Hugh Hewitt was talking about this with Mark Steyn during my drive home today:
HH: So Mark Steyn, do you think the American political electorate is watching this, and understanding again what we talk about a lot. There's a serious party in the United States. It might not be always right. It isn't always right. It makes mistakes. But there's also a fundamentally feckless and silly party, and it's the Democratic Party, and it's the political left.
MS: Yeah, well, you know, a Canadian blogger, Kathy Shaidle, who I like tremendously, her website. She said you know, Alan Colmes has said he's agnostic on the matter of whether 9/11 was an inside job. Now let's take him at his word. If these people, high up in the Democratic Party, seriously thought the president of the United States had committed, deliberately killed thousands of Americans...you know, Kathy said if that happened in her country, in Canada, she wouldn't want to live in that country anymore. She'd get her passport, she'd get her stuff together, and she'd get out of there. And the fact that you can sort of say Bush killed thousands of Americans, and then sit out on your cafe in San Francisco, sipping your venti latte, as if that's just something normal...I mean, this is pathetic. There's a disease in the Democratic Party that they've got to cure, because it's not good for the political system.
As it happens, because of my 9-11 blogging over at Screw Loose Change, I happen to have the clip of Colmes talking about his agnosticism:
It comes right at the 3:00 mark. Colmes is echoing the guest, Bob Bowman, who lies at about 0:55 by saying "I'm agnostic about these conspiracy theories...", which is clearly not true.
A great example of the unseriousness of the Democrats is the attempted purge of Joe Lieberman. Here's a classic example of this in a column from CBS liberal columnist Dotty Lynch:
One of those who are so worried about the state of the Democrats is conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. He wails that the campaign against Lieberman, "the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men," is a liberal inquisition designed to drive Scoop Jackson Democrats out of the party.
When conservatives start publicly worrying about the Democratic Party losing members, it may be a sign that the Democrats are actually onto something. (Earth to Brooks: the Scoop Democrats, with the possible exception of Jack Murtha, departed a long, long time ago.)
The reason many Connecticut voters are so upset with well-intentioned Joe Lieberman is because of his vaunted principles. They don't like them and are trying to let him and the nation know. Isn't that what primaries and elections are about? Voters get to chose candidates who will carry out policies they want.
Lieberman supported and still supports President Bush's policy on the war in Iraq, which many believe is immoral and misguided and he has an opponent, Ned Lamont, who is more in synch with the voters on this issue. Politics has become so technical and bloodless that it is hard for the pros to understand that voters can get quite passionate about issues, especially moral issues - like war and peace.
It is, of course, as if the WWII Republicans had decided to go after one of their own members in 1944 for not opposing FDR's war plans.
But where the historical precedent ends is that the anti-war movement of the late sixties and seventies was viewed by many as legitimate and courageous.
Chortle. Well, at least she got the past tense right.
The scarcity of 1960s-style protests against the war, says sociologist Todd Gitlin, is due to an "ambivalence about what to do, a lack of belief that protest would matter, and a lack of a counterculture that supports protest."
Excluding, of course, that same old counterculture from the 1960s.
