Actual and threatened politically-based violence has been largely a Democrat phenomenon for as far back as the eye can see. Michelle Malkin even wrote an entire book about Bush-era liberal violence titled “Unhinged.” But lately some Democrats have ratcheted it up a notch higher than I thought they would ever go.
This most recent cycle of destructive Democrat behavior I think has its genesis in the shockingly dramatic reversal in popularity and power of Obama in particular and Democrats in general as a result of what everyone has seen this past year of their true political beliefs, their arrogance, their disdain, and their hubris. The Democrats are stunned, panicked, angry, and desperate, and are lashing out.
Especially as a result of the long, revealing debate and eventual passage of the Democrat Party’s health care bill, Democrats have taken a severe hit in the polls. Their strategy after the bill’s passage has been to go on the offensive with false charges of racism and violence against those who oppose them. Whereas for Democrats rancorous political dissent, even fantasies of assassinating George W. Bush, were mainstream and asserted by them to be the highest form of patriotism during the Bush years, now, say those same Democrats, dissent of any kind against Democrat policies is dangerous, racist, and seditious. A Senate filibuster by the Democrat party minority was the last protection of virtue and democratic ideals when Bush was president, but now is an anti-democratic and racist tool when used by Republicans against the policies of Democrat party majority.
The intellectual vanguard of the Democrat party is not interested in consistency – only in results – in their efforts to discredit conservatives and Republicans among the many inattentive and easily foolable voters. Elected black Democrat leaders, within memory of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, now for political gain on issues of the day falsely charge their political opponents with racism with increasing fervor and frequency. Elected Democrat leaders, immediately after the passage of DemCare, announce they are the objects of unsubstantiated threats of violence, while Republicans like Eric Cantor and Sarah Palin reluctantly, because it is not in their characters to play the victim, come forward with countless tales of threats real and long-repeated. No one can honestly recall ever seeing or hearing about conservatives beating up opponents, but recently in New Orleans leftists targeted and severely assaulted (link) Republicans attending a party conference, and the Democrat media is silent. T-shirted SEIU union thugs beat conservative activists at a peaceful St Louis rally, and the liberal media avert their eyes. A finger of an elderly, peaceful tea party activist is bitten off at a political rally last year by an angry leftist. Then there’s harassment: an ultra-liberal student and son of a Democrat party official is about to go on trial for hacking into the email account of then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in an attempt to disrupt. And on and on it goes. Can such Democrats and leftists really love this country, to spread these lies and commit or condone such violence? To pour acid on the American ethic of civil discourse between people of different political beliefs for short-term political gain is despicable.
And now the other day former liberal Democrat President Clinton warns against non-existent Republican and conservative extremism on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, perpetrated 15 years ago by two anti-government types outraged over his own administration’s bungled murderous attack at Waco, Texas, two years to the day earlier, a horrific episode of Clinton incompetence. Clinton is not a talk show host or a blogger; he is a former President of the United States and a senior member of the Democrat Party. And yet Clinton seeks to spin the whole sordid episode as a warning against Republican Party extremism. Has he no sense of decency left? Apparently he thinks that a vicious and false offense is the best defense – accuse your opponents of exactly what your side has been doing, supported by your staunch left-wing allies in the media.
In a must-read post (link), Peter Wehner at Commentary Magazine Online’s Contentions blog addresses Clinton’s rank hypocrisy:
…. It’s also worth recalling that the Clinton administration organized, coordinated, and participated in some of the ugliest rhetoric we have seen in recent American politics…. And now Mr. Clinton is preaching to us about not demonizing our opponents and about the importance of not crossing rhetorical lines. Can a Clinton sermon on the importance of fidelity and the gift of celibacy be far behind?
…. The end game for many Tea Party critics … is to discredit the movement itself. It is to silence the overwhelming number of decent people who comprise the Tea Party movement by attaching them to the hip with haters and kooks. Liberals and the Democratic Party are losing virtually every substantive debate on the issues. It is blowing their circuits. And so they are left to resort to libel…Attorney John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog notes (link) that “It is deeply ironic that Democrats are trying to sell the idea that Republicans are somehow violent and unAmerican, when in fact, every actual violent incident is perpetrated by liberals, usually union thugs, against Republicans.”
In a post titled “Democrats Hate that Tea Parties Are Peaceful” (link), columnist Mona Charen reminds us of recent history:
….Democrats are reduced to warning that certain attitudes can lead to violence because there hasn’t been any actual violence at the tea-party rallies. All have been remarkably orderly and even friendly. You can almost feel the Democrats’frustration at this. By contrast, many, many left-wing protests and demonstrations have sparked violence. Just last year, at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, rampaging protesters broke shop windows and scuffled with police, who used batons and tear gas to subdue them. A 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle was so badly disrupted by anti-globalization fanatics who smashed windows and shut down the center of the city that the governor had to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard. (President Clinton failed to assail those who criticize corporations as inspiring the violence.) In 2007, several hundred protesters who descended on Washington, D.C., during the International Monetary Fund meeting turned over trash cans, smashed windows, threw bricks, and pushed a police officer off her motorcycle…. In 2008 …anti-Republican protesters at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul “threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below.” The violence was only fleetingly covered in the press and went unmentioned by leading Democrats.And finally, as for all the Democrat lies about tea-party racism, just the latest iteration of the standard liberal Democrat propaganda trope that conservatives and Republicans are selfish, racist, violence-prone haters, James Taranto asks and answers this question (link) in the Wall Street Journal, “Why the Left Needs Racism:”
If Republicans were able to attract black votes, the result would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Even in 2008, the Democrats' best presidential year since '64, if the black vote had been evenly split between the parties (and holding the nonblack vote constant), Barack Obama would have gotten about 48% of the vote and John McCain would be president. To keep blacks voting Democratic, it is necessary for the party and its supporters to keep alive the idea that racism is prevalent in America and to portray the Republican Party (as well as independent challengers to the Democrats, such as the tea-party movement) as racist. The election of Barack Obama made nonsense of the idea that America remains a racist country and thereby necessitated an intensifying of attacks on the opposition as racist.And so it goes. The ultra-liberal gang we witness today has long ceased being “your father’s Democrat Party,” and is rapidly polarizing and angering regular Americans. They have overplayed their hand. These ultra-liberal Democrats are sowing the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind, but unfortunately for all of us not before they have destroyed some of the unique American heritage in their wake. Are there no Democrat Party American loyalists in their midst who will stand and say “enough and be gone”?
John M Greco
