Re: Flirtations with fanaticism could prove costly to Dems in 2008

"jose" <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1125012002.250316.285110@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I'm beginning to see the source of your abject ignorance. Eric
> Alterman?

Sorry, I didn't include any references to Marx or Pat Boone.


>
> Roger wrote:
>> "jose" <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:1125008302.876198.103380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > The usual Democrat suspects in Washington, DC have been
>> > deathly silent over Ms Sheehan and the antiwar flotsam
>> > that ran off to Texas to use her bereavement to bludgeon
>> > the President and dishonor our sacred dead who paid the
>> > ultimate price just so lesser beings could vent their
>> > spleens in Texas. Where's Kennedy, Clinton, Schumer,
>> > Leahy, Biden and especially the quintessential antiwar
>> > loudmouth, John Frog Kerry?
>> >
>> > Flirtations with fanaticism could prove costly to Dems in 2008
>> >
>> > George Will
>>
>> "George Will felt free to coach Ronald Reagan on his debating technique
>> and
>> then praise his student's 'thoroughbred performance' on ABC News
>> immediately
>> following the debate."
>>
>> "When informed that his trial period had ended an the Washington Post
>> Writers Group was ready to syndicate him nationally, Will asked, 'Does
>> this
>> mean I have to stop writing speeches for Jesse Helms?'"
>>
>> "Will spoke up on ABC's This Week against the Clinton administration's
>> plan
>> to impose a tariff on Japanese luxury cars without mentioning that his
>> wife,
>> Mari Maseng, was being paid $200,000 a year as a registered foreign agent
>> for the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. Will thought the
>> potential for conflict of interest over a mere $200,000 was 'just to
>> silly'
>> for comment."
>>
>> All quotes from What Liberal Media, by Eric Alterman.
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> > http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Sad, yet riveting, like a wreck by the
>> > side of the road, Cindy Sheehan, a plaything of her own sincerities and
>> > other peoples' opportunisms, has already been largely erased from the
>> > national memory by new waves of media fickleness in the service of the
>> > public's summer ennui.
>> >
>> >
>> > But before she becomes fully relegated to the role of opening act for
>> > more durable luminaries at anti-war rallies, prudent Democrats -
>> > those political snail darters, the emblematic endangered species of
>> > American politics - should consider the possibility that, although
>> > she was a burr under the President's saddle for several weeks, she is
>> > symptomatic of something that in 2008 could cause the Democratic Party
>> > a sixth loss in eight Presidential elections.
>> >
>> >
>> > That something is a shrillness unlike anything heard, in living memory,
>> > from a major tendency within a major party. Many warm-hearted and
>> > mildly-attentive Americans say the President should have invited
>> > Sheehan to his kitchen table in Crawford for a cup of coffee and a
>> > serving of that low-calorie staple of democratic sentimentality -
>> > "dialogue."
>> >
>> >
>> > Well. Since her first meeting with the President, she has called him a
>> > "lying ***," "filth spewer," "evil maniac," "fuehrer" and the
>> > world's "biggest terrorist" who is committing "blatant genocide" and
>> > "waging a nuclear war" in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely
>> > persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously
>> > anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her
>> > recent e-mails - elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into
>> > ferocious left-wing rhetoric - it is difficult to imagine how the
>> > dialogue would get going.
>> >
>> >
>> > He: "Cream and sugar?" She: "Yes, please, filth spewer."
>> >
>> >
>> > Do Democrats really want to embrace her variation of the Michael Moore
>> > and "Fahrenheit 9/11" school of political discourse? Evidently, yes,
>> > judging by the attendance of 12 Democratic senators at that movie's
>> > Washington premiere in June 2004, and by the lionizing of Moore at the
>> > Democratic Convention - the ovation, the seating of him with Jimmy
>> > Carter.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > If liberals think that such flirtations with fanaticism had nothing to
>> > do with their 2004 defeat, they probably have nothing to learn from
>> > what conservatives did four decades earlier. But for the record: In the
>> > 1960s, just as conservatism was beginning to grow from a fringe
>> > tendency into what it has become - the nation's most potent
>> > persuasion - it was threatened by a boarding party of people not
>> > much, if any, loonier than Sheehan. The John Birch Society, whose
>> > catechism included the novel tenet that Dwight Eisenhower was an agent
>> > of the Kremlin, was not numerous - its membership probably never
>> > numbered more than 100,000 - but its power to taint all of
>> > conservatism was huge, particularly given the media's eagerness to abet
>> > the tainting.
>> >
>> >
>> > Responsible conservatives, especially William F. Buckley and his
>> > National Review, repelled the boarders, driving them into the dark cave
>> > where, today, they ferociously guard the secret of their size from a
>> > nation no longer curious about it. MoveOn.org, which claims 3.3 million
>> > members and is becoming a tone-setting tail that wags the Democratic
>> > Party dog that is mostly such tails, adopted Sheehan during her
>> > Crawford demonstration, organizing 1,627 vigils around the country to
>> > express solidarity with her.
>> >
>> >
>> > But the Democratic Party, whose democratically elected chairman is
>> > Howard ("I Hate the Republicans and Everything They Stand For") Dean,
>> > is not ripe for lessons in temperate rhetoric, which may be why the
>> > Republican Party has far fewer worries than it deserves. It is showing
>> > signs of becoming an exhausted volcano. Regarding Iraq, it is mistaking
>> > truculent asperity and tiresome repetition for Churchillian wartime
>> > eloquence.
>> >
>> >
>> > Regarding domestic policy, intellectual anemia has given rise to
>> > behavioral patterns not easily distinguished from corruption, as with
>> > the energy and transportation bills. Yet the Democratic Party, which by
>> > now can hardly remember the far-distant past when it was a volcano not
>> > of molten rhetoric but of serious thought, seems preoccupied with the
>> > chafing around its neck. The chafing is caused by the leashes firmly
>> > gripped and impudently jerked by various groups like MoveOn.org that
>> > insist the party adopt hysteria as a policy by treating the Supreme
>> > Court nomination of John Roberts as a dire threat to liberty.
>> >
>> >
>> > If Hillary Clinton has half the political sense her enthusiasts ascribe
>> > to her, she must be deeply anxious lest all her ongoing attempts to
>> > adopt moderation as her brand will be nullified by the increasing
>> > inclination of her party's base to succumb to siren songs sung by the
>> > likes of Sheehan. But, then, a rapidly growing portion of the base is
>> > not just succumbing to those songs, it is singing them.
>> >
>


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