A change in Princes is the Joy of Fools. ~ Old Romanian Proverb There is no cause so noble that it will not attract at least a few idiots. ~Larry Niven
I must be psychic. I posted a blog entry that dealt with my buddy, my old NYC pal Charles "Fauntleroy" Schumer; leading Donkey strategist, guiding light, bomb thrower and Momma's Boy. One of the things I mentioned was that he perpetually throws around the sobriquet "extreme right-wing" whenever he speaks about even the mildest, most centrist political opponent, and the next day he gets caught on tape pretty much agreeing with me. He's been doing it for decades. He has NEVER in his entire life held an honest job; although a Harvard trained lawyer, a member of the Bar, he has never practiced law. This is a guy who got a perfect 1600 SAT score, went to Harvard as an undergraduate and then on to the Law School. He's extremely bright, he ran for the New York State Assembly right out of college and won at age 23, and he has never, not ever, lost an election. He has been in Washington since 1981, and for you Donkeys that means thirty years.
Hence, Schumer the Tumor, the persistent cancer that continues to grow on the American body politic. He won't go away folks; Chuckie can't DO anything else. Like Quaddafi, like Saddam, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe--there is no AFTER for The Tumor, no Plan B, no Part II. Truthfully, he doesn't much want to go away. If he wanted to be a Governor of New York, he would have run already. But Schumer knows his perfect place: making laws at the national level. Telling YOU, people who live in disparate parts of the US, how to live, what to eat, how many and what sort of firearms you can own.
He's the quintessential effete, urban Progressive. He hears the call, he knows what he must do. And . . . he knows he has to fool most of you into accepting what he wants. He's been a champion on Obamacare, he's switched sides three times on the financial crisis, he's big in consumer product regulation. And of course, the Senate Judiciary Committee, where that "right-wing extremist" Molotov cocktail gets used frequently. After all, when you are gutting the Constitution in the Legislature you cannot afford to have some judge with an unhealthy affection for that ancient document scuttle your plans.
Schumer is pretty hawkish on defense, but you have to appreciate the delicacy of that position. First, he's from New York City, Brooklyn to be specific. He still lives there with his family. As a fellow City boy, I cannot adequately convey the utter shock, horror and outrage that natives felt when those murderous animals flew planes full of human beings into buildings full of human beings. Schumer was married at Windows on the World, a great restaurant at the apex of the North Tower of The World Trade Center. My wife took me there to celebrate my MBA, but I worked across the street for Bankers Trust for years and it was my favorite place to take visitors for the panoramic views of New York and the harbor. [BT got eaten by Deutsche Bank and my building was itself later a casualty of the WTC collapse, declared uninhabitable and finally succumbing to fire some years after] I went to a small, all-male Jesuit high school in Chelsea. Xavier is coming up on it's second century and 25 alums were listed as casualties of 9/11. If my life had zigged instead of zagged, I could have been up there watching a passenger jet speed headlong into my desk.
The second thing you have to understand about Schumer on defense is Israel. Schumer is Jewish, much of his original and current core constituency are Jewish. Support for Israel is the sine qua non of politics in NYC and for a Jewish politician, well it comes with the briss. Support for our staunchest ally in the Middle East is something I can enthusiastically get behind, I've been to Israel, it's a wonderful country. I have no doubt his position is sincere, he gets a little heated when talking about it. In speaking of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, he told an audience that "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution, they don't believe in the Torah, in David . . . . you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay." So much of his support for the War on Terror is informed by those two points.
And being meddlsome with laws is just in his nature.
This is Schumer's niche in life, he's happy doing what he does. Well, "happy" may be too extravagant a term as Chuck Schumer usually looks so sour it's as if he were weaned onto solid food by sucking lemons and never quite recovered from the experience. Chuck Schumer smiling is a terrifying sight to behold, the kind of expression a prison warden attending a state execution might give the condemned as he whispers "this is gonna hurt." He's the Democratic Policy Committee Chairman and he is at the apex of his power in Washington; if you doubt for a second that he is one of the leading figures championing the aggressive stance of the Donks in confronting the drive to reduce federal spending, then I have some wonderful beachfront property in Japan that I can get for you at a bargain.
I'm a Payload Specialist
I started this series of posts about Bill Nelson, the Senior (and next ex-) Senator from Florida and let me reiterate the connection: ASTRO BOY and Donks like him are important for men like Schumer to shove their Progressivist world view down your unsuspecting maws. They provide cover. I caught Nelson on C-Span the other night speaking in the Senate. I managed to stay awake. That men's-store-mannequin spouted every Donkey platitude about who they are protecting and who the real villains in America are, how the everything is going to be wonderful.
For example, he whined on about oil companies not paying royalties to the US for oil from leased Federal lands. Well---Bill---if memory serves, you had a 60-seat majority in Congress, a majority in the House and a President in the White House for two damn years. Why didn't YOU do something about it?
