Peggy Noonan: Dem Problems

Opinion Journal ^ | 03/03/03 | Peggy Noonan

[Pokey78]

Recently Andrew Cuomo asked me to contribute to a book of essays on the future of the Democratic Party. I thought I would send it to Andrew through OpinionJournal.com. That way he will be able to see your responses pro and con and perhaps include a few of them in the book, too.

[JoeSixPack1]

Wow, I would have a hard time picking a "best". This one is definately a homerun! She rounds out the objectives previously addressed in years gone by and sums it up with a well thought out scolding of lockstep win-at-all-costs rat power grabs.

What she only slightly touched on is the biggest headache the rats have - CLINTOON (the pair). The hitlery and slick political scheming rotates around purchasing special interest and single issue votes and completely alienating or simply ignoring majority voters. An article on a previous FR thread spoke of hitlery's mathamatical projections of winning a Prez elections without a single white male vote. (Dead white male voters are ok)

A complacent media cares only about on-air face time and ad dollars and our country's well being is their last concern. Peggy and Ann just flat out don't drink that brand of cool-aid the toons and the rats offer up but face a juggernaught of liberal elites countering their advise.

[yoe]

Miss Peggy really cuts through the murkiness of today’s socialist Democratic party. It is Gephardt who seems to be calingl for a union akin to Hoffa’s organized crime as his base. It Tom Daschle and his class warfare or Hillary’s strident and mendacious call to the feminists, radical activists of all sorts as she did in the 60s and 70s. It Nancy Pelosy coming into the media light swinging like a mad miner who had been underground too long, spouting an anti-American pro socialist rhetoric long dead. It is all those slick and corrupt DNC leaders they cling to; it has not been about America and Americans for a long, long time.

I too hope Cuomo doesn’t pay attention to Peggy’s excellent advice other than to rally around a deserving President and put America first. One other thing; she hits the nail squarely on when she touches on elitism, snobbery it is that arrogance and their anti-Americanism that will do them in and is.

[Bonaparte]

"...to blame Americans for everything that's wrong with our country..."

To a democrat, what's wrong with America is that it's America. They utterly despise our heritage, our cherished institutions and our values. It's just like having thousands of Aaron Burr clones running around.

[Dec31,1999]

Bump. Thanks for the great post.

[ImpBill]

Peggy asks the Democrats to show class and integrity. I think she is asking them to show things they believe are liabilities. The Democrat elected leadership has NO class nor integrity. They squandered it all in the quest for power. I hope elected Republicans are capable of having enough vision to see that and not follow the same path. I am not always convinced they do.

[GOPJ]

How can one person be this insightful? It's never just one comment that "shines the light," it's twenty. Amazing.

My Democratic friends, when you think about this question, ask yourself if snobbery as a political force isn't part of the reason you stand where you stand.

[babble-on]

jeepers creepers

[An.American.Expatriate]

Damn, That was GREAT!!!

[txzman]

Best line of the article: And they're not teaching their kids to love you.

Absolutely right!

I was a Democrat for a long time, until I turned 35 or so (See Winston Churchill). Now my kids wonder where we go to meet Democrats! LOL.

[I Am Not A Mod]

Free Republic Highlights 3/03/03 (doesn't that date look cool?)

[Freedom4US]

Why on God's green earth would normal, traditional American families want anything to do with the Democrat Party?

Aren't too many of those left. The Democrats understand this. The MTV generations and their ideological ancestors just "want something for nothing" as it were. With only a vague and indifferent education, they are thoroughly committed to "me" and are unconcerned with anything else.

[PGalt]

The Democratic Crime Syndicate should be shown the ash heap of history. The Republicans, Libertarians, Constitutionalists and Freepers should be steering the political course of this great nation. Criminals are anti-freedom. For them to have their own political party is unbelievable.

[backhoe]

The age-old struggle between those who claim the right to dictate the terms of existence to everyone else and those of us who recognize that no such 'right' exists is coming to a head once again.

Afraid so.

Standing by...

[jla]

Have a philosophy instead of an ideology, hold it high and dear, and attempt to apply it, not impose it.

The comely Miss Noonan might as well have just suggested they squeeze water from a rock.
Liberal ideology cannot be transposed to a philosophy because it's intrinsically one of hegemony over the will of the people, and their innate desire for freedom.
Much akin to Lenin, Mao, et al, the liberal ideology is premised on the notion that those occupying the offices of power know what's better for the citizens, whether they like it or not.

[fporretto]

Miss Noonan is a marvel.

It has been very good for the GOP, overall, to have so many adherents who are former Democrats. Those people learned from their mistakes; they saw that what they'd advocated had gone wrong, thought about the reasons, and abandoned their allegiance to what didn't and couldn't work. Learning is most effective when it's personal, based on the recognition of one's own mistakes, rather than borrowed from the experience of others.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

[alwaysconservative]

My favorite passage, in particular the last line:

Let me be, admittedly, mean, but to make a point I can't figure out how to make any other way. Those who oppose the right to keep and bear arms are not as a rule the kind of people who would, or could, take down a nut waving his gun at the kids in a McDonalds. Those who oppose gun rights are more like the kind of people who when the incident was over would write a sensitive essay about how it felt to come face to face with one's existential powerlessness when faced with the sudden force of a sick man who alas shot two kids right in front of me. You may mean to be helpful in the abstract, but you are not helpful in the particular.

Ms. Noonan is a national treasure!

[irish_links]

"...Why on God's green earth would normal, traditional American families want anything to do with the Democrat Party?

Aren't too many of those left....."

Excellent point. The statistics are interesting. In rough numbers, only 30% of households has children under the age of 18 present. Only 8% of households is made up of a married couple with children at home and a mother who does not work outside of the home. I don't have numbers relating to female headed households with young children present, but am quite certain that it is higher than 8%.

Increasingly, America is made up of single parent households, seniors, immigrants and minority groups. Each segment benefits from government sponsored transfer of wealth from economically viable households (read: reasonably well educated, married) to less economically viable households.

The Democrats can knit together a very powerful coalition by buying the votes of the less economically viable households, satisfying the "I-want-sex-without-consequences" crowd (abortion rights) and embodying the discontent of the "I'm-in-a-life-long-rebellion-against-Daddy" crowd (environmentalists and peaceniks). In reality, the numbers stack up very much against the Republicans.

I hate to say this, but Peggy is "projecting" her feelings onto a generation that largely doesn't share her views. We are a minority and a shrinking one. GWB has done as much as one could to stem the tide. It's not enough, however; and the Democrats, with their insatiable lust for power, will rise to the top in the relatively short term.

Peggy, we've won a battle or two, but we've lost the war.

[Enduring Freedom]

The power of ideas has rooted in the Conservative party, and Noonan is a competent gardener.

[aeronca]

I agree, the only part of this article that made me cringe was the comment about gun registration. She needs to brush up on the history of gun registration and where it leads.
Otherwise a good article.

[hobbes1]

Peggy Ping