Abortive Rise Of The Idiocracy
I don't call the peeps that pushed Ned Lamont over the cliff a Polish firing squad for nothing....
~ ~ ~
I didn't get a chance to pontificate on the pyrrhic primary setback dealt three-term Democrat incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman last week. Several days later I'm still trying to figure out what the neoBolsheviks that think they've politically slayed him have really accomplished.
Let's start with the most practical aspect. While Team Lamont has denied Senator Lieberman renomination as a Democrat, they did so by a margin of four percentage points less than a week after Lamont had purportedly enjoyed a double-digit lead. Had the primary election been a week later, Lieberman would probably have survived, Lamont would have been heaved overboard like an empty beer can, and the perpetually angry mob would have been off to the next riot.
That "Joementum" has continued since last Tuesday, with the now-independent Lieberman having opened up a six-point lead over the ostensible Democrat senatorial nominee in the three-way race (the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, is a single-digit non-factor). Lest one think that this is just a blip and that Lamont will bounce back and run away with the race, Jim Geraghty at TKS ran the numbers, and they make for a steep, uphill battle for the "Kos-ulists".
To summarize as best I can:
-The Connecticut voter registration numbers are Independents 44%, Democrats 33%, Republicans 22%.
-Assume Lieberman loses about 20% of the Democrat vote he won in the primary. That gives Lamont 60% of 33%, or 20% of the overall electorate versus 13% for poor ol' Joe.
-J-Ger assumes Lieberman wins the independent vote 55%-45%, which he considers bending over backwards for the left-wing extremist Lamont. That's another 24% of the total vote for Lieberman, bringing him within 40%-37%.
-In order to beat Lamont, Lieberman would have to carry a minimum of just under 60% of the Republican vote. That's where the 'Pubbie being irrelevant comes in. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, three-quarters of Connecticut Republicans were willing to give the incumbent a fourth term. It would be astonishing if that number hadn't remained firm or even expanded. I mean, what are they going to do, vote for Lamont? Or waste their votes on Schlesinger, which would be pretty much the same thing?
Let's say Schlesinger gets an even 10% of the vote, which is probably generous. Three quarters of the remainder going to Lieberman would put him at a total of 46% of the total vote, to 43% for Ned Lamont. And that would be, in essence, Lieberman's floor margin; take out Lamont's handicap and the former wins in a walk.
So in the end, Joe Lieberman is still going to be in the U.S. Senate. Which means this whole "people power uprising" fiddle-faddle will join all its predecessors on the political ashheap, where, it seems, misery really does enjoy company.
~ ~ ~
For the Kos-hacks, it will be a costly failure, indeed. But one that they will never allow themselves to understand.
Goodness, but that is multi-faceted. Let me see if I can compact all of it down into a managable size.
Think how different things would have been if Lieberman had won:
Remember that it was just last Monday that Lieberman echoed Mrs. Clinton's cliched call for Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to resign. Had he been renominated, there doubtless would have been a lot more of that reaching out to Lamont backers (which would have been bitterly and petulantly rejected, and probably would have included, ironically, an independent run in the fall that, with double irony, would have produced the exact same result). But now? What reason does the senator have to try and mend fences with the radicals who cashiered him? And once he's re-elected, how much less influence will they have over his foreign policy votes?
Next, ponder the pictures beamed to the entire country from Lamont HQ on primary night:
Extremism, racism, and treason, all on the same stage. The very same traits that George McGovern embodied over thirty years ago that, with the exception of two lying southern governors, shut the Democrat Party out of the White House ever since, and inexorably took Congress away from them as well. THIS is what reactionary libs want to be honest about?
