Democrat leadership's position


Watching a political party self-destruct
I think Tony Blankley got it right

The Democrats' wild applause on behalf of doing nothing was more than a merely tactical political blunder. It displayed a deeper truth about them.

If one recalls, last year, the official position of the Democratic Party was not only that they opposed President Bush's Social Security reform, they argued there was no crisis -- no major problem that required rectification.

(In fact, Social Security has $4 trillion of unfunded liability, and if major changes are not made quickly, we will only be able to pay the retired baby boomers about 70 cents for each dollar of promised benefits.)

Social Security is the single most iconic Democratic Party issue of the past hundred years -- the Democrats created Social Security in 1935, and have won countless elections since then by beating up Republicans for allegedly not supporting it. It was the Democratic Party's sacred virgin. They would lie for it, die for it, steal for it, demagogue for it -- but never cheer its demise or harm, even sarcastically.

Their collective decision to cheer the failure of the body politic to provide for sufficient revenues to pay the benefits was an act of historic shame for the Democratic Party.

Worse than that for the Democrats, it shows how severely degraded their political instincts have become. Tip O'Neil's Democratic Party of 20 years ago would never have cheered the failure of Social Security -- even to try to make a small political point. To be sure, they would demagogue the issue ruthlessly, but never be seen to be walking away from the sacred program.

Until George Bush became president, the Democrats, for better and for worse, were a liberal party. Deformed by hatred of the current president, the Democrats have become a nihilist party.

It is one thing to oppose one's opponent's policies. After all, Benjamin Disraeli, the founder of the modern British Tory Party, once famously observed that the job of an opposition party is to oppose. But he also said they should oppose but not obstruct. And while in the minority he carefully proposed policies he would implement when his party came into power.

But today's Democrats largely refuse to even admit that the problems President Bush is trying to solve even exist. They offer nothing. And this mentality was also on display Tuesday night in Congress. On most of the president's major pronouncements regarding our war against radical Islam, the Democrats sat on their hands.

Since Gore v. Bush, the Democratic leadership has pretty much focused on "getting" George W. Bush, to the exception of almost everything that made them a good party.

(I don't think any political party can be great. The "great politicians" have changed their party much more than their party changed them.)

As the rules are written now, there needs to be an opposition party. The Democrats are rapidly reducing themselves to a token force. As things stand right now, there is a strong possibility that the Republicans are going to be an unshakable majority for a generation or so.

There is still time to turn things around. But it won't happen with the current Democratic leadership.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - February 2, 2006 at 04:32 AM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved