Peggy Noonan: They Got What They Wanted

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

[Pokey78]

Every party has a reason for being. The Republican Party was formed in the mid-19th century to achieve a specific historical goal: the end of slavery. From there it became the party of Lincoln, the party that saved the Republic and, ultimately, the party that gave a natural home to those who felt enslaved by big government, high taxes, big regulation.

[BubbaJunebug]

That's a lot, but Paula Zahn is not a state, at least not yet, and she doesn't get a vote in the Senate.

I noticed this also...obviously has been sharpening her claws.

[KeyWest]

She is right until the end. Then reality sets in. Hill and Bill run the party. The tactics - it is not strategy, which is what Peggy proposes- of Bill and Hill and have led to Republican victories since they took over the dem party. So to propose that Hill is the future is wrong since she is the present and past and what has caused the dem mess.

They need a compassionate realist who can look at programs for the disadvantaged and provide realistic solutions that end the problem, not keep it going. But all the innovation is coming from the pub side ie vouchers, which is a classic old style dem program, something to help the poor. Same with investing social security money.

The problem with the dems is that they are not one party but a group of splinter parties. They are the classic parliamentary government coalition. Their future is in question. If they go left, they stay together but lose the center. If they go to the center, they fracture into the dems and greens/socialists. Not a happy place to be.

[ventana]

I think you are so right. Peggy is a fine writer when she looks inward and defines for herself the critical theme gnawing in her gut, and then builds on it. Like her Wellston article. She knows burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy and that the Democrats at the Funeral Rally were having none of it, and she reacted to this. In this article, she knows pointing out wrongdoing is a spiritual act of mercy and she want to offer it to the Democrats. It's okay, too, to do that. It's a two party system. We need them, just not in their present state. She knows this and wants to help. But as soon as she thinks of Hillary, she is distracted, because she is confronting pure evil, and what to do about that? V's wife.

[Mia T]

Q ERTY6 _{utter failure} ^bump

 

In my view, Peggy Noonan gets mired in microanalysis and stuck in semantics.

It was glaringly obvious since September 11, 2001, and it was confirmed on November 5, 2002: the Democrat party is in the throes of death.

It suffers from terminal obsolescence, intractable vacuity, a vertiginous, egocentric spin, and spontaneous corruption--that is to say--the Democrat party suffers from malignant clintonism.

From this it follows--no post hoc reasoning this--that the clintons and clintonism are already dead. The only question left is whether a decent burial is in the offing...

 

 

Thou art arm'd that hath thy crook'd schemers straight.

Cudgel thy brains no more, the clinton plots are great.

 

Mia T, On Neutered and Neutering,

by Mia T and Edward Zehr (EZ)

IT IS OBVIOUS

By Mia T, 3-3-02

 

It is obvious to anyone who bothers to remove his political blinders. It is so patently obvious that even those whose political blinders are a permanently fixed fashion statement -- that is to say, even Hollywood -- can see it. (Just ask Whoopie Goldberg...or Rosie O'Donnell...) Bush's poll numbers are a reflection of this self-evident truth.

What is manifestly obvious and confirmed on a daily basis is the plain fact that Democrats are, by definition, constitutionally unfit to navigate the ship of state through these troubled, terrorist waters. Democrats were unfit pre-9/11, but few could see it then. It was 9/11 and its aftermath that made this truth crystal clear even to the most simpleminded among us.

The unwashed masses, the uninformed, the disinformed can see it now. All America can see it now. Self-preservation is kicking in, trumping petty politics at every turn.

And this is why Democrat demagoguery and stupidity and sedition are achieving new lows...

We are witnessing the last gasp of a political relic. The Democrat party is not merely obsolete. As 9/11 and clinton-clinton-Daschle action and inaction have demonstrated, the Democrat party is very dangerous.

We must now make sure that this fact, too, is obvious to all...

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize

 

 

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.*

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

 

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational.

Indeed, assessing the clinton presidency an abject failure is not inconsistent with commentary coming from the left, most recently the LA Times: "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize."

When the clintons left office, I predicted that the country would eventually learn--sadly, the hard way--that this depraved, self-absorbed and inept pair had placed America (and the world) in mortal danger. But I was thinking years, not months.

It is very significant that hillary clinton didn't deny clinton culpability for the terrorism. (Meet the Press, 12-09-01), notwithstanding tired tactics (if you can't pass the buck, spread the blame) and chronic "KnowNothing Victim Clinton" self-exclusion.