Oh, yes, indeed:
Talk about standing reality on its head. Talk about blind faith. The barometer of the past forty years of national elections is precisely the opposite of Mr. Sirota's diagnosis. He and his fellow travelers, and their Connecticut Donk senate candidate, are still welded to the insane notion that their problem is they STILL haven't been sufficiently loud, obnoxious, and extreme. If only they shout for an unlimited minimum wage loud enough, if only they bellow for tax increases loud enough, if only the deny the War On Terror and insist we withdraw completely from the world loud enough, if only they scream obscenities at George W. Bush, Republicans, and any Democrat who doesn't join them in jackbooted lockstep loud enough, somehow some magical, metaphysical tripwire will be triggered and the American people will "see the light" and put them back into power. Even if just to finally shut them up. Does anybody still wonder why we call these people nutters?
But the even bigger howler is the "ordinary citizens" crack. Ned Lamont is the antithesis of Joe Sixpack. He is, as Mark Levin wrote the other day, a "know-nothing, empty-suit, blue-blood," "the Democrat party's poster boy," "a John Kerry, but without the [bogus] Purple Hearts." He's the epitome of the lily-white, "limousine liberal," silver-spoon, trust-fund debutante. To him "ordinary citizens" are the people who do his landscaping and clean his swimming pools. "Peasants" is the synonym his ilk generally use.
There is also the astonishing arrogance of the nutroots equating themselves with all Americans:
This is Marxist gobbledygook. It's also a very elastic jumble of words. "Democracy" appears to only "work" when the results go the Kos-hacks' way. When Lieberman wins the rematch in November, that won't be "democracy at work," but another "stolen election" masterminded by the former Democrat's "Republican puppetmasters." I'm sure Cynthia McKinney will be able to sympathize.
The whole "We are the people" angle is a pathetic fraud, which ought to give you an idea of how dense they consider Connecticut (and, really, all American) voters to be.
But that's just the beginning. So much other vileness (remember the Lieberman in minstrel blackface pic?) about the far Left became, in their bacchanalial primary night triumphalism, impossible to ignore.
Big case in point - their anti-Semitism:
The Enemy Media, in the person of Chris Matthews, wasn't bashful about getting into the Jew-bashing, either:
Next, as harbinged by the Kos "dustbin of history" quip, is the fever swamp's naked hostility to any "friendly" not every bit as ideologically "pure" as they:
Somehow a massive purge of "pro-war" heretics is supposed to revitalize the Democrat Party as a viable national force. Michael Moore would have more success going to a novelty store, purchasing a Brad Pitt mask, getting into bed with Angelina Jolie, and hoping she doesn't notice the difference.
Behold the depths of perfidy to which that seething frustration has taken the "nedrenaline" addicts:
Read the rest of the AmSpec article. This is why I call these people "the DisLoyal Opposition." This is why I do, indeed, deny their falsely-proclaimed "patriotism," why I do not shrink from denouncing them as dhimmis and traitors, and call them what they are - co-belligerents with America's Islamist enemies. Lefties are not just on the other side of the aisle, they're on the other side of the war. And on the platform of one northeast senatorial primary victory, they're being more open and honest about their treachery than ever before - and they think that the country agrees with them!
The pertinent question is whether the Donk party establishment - which really has been functionally beholden to these lunatics for years - will be bullied and intimidated into matching the latter's style as well as their substance. I wouldn't put too much stock in Joe Lieberman's senate colleagues all rushing over to back Ned Lamont. The latter did win the primary election and is the party's senatorial candidate from Connecticut; it would be more than a little odd, to say nothing of awkward, for the national party to take a walk on him at this point. They're saying all the expected things now, but you can be sure they're privately pulling for Lieberman to pull their bacon out of the fire in November.
It's if that doesn't happen that I think you'll see Michael Moore's threat become a prophecy:
More likely the "writing on the wall" will be a fourth losing election cycle in a row, and Kos' crazoid "people power"'s conspicuous culpability for it. Indeed, the Lamontiacs' bad timing as the reality of war that they stubbornly, adamantly, and irrationally deny reasserted itself within hours of their pagan "Bring them homerism" chanting.
I guess it was all Joe Lieberman's fault, in the same way that "people power" means driving people out of your party that can actually win elections. Never has so communal a premise produced so much loneliness.