Nelson also trotted out the now-standard Donkey diatribe against corporations that don't pay taxes. YAWN. Ditto for this one too, Bill, where where you and your fellow Donks? On a junket paid for by GE, maybe, one of the biggest tax avoiders of all but also former owner of a few lovely broadcast networks that just happen to support the Democrats in almost everything they do?
Is there anyone out there who doesn't understand that whatever taxes a corporation has to pay it passes along to it's customers in the form of higher prices. I guess there are. No, competitive pricing won't help you; taxes are imposed across all competitors so they will ALL raise their prices. Or some will go out of business and you will have fewer choices and, oh yes, the survivors will raise prices because they can!
But that's the dirty little secret:: The Donks in Congress and the White House KNOW all this, so when they rail on about raising taxes on corporations and the great unwashed cheers and thrusts fists in the sky, they are really setting themselves up to be the ultimate taxpayer. The Donks in Congress have just wiped off their fingerprints.
Yes, I do moisturize . . . .
Folks in Florida, remember what Nelson says. Remember in whatever state you live the next time you are tempted to vote for that nice person with the Jackass button on their suit lapel. The 2010 elections knocked off a lot of the moderate Donks, leaving the screedy shrill ones like Maw Pelosi in place. But for all intents and purposes there are NO moderate Democrats in Congress anymore. They cannot vote that way with the hard lefties in all the senior positions.
Remember what all those who did not buck the Progressives said when there was time to do something about it. Remember and think for yourselves.
Now, now, I know best!
My memory works just fine. I remember what has happened in the world during my life and what I thought about it at the time. I need no one to help me remember history through the prism of political spin. I remember who promised what, who tried to call attention to problems, who shouted them down and why. And I'll tell you that the problems we are facing TODAY have been brewing for years, that there were plenty of warnings, that many of the Donks in power now were around then and screaming against solutions.
And here's a little video that does a GREAT job explaining it for those that are numerically impaired.
I know some readers are going to think I am am picking on Bill Nelson far in excess of what he himself deserves. He's a good guy, he's a family man, he rode on the Space Shuttle, he's personable. He's the man every guy strives to be and every woman wants to marry. A leader, a lawyer, a legislator. From his campaign website:
From time to time, Bill gets asked where he gets the energy and determination to stand up and keep fighting. He says it comes from being an optimist and believing things will get better for all people. It's an optimism that comes from faith, from family and from his belief in individual responsibility. It's why Bill Nelson is optimistic for the future of Florida and our nation.
That's just so beautiful! It's so hopeful, so positive. It belies anything a person who observes him and thinks clearly and for himself would deduce from Nelson's conduct in office; but Geez, don't you just wish it were true!
See, this has always been my problem with the Donkeys; and it's their secret weapon; one of their most powerful. Individually, the Donks can sometimes come off as salt-of-the-Earth, fairly conservative people in their personal outlook, demeanor and lifestyle. They go to Church, they may hunt or fish, they read to the vision-impaired and they show up at Habitat for Humanity. They never miss a State Fair, and make sure the press knows what soup kitchen they'll be working in next Thanksgiving. They fit into their communities, they have to to get elected. The problems start when they get to Washington.
For most of my life, the Donks have been moving farther and farther to the left. Self-important Senator from New York, Charles Schumer (The Tumor), is a leading strategist behind many of the DNC's policy and publicity initiatives [not to mention my personal choice for Biggest Momma's Boy in Congress] and regularly trots out the "extreme right-wing" label, no matter how mildly centrist the object of his vituperation, more so even than Van Jones uses "racist." Neither label has any particular meaning except to rouse somnolent Donks who wait to hear the right boogey words which impell them into action. Think of them as Manchurian Constituents, ready to board buses and shout slogans and carry signs thrust into their hands when they hear certain phrases that have been programmed into their small brains.
So you vote for the mainstream guy, but you get the rabid Equine. He's the beard the Party wears to gain a majority. You vote for Bill Nelson, you get Schumer the Tumor. You vote for Bill Nelson, you get Harry Reid. You vote Nelson, you get Barbara Mikulski. You get Dick Durbin. You get Barbara Boxer. When he gains enough seniority, you'll get Al Franken, too.
This is the Howard Dean Donkey Party. It isn't going to change. Well, it will, but the days of the more centrist Democratic Leadership Council are long gone. It's getting more and more left-wing. For those of us who watched the Democratic Primaries in 2008, there were tell-tale clues. The Eastern hard left Donks were chafing under the more Centrist Clintons and their pet DNC chairman, Terry McAuliffe. But the Clintons brought in the donations as no one else in the party at the time could, so the Clintons called the tune and the rest of the party capered about obediantly. That doesn't mean they liked it.
Dean is another story. Dean can, through a TV screen, palpably radiate his insane hatred for Republicans and by extension, for the American traditionalism and values they represent. You could cook a Cornish game hen in the radiance of Dean's venomous tirades when he unleashes them.