If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.

And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton covertly cooked the books even as he assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.

It is critically important that hillary clinton fail in her grasp for power; read Peggy Noonan's little book, 'The Case Against Hillary Clinton' and Barbara Olson's two books; it is critical that the West de-clintonize, but that will be automatic once it is understood that the clintons risked civilization itself in order to gain and retain power.

It shouldn't take books, however, to see that a leader is a dangerous, self-absorbed sicko. People should be able to figure that out for themselves. The electorate must be taught to think, to reason. It must be able to spot spin, especially in this age of the electronic demagogue.

I am not hopeful. As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. "

Mia T, hillary clinton blames hubby for terrorism

(SHE knew nuttin')

Meet the Press, 12-09-01

 

 

*George Will continues: There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip), and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. ... Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism

Q ERTY3 co-rapist  bump!

[AmishDude]

Peggy is grossly underestimating the trouble the Democrats are in right now. Their consituency groups consist of: Hollywood, trial lawyers, unions, blacks, other minorities, feminists, academia, campus activist types. (Forgive me if I've left one out.)

The first two provide mostly money and are further left than the rest -- this is a problem, the donor base must be appeased. Unions provide some money and labor for party activities. They also provide some votes, but a dwindling amount. If blacks even vote 70% Republican, the Democrats will never hold any house of Congress or the White House ever again. Other minorites, particularly Hispanics, lean much more Republican, in part thanks to the Bush brothers. Academia and the campus activist types are a small but vocal part of the party and represent the far left wing, but . . . they are going Green.

Therein lies the problem for the Democrats, if they go to the center, the Greens will peel off the left. The Democrats can't even call for expansion of the welfare state, because the Republican approach to pruning the welfare state is much more popular. Right now, the Democrats are left with one issue -- abortion. That's it. That's why most people who vote Democrat do so, these days. It will be interesting to see what happens with this party because abortion will not be enough for them and I don't see a future issue for them to grab onto.

[AmishDude]

I loved that Paula Zahn sentence. Notice how Peggy's style is more subtle and much funnier than when Maureen Dowd tries the exact same thing.

[anniegetyourgun]

As has been said before - the D party was the party of the working man....now they are the party of the man who won't work.

[theophilusscribe]

Perhaps Noonan is not writing to conservatives. At least, this does not appear to be a commentary to conservatives. We know what we stand for—and we stood for it in an amazing way on 5 November 2002. Conservatives are not the question here.

Yet, what do Democrats stand for? Like a Seinfeld episode, they spent their entire time on nothing. It is a party about nothing. Why? Because if they get nailed down on anything they alienate half their base.

"It is a disaster for the Democrats. It has entered the history books. It has launched furious soul-searching."

Could she be writing to moderate Democrats like Breaux, Miller, the Blue Dogs in the House? Guys who never smiled and winked at Daschle's antics, and cannot stand the Clinton/Kennedy coalition that has absconded with gentlemanly politics (as if there really were such a thing).

She is asking, "Can you find a unified purpose?" The answer is an obvious no. The Breauxs and Millers of the Congress will never stand for the same things that Hillary stands for—and they know it.

"Hillary Clinton just may be where the party is going."

But Peggy is spelling it out clearly for them, just in case they didn't get it. Jump off the sinking ship, you still have friends in the party that still has a palatable purpose. She seems to be calling to the better angels of someone's nature—and I think it may be those statesmen who were wise enough to realize that it is political suicide to go against a tax cut or offer sympathy to Saddam Hussein.

No, I don't think this was for our consumption as much as it was for people who may soon be our allies. Hey, if the French could learn from Tuesdays rout, maybe some moderate Democrats can too.

Just a thought . . .

[bvw]

Cutting to the chase: This is a either a bad bad article or a poison bad one.

By bad bad I mean one I mean a essay that fails on misrepresentations, on false recastings of history, on myopia. Myopia in support of a premise that can not be made without that myopia.

By bad poison, I do not mean poison to the RATs if advixe is taken. I mean poison to the GOP and youthful studentia if history is recast along the lines Noonaniski lays out.

67 replys on thread as I write. 49 good, 3 indifferent, 13 which mark the essay as bad. Hooray for that 13!

MiaT summed up the essay most aptly so far.