But don't feel bad for Little Neddy's peeps. Their vivid, if fetid, imaginations will always be their ace in the hole.
~ ~ ~
I didn't get a chance to pontificate on the pyrrhic primary setback dealt three-term Democrat incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman last week. Several days later I'm still trying to figure out what the neoBolsheviks that think they've politically slayed him have really accomplished.
Let's start with the most practical aspect. While Team Lamont has denied Senator Lieberman renomination as a Democrat, they did so by a margin of four percentage points less than a week after Lamont had purportedly enjoyed a double-digit lead. Had the primary election been a week later, Lieberman would probably have survived, Lamont would have been heaved overboard like an empty beer can, and the perpetually angry mob would have been off to the next riot.
That "Joementum" has continued since last Tuesday, with the now-independent Lieberman having opened up a six-point lead over the ostensible Democrat senatorial nominee in the three-way race (the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, is a single-digit non-factor). Lest one think that this is just a blip and that Lamont will bounce back and run away with the race, Jim Geraghty at TKS ran the numbers, and they make for a steep, uphill battle for the "Kos-ulists".
To summarize as best I can:
-The Connecticut voter registration numbers are Independents 44%, Democrats 33%, Republicans 22%.
-Assume Lieberman loses about 20% of the Democrat vote he won in the primary. That gives Lamont 60% of 33%, or 20% of the overall electorate versus 13% for poor ol' Joe.
-J-Ger assumes Lieberman wins the independent vote 55%-45%, which he considers bending over backwards for the left-wing extremist Lamont. That's another 24% of the total vote for Lieberman, bringing him within 40%-37%.
-In order to beat Lamont, Lieberman would have to carry a minimum of just under 60% of the Republican vote. That's where the 'Pubbie being irrelevant comes in. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, three-quarters of Connecticut Republicans were willing to give the incumbent a fourth term. It would be astonishing if that number hadn't remained firm or even expanded. I mean, what are they going to do, vote for Lamont? Or waste their votes on Schlesinger, which would be pretty much the same thing?
Let's say Schlesinger gets an even 10% of the vote, which is probably generous. Three quarters of the remainder going to Lieberman would put him at a total of 46% of the total vote, to 43% for Ned Lamont. And that would be, in essence, Lieberman's floor margin; take out Lamont's handicap and the former wins in a walk.
So in the end, Joe Lieberman is still going to be in the U.S. Senate. Which means this whole "people power uprising" fiddle-faddle will join all its predecessors on the political ashheap, where, it seems, misery really does enjoy company.
~ ~ ~
For the Kos-hacks, it will be a costly failure, indeed. But one that they will never allow themselves to understand.
Goodness, but that is multi-faceted. Let me see if I can compact all of it down into a managable size.
Think how different things would have been if Lieberman had won:
Had Lieberman eked out a victory, the Connecticut Senate primary would have been a huge win for the Democratic Party as they would have been able to reap the dividends of all the energy (and voters) Lamont's candidacy had attracted, while at the same time sending a message to the country that the Democratic Party is large enough for pro-war Democrats. Had Lieberman held on and won, he undoudtedly would be reaching out to left-wing Democrats and pushing further away from President Bush and the Republicans. Instead, Lieberman will now be ostracized from the party and will be reaching out to Independents and Republicans while chastising the extremists in the Democratic Party. [emphasis added]
Remember that it was just last Monday that Lieberman echoed Mrs. Clinton's cliched call for Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to resign. Had he been renominated, there doubtless would have been a lot more of that reaching out to Lamont backers (which would have been bitterly and petulantly rejected, and probably would have included, ironically, an independent run in the fall that, with double irony, would have produced the exact same result). But now? What reason does the senator have to try and mend fences with the radicals who cashiered him? And once he's re-elected, how much less influence will they have over his foreign policy votes?
