Rekha sez: McGovern in 2004!!!
Ultra-liberal, child of the United Nations, Des Moines Register Communist… uh… I mean Columnist Rekha “from planet” Basu is at it again. This time however, I want her to be right and her predictions to come true. She thinks the Democratic presidential candidates are going to swing left… WAY LEFT.
Rekha and 7 of the 9 Dwarfs were hangin’ at the Tom Harkin steak fry with Slick Willy and the left-wing rhetoric was a flyin’ so hard and strong that Rekha got palpitations. She came back with a with a belly full of steak, a mind full of mush and graces us with:
In Iowa field, Democrats look like Democrats again
And I say (in my best Mr. Burns hiss) Excellent!
You don't get somewhere by running away from it. But that's what the Democrats had been doing.
What is “
it”? The horror… I think we’re going to find out.
At a time when the country has most needed an alternative to the divisive, bankrupting, internationally isolating policies of this Republican administration, the Democrats were afraid to sound like Democrats.
Maybe because they were afraid of never being elected again and perhaps being sent off to the nuthouse.
Too many of them took a powder when the Iraq war resolution was being hatched. Too many signed off on the president's tax cuts for the rich while poor families went into a free-fall. As air- and water-quality rules were downgraded to suit business, and civil rights and labor rights were eroded in the name of nabbing terrorists, and as the national deficit ballooned into unprecedented proportions to fight a war launched on myths, they hardly put up a fight.
Or maybe they realized that our country was under attack by a hostile, totalitarian ideology supported and funded by nation states like Iraq.
Yep, hundreds of US soldiers dying a week. Dickensian poverty, sludge running from my kitchen faucet. Hey Rekha, I happen to agree with you about the erosion of civil liberties. The Patriot Act is an abomination. That’s why we have to destroy Islamo-fascists where they live and breed... so that we can breathe free at home. I also agree with you on the deficit… well not really. You’d expand federal spending into the stratosphere. I’d cut it to the bone… and taxes with it.
Most were watching President Bush's high poll numbers, and letting right-wing talk show hosts such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity characterize them as the reckless tax-and-spenders. Many Democrats were running away from their own legacy in office.
What legacy is that Rekha…? The War on Poverty… that old chestnut that brought us institutional, state-sponsored poverty, skyrocketing illegitimacy rates and the entitlement state?
Until last weekend. In a muddy Indianola field, the Democrats came back with a collective roar.
Collective bleat is more like it.
Appropriately enough, The Rolling Stones" "Start Me Up" was being played when Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fisher introduced seven of the nine candidates at Tom Harkin's annual steak fry. It was a moment millions of Americans have been waiting for.
What...? No Fleetwood Mac???
Yeah, the millions that are too afraid to go out into the world, carve out a living on their own and not be beholden to and a slave of the “gub’mint”.
While politicians have had their eyes on the polls, ordinary Democrats have been hungry for someone to frame and lead the opposition to the Bush agenda. So hungry that at candidate debates, someone like Al Sharpton, who has little credibility and even less hope of winning the nomination, draws the greatest applause. He hasn't been afraid to tap the public's outrage over the dismal state of America's economy and foreign policy.
No Rekha... not "ordinary" Democrats. Just left-wing-nut Democrats... the kind who flock to Iowa Democratic Caucus meetings where "Lefter then thou" is a virtue and President Bush is the reincarnation of Schicklgruber.
Sharpton wasn't there Saturday, but the passion people had been waiting for was back. So was Bill Clinton.
Good God… Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton in the same field… at the same time. Immediately after the hootenanny we would have had to napalm that field and salt the earth. Whew… good thing for Indianola Sharpton didn’t make it!
Candidate John Edwards summed up the collective sentiment: "I'm tired of Democrats walking away from Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who led the greatest period of economic growth in our nation's history." In fact, it was Gore who first walked away from that legacy, not wanting to be tarnished with the fallout from Clinton's Lewinsky sideshow. Now, many are starting to see the Lewinsky period as America's heyday.
Perhaps the white whine crowd you hang with Rekha. Not in my circle. Clinton was a perjuring, slick as they come, huckster. And, by the way Rekha… if a Republican president was getting hummers under the desk by interns who were half his age, I’m just going to guess that you would be shrieking “abuse of power” and “sexual harassment” at the top of your lungs.
"He brought us peace and prosperity," Carol Moseley Braun said of Clinton. "The Bush crowd has brought us depression and war."
Depression…? DEPRESSION???!!! Come on now. I’m sure that Carol “ridden out of the Senate on a Rail for corruption” Brown’s comments brought a quiver to your loins, but even YOU must know that it overreaches hyperbole into the realm of psychotic ranting.
Let's renew America, she urged, "So we can be embraced by the world community again as a nation that leads by its goodness, not just its military bluster. . . . Renew America to get back our constitutional rights, our civil liberties, our privacy."
Translated into plain English: “… So that the French, the Germans and the Russians can again make oodles of money off of another sweet ‘Oil for Food’ scheme. . . Transform American into a giant redistribution of wealth machine where equality of outcome (not opportunity) is state mandated.”
How things have changed. Mainline Republican philosophy was once all about practicality, like balancing the budget and keeping government from meddling in people's lives. At their best, Democrats were the ideological ones: for human rights, diversity and inclusion, civil liberties and protecting the vulnerable.
(
Feigned cough) Socialism!
The new Republicans brought massive deficits and put government in people's bedrooms. And after Sept. 11, 2001, Democrats were cowed into submitting to Republican excesses.
Democrats are cows… you may be on to something here Rekha.
You might well have wondered if there were major differences between the parties.
Oh tell us, please Rekha…
Saturday put that question to rest. The Democrats sounded like Democrats again. Finally.
Rekha, do you remember the last time the Democrats came to the game in high dower as socialists rampant. The year was 1972. George McGovern was the Democratic candidate. The Republicans won 49 states.
So again Rekha, I can only hope that you’re right.