I can not understand the love of this essay -- I do not think it is for the essay at all, but for some celebrity glam fan love fest of Mrs. Noonan. My major complain with it is that is false ontop of false, yet even if I dimwittedly bought into the false retelling of history -- which I guess is in some way subtle -- the essay on it's own, is pedestrian, at most a B- in a good upper level English Composition course, and a D for "disinteresting to the average reader" in a Journalism class back in the days that might mean journalism rather than socialist propagandism.

So the RATs were big on civil rights, eh? Oh, yeah, right. NOT! Half the RAT party was under white sheets in buck wings burning crosses and looking for niggers to hang.

No, no, no. Go to every point Noonanski has made about what the RATs were for good and what the GOP was not. You will find that it was the GOP that started those things, that keep them alive, and that the RATs not. Could not.

Grover Cleveland was the last good Democrat. When he left the boat, for some treason, the RATs boarded. Why was Cleveland the nation's greatest President -- after only Washington? Because he toed to the true old Democrat philosophy -- minimal taxes, minimal government. The philosophy that allowed the common man, the tradesman, the small business to flourish!

How so ever ... once the RATs boarded and took over, the RATS became the party of appearances, propaganda, enflaming mobocracy. DEM became demagogue! Nothing at all to do with great civic causes, except and only for enflaming the mob!

It was the GOP, who initiated and keep vital the rise of the entitlement state, big government, big corporate welfare. Why? Because, generally the GOP has maintained a level of honesty, of genuine sense of civics that the RATs care not for except as an incendiary.

Today, however we have a new breed in the GOP -- the GOP now also containes the honest strain of American poltical philosophy that the last Democrat Cleveland represented.

The RATs are dead, dying. The new struggles will be within the GOP -- who will win? Even -- what will be the philosophic lines that will form up?

[woofie]

I say to the Democrats "Go left young man"...Peggy's article is wonderful

[tear_down_this_wall]

Thanks Pokey!

I'd give anything to know Peggy's FReeper name!

tdtw

[m1911]

Ok, I think I understand. And I say the war isn't over, never will be. Ideas don't die, good or bad, only grow more and less popular. Percentages don't define a philosophy, but they do define the practical power of a philosophy.

[SuziQ]

--have a lot of people at the table, but don't invite academics and intellectuals. They got you into a lot of this mess, and they don't know anything about America. They think it's a place with a lot of people. They have no idea.

This is good advice, but the Dems won't follow it. They believe they intellectually superior to all us right wing, Church going simpletons. For that they will continue to be painted, and rightly so, as elitists.

[dano1]

this is a problem, the donor base must be appeased.

I completely agree about the fragmented donor base. But the problem isn't just that some Dems are further left than other Dems. It's that the core issues and pocketbook concerns of the sub-groups don't coincide. For example, no one but the trial lawyers really care about preserving the tort system. No one but the NEA really cares about preserving a "no fault" education system. No one but the labor unions want to restore gold-plated assembly jobs. No one but Hollywood cares about hawking vulgarity. Only the greens eschew SUVs. Only the African-americans are serious about reparations. Only the gays worry more about HIV than cancer. Abortion is a broader issue probably only because they all have babies. But no one really wants to pay more taxes, everyone wants to own stock, and the politicians have to accept corporate money to feed their addiction to high-priced campaigns. There may not really be political solutions to reconcile these competing interests, which may be why the democrats have to fall back on feints like the culture wars, the senseless class-bashing of millionare Hollywood liberals against middle-class working pubbies, and trying to evoke the ghost of the civil rights movement against the boy scouts. Maybe there isn't a solution. Maybe Republicans need to start thinking about how the GOP will survive in a post-DNC world, because if the DNC goes down the politcal landscape will change overnight, and the RNC might not be prepared to adapt to that. All it will take is one day for some charasmatic politician to see some daylight and go for it, and the two-party system will be history.

[HamiltonJay]

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

Great?? minds think alike :) Just said the same general thing myself a few minutes ago.

In another thread

[stanz]

Hillary Clinton just may be where the party is going.

Our biggest nightmare.

[Dutchgirl]

the D party was the party of the working man....

Dem: "What happen?"

Noonan: " All your party base are belong to us.

[blackie]

Peggy Noonan Swings !!

GWB Is The Man !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Let's Roll !!

Molon Labe !!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!