Next, ponder the pictures beamed to the entire country from Lamont HQ on primary night:
Nationally, the images from last night are a disaster for the Democratic Party. Perched behind Lamont during his victory speech were the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, grinning ear to ear, serenaded by the chant of "Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home." For a party that has a profound public relations and substantive problem on national security, these are not exactly the images you want broadcast to the nation.
Extremism, racism, and treason, all on the same stage. The very same traits that George McGovern embodied over thirty years ago that, with the exception of two lying southern governors, shut the Democrat Party out of the White House ever since, and inexorably took Congress away from them as well. THIS is what reactionary libs want to be honest about?
Oh, yes, indeed:
Yet, there's a logic to the Left's illogic in attacking Lieberman. The 2006 midterms, to the netroots, are essentially irrelevant. In fact, a victory for the Democrats in 2006 is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the Kos crowd. They have yet to truly "crash the gates" and take over the Democratic Party - thus, a victory helmed by the hated "Democratic establishment" this year would render the Kossacks irrelevant.
Their goal, for now, is simply to be feared in the Democratic primary process. In that sense, last night's Lamont victory is mission (almost) accomplished. Writing ahead of Lamont's victory, liberal blogger David Sirota wrote that a five-point margin over Lieberman might make "Democratic insiders realize their fight against ordinary citizens is a losing battle and realize their careers are about to be cut short lest they change their ways." Thanks to such a realization, he wrote, the Democratic Party might "actually start winning national elections for the first time in a generation." [emphasis added]
Talk about standing reality on its head. Talk about blind faith. The barometer of the past forty years of national elections is precisely the opposite of Mr. Sirota's diagnosis. He and his fellow travelers, and their Connecticut Donk senate candidate, are still welded to the insane notion that their problem is they STILL haven't been sufficiently loud, obnoxious, and extreme. If only they shout for an unlimited minimum wage loud enough, if only they bellow for tax increases loud enough, if only the deny the War On Terror and insist we withdraw completely from the world loud enough, if only they scream obscenities at George W. Bush, Republicans, and any Democrat who doesn't join them in jackbooted lockstep loud enough, somehow some magical, metaphysical tripwire will be triggered and the American people will "see the light" and put them back into power. Even if just to finally shut them up. Does anybody still wonder why we call these people nutters?
But the even bigger howler is the "ordinary citizens" crack. Ned Lamont is the antithesis of Joe Sixpack. He is, as Mark Levin wrote the other day, a "know-nothing, empty-suit, blue-blood," "the Democrat party's poster boy," "a John Kerry, but without the [bogus] Purple Hearts." He's the epitome of the lily-white, "limousine liberal," silver-spoon, trust-fund debutante. To him "ordinary citizens" are the people who do his landscaping and clean his swimming pools. "Peasants" is the synonym his ilk generally use.
There is also the astonishing arrogance of the nutroots equating themselves with all Americans:
During his speech at the real world convention of his popular Daily Kos website in June, Markos Moulitsas swore before an enraptured audience that if "the Democratic Party and allied organizations that claim to represent us" were to "refuse to reform, if they refuse to be more accountable, if they refuse to join this people-powered movement as it seeks to move our country forward...well then, they'll be relegated to the dustbin of history."
That's tough talk the netroots backed up with a vengeance Tuesday night when political neophyte and netroots champion Ned Lamont slew national Democratic stalwart Senator Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary. The victory led a euphorically hubristic Moulitsas to declare "democracy and the people of Connecticut" the evening's true winners, and surmise further, "What tonight showed is that democracy can work. That even the most powerful, entrenched forces can be dislodged by people-power." [emphases added]
This is Marxist gobbledygook. It's also a very elastic jumble of words. "Democracy" appears to only "work" when the results go the Kos-hacks' way. When Lieberman wins the rematch in November, that won't be "democracy at work," but another "stolen election" masterminded by the former Democrat's "Republican puppetmasters." I'm sure Cynthia McKinney will be able to sympathize.
