Jul 16 2005

The Leftward Fevered Swamps

Published by at 12:17 pm under All General Discussions

Thomas Lifson is linked at RealClearPolitics with a smashing post on the destruction of the democrats by the out of control anger on the liberal fringes of America. As they sink the rest of the country backs away – and towards the only other option out there at the moment, Republicans. Who we can safely say after Reagan, Newt and two Bush;s are not as scary as the liberal fringe make them out to be.

Desperate people say stupid things. Democrats are increasingly desperate, and in increasing numbers have moved from uttering the merely ridiculous to shouting self-destructive rhetoric from their media rooftops.

To the FundieDems, President Bush must be stupid. If he were admitted to be a Yale and Harvard-educated student of strategy, a visionary seeking to transform domestic and world politics, they would have to take seriously the arguments he makes and respond on a sober level. The last thing they want is to get bogged down in a discussion of what to do about saving the world from Islamofascism, securing Social Security’s future, or keeping the economy growing at the healthy clip it enjoys courtesy of the tax cuts they vociferously opposed.

It is far simpler to write him off as stupid and beneath contempt. No need to answer idiots.

Making him the pawn of Satan’s Embodiment on Earth, Karl Rove, is even better. It gives them a logical ground on which to regard themselves as virtuous, and supplies all the motivation one could ever need for raising money, and going through the motions of contemporary activism: the endless round of parties, demonstrations, and posting of hate speech in the comment threads of Daily Kos and Democratic Underground.

But in their eagerness to denounce the man they blame for their tragic fate at the polls, they carried projection one step too far: they called him a “traitor.” This is a serious blunder.

Outside of the fever swamps of the left, a group which may encompass 15% of the electorate at best, nobody thinks Karl Rove bears allegiance to a foreign power or principality. He may be a Texan, but at least 85% of Americans recognize that Texas is part of America. It is simply not plausible to use the word “traitor” about him. Swing voters absolutely hate such rhetoric.

Dems are very, very sensitive, quite understandably, to the notion that they are not pro-American. In fact, they constantly deny a lack of patriotism, even when nobody is questioning them on it. Psychology teaches us that when people fear their own imperfections, they project them upon others, attributing their own dark impulses to those who alarm them most. Rove’s electoral successes make him the scariest boogieman the Left has seen in decades.

Most rank-and-file Democrats, like most Americans, are indeed patriotic folks. But there is a group among them which would rather see America face reversals, military, diplomatic, and economic, than see George W. Bush and the GOP get credit for successes. When they eagerly predict disaster, desperately search for and loudly proclaim the slightest evidence of failure, and then deny the existence of success when it stares the public straight in the face, one naturally wonders about what they are rooting for.

Fevers like this can be very dangerous, which is why most people have been telling the democrats to take a chill pill and calm down vs doing things like comparing our military to the Nazis.

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