was, after all, more interested in feeding his addiction to sexual gratification than leading this nation into what he declared as a war on terrorism (in order to distract us), not protect us.

Now, we have a real man in the White House and a real war on a global scale. The democrats offer only marshall law here at home in the face of growing terror. Our current leadership is taking the war to the perceivable enemy, wherever he and a host of very capable people uncover them. This president is actually leading this nation, even taking a new approach to 'deterrence' ... strike the snakes where they hide and prevent later mass destruction by going after the building threats! NO democrat now on the natioonal scene could or would do that. Hillary in our future? She won't even survive a re-election in liberal New York by the time her perfidy is exposed over the next two years. and it will be exposed, out of necessity, to see how we got so deeply exposed to terrorist threats when we should have had foreign policy leadership instead of domestic debauchery.

The democrat party wanted to keep their deviants in our White House. Let them eat their own now. We are about more important matters, we the people and our new direction of leadership. Thank God for our courageous military, for they are the last great hope to stop our destruction from without as it seeps and oozes across our nation because of the failed leadership from clintonism that has finally brought this exposure of the bankrupt democrat party and their socialist, appeaseNIK, postponeNIK shrillary.

[texasbluebell]

bttt

[right way right]

That is the heart of the article

It is the reason she wrote it.

RUN HILLERY RUN!!!

Your party needs you!!!

[ClancyJ]

Well, that is helpful - give ole Hillary a hand up. Thanks Peggy. This reminds me of the old saying - the Republicans eat their young. Guess the Republicans also counsel the losers as to how to regroup to fight us again.

We have not won yet and we need to keep on fighting for this country - not assist the enemy back up or show the enemy how kind and generous we are in assisting them to stomp us.

[okie01]

A vivid dramatization of the differences between the two parties:

Peggy Noonan's thoughtful and gracious piece on the Democrats, contrasted with Paul Krugman's fear, loathing and sniveling over the Republican victory.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Great article. I see the Dems in 8 yrs of wasteland at least because they will go hard left and leave a lot of the country behind in the next few weeks.

Unless the GOP screws the pooch they are set for the next decade.

Boy, a lot of the SCOTUS Justices are getting up there in age too. /glee and myrth

[Tredge]

This column illustrates so well why I go straight to Peggy Noonan's column every Friday morning when I get online. I confess that her columns about the hardships in the Catholic church and the more sentimental writing turned me off a bit (especially when Ann Coulter really hit her stride) but here she is so incisive, so clear!

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Bill, this actually plays into Hillary's hands. She will run in 2008 after the party is in total disarray for the next 6 yrs and she can start her triangulation right now. She will triangulate herself between the extreme leftist of her own party and attempt to paint the GOP as the other point of the triangle.

She will have trouble with the latter point of the triangle but that will be her ploy for the next 4 yrs then she can tell her party that I can save you if you want to be in power again.

Picture her running against the personality challenged Cheney. The media will be moist thinking about her as President.

[Mike Darancette]

The Dems do have a problem in the the "little guy" whose ostensible benefit excuses their excesses turns out to be a steadily dwindling constituency...

If "little guys" do not exist then the Democrats will invent them.

The success of Daschle and maybe Johnson (if he isn't caught) with the Native Americans on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations of South Dakota are a prime example. Mrs. Johnson (if you can believe it) was distributing blankets to the Indians before the election, if that was done by a Republican it would be a raciest act.

But, yet, Johnson got all the votes he needed to pull ahead in the Senatorial.Race from these reservations. It is so inconsistent that Native American would vote Democratic when that party is least likely to let them hunt, fish and exploit the natural resources of their lands.

[Nephi]

Sheesh, even wordsmith, Peggy Noonan refers to the Democrat Party as "Democratic." Ughhh.

[elbucko]

This reminds me of the old saying - the Republicans eat their young.

This is still true. Witness how the CA Republican Party ignored Bill Simon because he foiled Richard "RINO" Riorden's plans for governor. One mustn't do this when the Old Dinosaurs of the GOP are seeking the throne. Republicans still eat their young. The close race between Simon and Davis did, however, give Riorden gas. (URRRRRP!)

[lainde]

No, no no...This must be the most wonderfully subversive article...Peggy recommends they consider Hillary as their future leader!!!! If they just take that advice, Hah....what a GIFT. This election proves to me that Americans have not collectively lost their minds and survival instincts.

[thurules]

"This is the Democrats' problem: They have achieved every major goal they sought in the past 100 years. The party is losing because it won.

They got Social Security. They got Medicare and Medicaid, with the help of some Republicans. They got civil rights with the help of a lot of Republicans. They supported equality for women, and women are equal. (How many were elected the other night? So many it wasn't a story, really, because it's a 30-year trend that just keeps growing.)

They got the New Deal, and they got the Great Society. They got the welfare state. And you can argue they have been undone by their success."

Is this making "tons of sense"?

[Billthedrill]

Mebbe so, but she's going to have to overcome the loss of the titular party head, because I really think Terrible Terry's toast. She's going to need Bill for his funding prowess (assuming that continues) so the Marriage From Hell looks indissoluble, which is as nasty a thing you could wish on either party. This will clear some old Dem dinosaurs senior to her out of her way, to be sure, but that also clears them out of the way of up-and-comers in the party who owe no particular allegiance to the Hildebeest and her Hollywood/NYawk coalition. And the Kennedy wing of the party is smarting of late and is very likely ready to start reasserting itself. She's going to have to fight to stay Queen of the Hill and never mind what the hill is made of.

[m1911]

It is to me. What's incorrect in that section?

[goldstategop]

The Democrats don't have a philosophy except lying to the American people that we still have a Big Idea (when in actual matter of fact haven't had one since LBJ was President) and scaring the bejesus out of blacks about how the Reps are really the KKK in conservative drag. Well that flopped Tuesday night big time and its not going to work for them in the future. Peggy Noonan has the roots of the Democrats' election debacle figured out quite nicely: what does the party have to offer America? Until it does the decade long Democratic meltdown aided so spectacularly by Bubba will continue gaining steam. Indeed, Happy Days Are Here Again won't be around for awhile for the Democrats.

[Cultural Jihad]

A Peggy Noonan BTTT.