The whole "We are the people" angle is a pathetic fraud, which ought to give you an idea of how dense they consider Connecticut (and, really, all American) voters to be.
But that's just the beginning. So much other vileness (remember the Lieberman in minstrel blackface pic?) about the far Left became, in their bacchanalial primary night triumphalism, impossible to ignore.
Big case in point - their anti-Semitism:
I am not Jewish. I have never been to Israel. I am not a Democrat in Connecticut or elsewhere.
But hearing a Connecticut Democrat on the local radio across the Long Island Sound sneering that Joe Lieberman is the Senator "from Israel"... In truth? I almost ran off the road.
I feel sorry for Democrats. Sort of. The party of FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK has come to this? More to the point, a member of the party that had Harry Truman recognize Israel literally within minutes of its announcing its existence is now of a mind to defeat a senior Senator...because he's Jewish?
The Enemy Media, in the person of Chris Matthews, wasn't bashful about getting into the Jew-bashing, either:
The body language of the two is so different. You have this very wasp-y fellow, Lamont, very calm, very casual, very St. Paul's almost in the prep school sense, Lieberman of course is the schmaltzy ethnic guy, the Uncle Tonoose, you know, the guy that's very much kind of lachrymose in his almost postnasal drip voice of his, but he doesn't look happy.
RUSH: All right, now, "the schmaltzy ethnic guy, the Uncle Tonoose," And as I said the last hour, Uncle Tonoose was a character on the old Danny Thomas Show, and I think I'm pretty safe in saying that Uncle Tonoose is played by Hans Conried, huge hook nose and so forth. Here's Matthews describing - let's be honest about this, folks; let's just put it out there. When you say somebody "is a schmaltzy ethnic guy," you're not talking about an Arab. You're talking about a Jew. You just described somebody as a schmaltzy ethnic guy who has postnasal drip with his voice, lachrymose and so forth. Uncle Tonoose, in character, was a Lebanese Arab.
Danny Thomas was a Christian Lebanese, and Uncle Tonoose therefore, was portraying an Arab. But isn't it interesting that you have Chris Matthews describing an Arab as a Jew, on the basis of appearance, schmaltzy ethnic guy. You know, there are some people saying this, but their dancing around it, but one of the little - or not often discussed aspects of the kook fringe base of the Democratic Party, I'm just going to put it out there, is anti-Semitism. There is so much anti-Semitism today in the Democratic Party.
Can anybody imagine what Chris Matthews' reaction would have been if, say, Rush Limbaugh had said these words about a prominent Jewish politician?
Anti-Semitism has found a home in the Democrat Party. It is the anti-Semites in the Democrat Party that are bound and determined to take it over, followed by the country at large. "Today, that schmaltzy ethnic guy; tomorrow, the world!" And Ned Lamont is their icon.Next, as harbinged by the Kos "dustbin of history" quip, is the fever swamp's naked hostility to any "friendly" not every bit as ideologically "pure" as they:
Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, following the Connecticut primary defeat of Senator Joe Lieberman, issued a direct threat to his fellow Democrats: Denounce the war in Iraq or you’ll get what Joe got.I'm reminded of that old Rolling Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Wackos like Michael Moore have been raging and venting and bitching and moaning for five and a half years against George Bush, against the GOP, against the war, and they're farther away from power today than when they started. Seething in their frustration, unable to take down their political foes, they fell upon one of their own who was uniquely vulnerable: a patriotic, socially moderate, "adult" Democrat from a deep "blue" state. And they finally succeeded - barely - in taking him out. And now they're feeling their oats. It's like a really slow tiger without a clue about the concept of stealth getting so fed up with not catching any game that he sits down and gnaws off and eats one of his own legs, and then growling waves the bloody stump around in triumph at the surrounding gazelles and wildebeasts and warthogs as a warning that "You're next."
In a letter to his Web site visitors, which served as fertilizer for blogs everywhere, Moore raged that Ned Lamont’s anti-war victory was the beginning of a revolution among liberals.