Weiner goes on the attack.
[And speaking of politicians that go rabid from time to time, every Pubbie's favorite Democrat-to HATE-Anthony Weiner. Would it surprise you to learn that Weiner learned from the Master, the aforementioned Chuck Schumer? Weiner was an aide to Schumer when The Tumor was in the House, trying to have gun dealers in Wyoming regulated as though they were selling to recently-escaped convicts in Rego Park or drug merchants along Woodhaven Boulevard. After serving on the City Council in New York, Weiner ran for Schumer's House seat in 1999 as The Tumor was trading up to bring his own special brand of poison into the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. Weiner has never gotten less than59%of the vote in 5 elections, so that's why the littleputz is always so smug. I come from Queens, Jackson Heights specifically; I know the area Weiner represents. Gilbert Gottfried could get elected there, bad taste jokes and all.]
"Ja think I'm a cowboy!"
When Mr Obama came along, and showed he had a talent for putting money together and for putting a highly-effective grassroots coalition in play and using the Internet as well, out went the centrists. I knew Mrs Clinton's was done in January 2008, when Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. Ted's signature issue throughout his career had been health care, which is also strongly associated with Hillary and wasn't with Obama at that time. Maybe Ted never forgave her for screwing it up so badly during the Clinton years, which she undoubtedly did, leaving the Republicans in charge of both the Senate and the House during most of the final years of his life. Kerry-the-Sailor-Man had already endorsed Mr Obama. Others followed suit. Maybe the entire caucus resented her for Bill Clinton's turn to "Triangulation" as an act of self-preservation, saving his own Presidency by essentially abandoning the Congressional Democrats. The Donks had won big in the 2006 mid-term elections, a sign that the country was turning away from the political center. Hillary was toast, and the Donkeys were in full gallop Leftward for the general election. The Donks had had their fill after sixteen years of Clintons.
The leftward lurch of the US continued through the 2008 elections, helped along by the economic downturn, mortgage banking implosion, TAPR and Detroit bailouts and calls for subsidies for many industries as long as the subject was on the table. When Republicans start tossing around collectivist cures to economic and societal woes, they are going to lose out to the party that always prefers socialist solutions.
The Donkeys do have a critical weakness that victory in politics brings out. The Party leadership and their camp followers in the media, in academia, in the blogosphere and in the left-leaning nonprofits are horrifyingly, excruciatingly, condescendingly elitist. Not in the Old Money sense of the word, but a self-appointed elitism based on acceptance of the model and forms of Progressivism. They are just smarter than anyone else. University trained, good grades in all the "right" subjects, a solid career in public service or it's close private analog. Aware of the tragedies and foibles of their unenlightened fellow humans, they hear a call the unworthy are deaf to, a sublime summons to organize mankind for the sake of mankind. Even if it's against the will of mankind. So for the greater good of mankind it is necessary to hoodwink mankind. They know they are worthy, they are special, they are better because they hear that call and others do not.
So generally speaking, the Donks begin to steamroller their visions. Whether the Bill Nelson's of the party are truly with them ideologically or not doesn't matter. They had better toe the line, to vote as the party demands. Having a political party at the national level at all means you are going to have to accept compromise as a fact of life and vote en masse when your leadership makes a case for it; that's life in politics. But when the Leftist Donkeys take the bit in their teeth that dynamic changes, and the more moderate Democrats become true party "backbenchers," with radicalized, redistributionist reformers out to remake this "zero-sum" world. And the Republicans become, well "What Republicans?"
The rank and file Donks and the rest of the public would probably rebel if the full extent of the corrective surgery were revealed. So they obfuscate, they generalize, they retreat behind carefully crafted phrases that seem to fall from the lips of every Donk caught out where a reporter can question them, simulatenously and verbatim; bromides that reveal nothing except the inner goodness of the speaker and his Party.
They went too far post 2008. No jobs materialized from that orgy of pork and debt known as The Stimulus Package. Businesses surprisingly (to anyone who did not study the 1930s and New Deal), un-patriotically, did not expand and hire more employees in the wake of new taxes and new regulations being tweeted and emailed from Speaker Pelosi high above Planet Earth in her US Government Gulfstream.
And then The Horror began. A self-organizing group of people aghast at the extent of government growth being promulgated started to show up at what the Donks thought were going to be routine dog-and-pony Town Hall meetings about the health care proposals and ask unplanted questions.
Moreover, they demanded answers and just would not be shut-up, put off or put down. And the more the elitists tried to dismiss them, the more they came back and with greater intensity. The elites made the mistake of writing it off to racism, or fear of the unknown, or religious intoxication, anything but what it really was. A spontaneous, grassroots rebellion against everything the Progressives hold dear, everything the leadership of the Democrat Party has become in the last several decades.
And anyone who kicks Arlen (Scottish Law) McSpecter around earns a warm spot in my heart.
