Thank God Not a DemocratIf I were still in the Democratic Party, I'd have to deal with nuts like
Jane Hamsher and
Greg Sargent. Marshall Wittman
shows the downside of that.
First Wittman stands up for Joes Biden and Lieberman and Hillary Clitnon for their steadfast support for the Iraq War. And gets perhaps just a little too close to the fire:
And, of course, Joe Lieberman refuses to waver. While many politicians claim not to be guided by polls, Joe truly puts principle first. He is a profile in courage. The scorn of puerile bloggers and assorted lefties should be worn as a badge of honor.Well, you can imagine Hamsher going nuclear over that little comment, right? Sure enough, she did not hold back:
You’re absolutely right — nobody should listen to us "puerile bloggers and assorted lefties." It’s time for the adults to take charge of the Democratic Party, and you have always done a superb job of casting yourself as the Uber Grownup.
You assert that John Kerry and John Edwards are nothing but political hacks who oppose the war out of pure opportunism. Well, you’re a wise man who clearly knows more than we do. You’ve counseled us over the years to shut up and suck it up and not offend anyone with our "looney lefty" ideas so that you Democrats can retain power. Because consider how bad the alternative is, right? Party unity, go Democrats, blah blah blah. That’s always been your battle cry. In fact, you’ve defended every position you’ve ever taken based on the fact that it was "good" for the Democratic Party. So I know that you only have the best interests of the party at heart at all times.Not hard to sense the dripping sarcasm there. Jane does the "But Brutus is an honorable man" bit about as well as anybody in the liberal blogosphere. Sargent instead tries the
"we're patriotic too" wheeze:
As Wittman might say, let us please reason together. There are several basic problems here. The first is that Wittman is assuming that virtually anyone who doesn't agree with Biden and Liberman is automatically doing so out of partisanship. Wittman tries to compensate for the obvious ridiculousness of this assumption by allowing that there may be two liberals out there -- Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy -- who are motivated by principles. But clearly he must think the rest of the world's unnamed liberals are driven by nothing but partisanship, since he accuses them of putting party before country.Hmmm, Wittman's biggest mistake there is assuming that Feingold and Kennedy are standing up for a principle. If Feingold weren't obviously angling for the Democratic nomination in 2008 I might be willing to grant him that distinction.
But you know what the difference is; I'm not a Democrat. They don't care what I say. I'd much rather disagree with my fellow Republicans. Yes, we get passionate at times, but we seldom get to the point where our bitterest enemies are within our own party. Reading Hamsher and Sargent it's not hard to sense that they feel the biggest obstacle to progress is the DLC, not the Republicans.