Writes Moore on his Web site: "Let the resounding defeat of Senator Joe Lieberman send a cold shiver down the spine of every Democrat who supported the invasion of Iraq and who continues to support, in any way, this senseless, immoral, unwinnable war. Make no mistake about it: We, the majority of Americans, want this war ended - and we will actively work to defeat each and every one of you who does not support an immediate end to this war.”
Somehow a massive purge of "pro-war" heretics is supposed to revitalize the Democrat Party as a viable national force. Michael Moore would have more success going to a novelty store, purchasing a Brad Pitt mask, getting into bed with Angelina Jolie, and hoping she doesn't notice the difference.
Behold the depths of perfidy to which that seething frustration has taken the "nedrenaline" addicts:
Three years ago the head of Amnesty International warned the anti-war left that it must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles the Bush Administration - or risk becoming irrelevant. Three years later and the anti-war groups have not only refused to "confront terror," but they are increasingly and enthusiastically giving their support to terrorist groups.
The more radical elements of the anti-war movement have never been - strictly speaking - about opposing the war in Lebanon or Iraq or Vietnam for that matter. Indeed the real issue has never been war at all, but in opposing U.S. and its ally Israel's power at every turn. Yet even that villainy isn't enough for today's anti-war warriors. Today's peacenik must actively support the enemies of America, including terrorist organizations.
Of course, the anti-war movement has itself long been allied with terrorist groups. It was leaders and members of the Students for a Democratic Society that splintered and became the Weathermen (a radical group of communists whose stated purpose was to carry out terrorist attacks to achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. government, and capitalism as a whole). But even in the darkest days of the Vietnam War there were no public rallies in support of the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong. Indeed, supporting the communists - as did Hanoi Jane Fonda - was certain to lead to universal castigation and denouncement. My, how times have changed. Rather than existing on the underground fringe, today's supporters of terrorist groups are happily rallying before the TV news cameras.
Read the rest of the AmSpec article. This is why I call these people "the DisLoyal Opposition." This is why I do, indeed, deny their falsely-proclaimed "patriotism," why I do not shrink from denouncing them as dhimmis and traitors, and call them what they are - co-belligerents with America's Islamist enemies. Lefties are not just on the other side of the aisle, they're on the other side of the war. And on the platform of one northeast senatorial primary victory, they're being more open and honest about their treachery than ever before - and they think that the country agrees with them!
The pertinent question is whether the Donk party establishment - which really has been functionally beholden to these lunatics for years - will be bullied and intimidated into matching the latter's style as well as their substance. I wouldn't put too much stock in Joe Lieberman's senate colleagues all rushing over to back Ned Lamont. The latter did win the primary election and is the party's senatorial candidate from Connecticut; it would be more than a little odd, to say nothing of awkward, for the national party to take a walk on him at this point. They're saying all the expected things now, but you can be sure they're privately pulling for Lieberman to pull their bacon out of the fire in November.
It's if that doesn't happen that I think you'll see Michael Moore's threat become a prophecy:
"To Hillary . . . You will never make it through the Democratic primaries unless you start now by strongly opposing the war. It is your only hope. You and Joe [Lieberman] have been Bush's biggest Democratic supporters of the war. Last night's voter revolt took place just a few miles from your home in Chappaqua. Did you hear the noise? Can you read the writing on the wall?”
More likely the "writing on the wall" will be a fourth losing election cycle in a row, and Kos' crazoid "people power"'s conspicuous culpability for it. Indeed, the Lamontiacs' bad timing as the reality of war that they stubbornly, adamantly, and irrationally deny reasserted itself within hours of their pagan "Bring them homerism" chanting.
I guess it was all Joe Lieberman's fault, in the same way that "people power" means driving people out of your party that can actually win elections. Never has so communal a premise produced so much loneliness.
But don't feel bad for Little Neddy's peeps. Their vivid, if fetid, imaginations will always be their ace in the hole.
posted by JASmius at 2:45 PM
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