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Quote of the Day: Why Is It Always Our People?
“Why is it always our people? Why us? Bork, Thomas, Alito, and now Kavanaugh. Why us? Because it’s a noble cause in their eyes to destroy a conservative judicial candidate, and I hope it blows up in their face. I hope politically they pay a price for this … losing [the confirmation fight] is not enough, they need to pay a price at the ballot box.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
He is right. Until the Democrats pay a price at the ballot box their incivility will only increase. When you are trying to train a dog not to make messes on the floor you need to rub their noses in the mess they made and say “No.” If you think what they did to Kavanaugh is acceptable, if you want to give political violence a pass, if you are good with virtue-signaling mobs destroying peoples lives stay home on November 6, or go ahead and vote Democrat. If you are tired of this behavior, vote them out of office.
Traditionally the out-of-power party makes big gains in the election after a close Presidential race.And as Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) keeps saying all the Democrats needed to get that kind of sweep was not act crazy. But they cannot manage even that low bar.
If the Republicans end up holding the House and making gains in the Senate, that should send a powerful message from the electorate to the Democrats. But for that to happen people have to turn out and vote, and vote against the Democrats.
I leave readers with this thought:
Remember, remember, the sixth of November,
The Kavanaugh smear and plot.
I know of no reason why the Kavanaugh smear
Should ever be forgot.
Vote.
Published in Politics
This will always be asymmetrical. Conservatives are generally inclined to find politics to be a necessary evil to protect the private sphere and its values. Republicans have always had a harder time building a farm system of professional politicians because it is antithetical to a life in the normal dimension. So the GOP often winds up with unpolished candidates without canned answers for every issue like Christine O’Donnell or Judge Moore (or Donald Trump, for that matter).
Democrats increasingly find all personal meaning in politics and policy. The idea that there is a shared, diverse private sphere in which people of different religions of politics interact is itself something inimical and evil. Environmentalism as a religion, overregulation for its own sake, high taxes as a form of justice, the identity politics of the moment or some other assault on the normal or conventionally moral sensibilities and food purity fetishes all must be imposed as moral and political imperatives. All else must be crushed. “Civility” as a social norm is a fossil from the targeted private sphere. “Civility” as a term of the moment used to attack infidels and thus advance the narrative is something quite different.
Democrats are in an odd place. The energy gained by mobilizing affluent white airheads with the Narrative means (1) further purification of the party until it represents a convention of university ideology commissars; (2) a loss of support among normals of color and (3) an political opportunity for free-market, pro-constitution forces to reset the agenda, an opportunity that will very likely be missed.
Just as after the Democrats lost the White House in 1968, 1980 and 2000, the midterm election cycle will teach them nothing if it turns out badly (with their losses in 2002 being the best example of that — the only lesson there was not to nominate the openly looney Howard Dean, and opt for the quieter but just-as-progressive John Kerry).
Every time they’ve lost control of the presidency for the past half century, they haven’t moderated in the following presidential election, but instead have doubled down and nominated a candidate to the left of the guy who lose four years earlier (Carter and Gore both moved to the left after their losses, but were considered the more moderate of the Dems’ options in 1980 and 2000). The party’s activist base is going to demand a hardcore progressive candidate in 2020, so that only a loss then might convince enough of the rest of the party they’ve gone too far left (and it took three straight presidential election losses before the activists toned it down in 1992 and allowed Clinton to run as a moderate against GHWB).
Then giving them a thumping in 2018 is only a necessary but not sufficient condition. I’m good with that as a reason to give them a thumping.
Imbalance of mass media coverage of incidents of political violence in the United States:
https://fee.org/articles/the-danger-in-media-telling-only-half-the-story-on-political-violence
It’s very simple.
Attacks by right-wing nutjobs are indications of a possible trend, or at least might be, so those need to be presented on the national news and highlighted to the maximum extent possible.
Attacks by left-wing nutjobs are simply minor local stories. Even if they are frequent they are not national news. They are just of interest locally, and the fact that they are frequent just underscores their unimportance. After all, the key part of the word news is “new.” If they are frequent they are noise, not news.
…and yet, responding at the ballot box will only poor gasoline on the fire of Democrats insatiable lust for political power and their deranged hatred of anyone who opposes them.
I’m convinced that Tuesday will be a good day for the good guys. I’m equally convinced that Wednesday will be a very dark day for our republic when these lunatics respond.
While I agree with your statement, 1994 was another off-year election where the Democrats got a major shellacking. Yes, Bill Clinton won in 1992, but with less than a 50% majority due to Ross Perot, and without Perot, G. H. W. Bush might have squeaked by. “Hillary Care” was not liked by the majority of Americans, and Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” finally broke the Democrat majority in the House.
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But . . . but . . .
but Orange Man Bad!!
>:^|
I hope my saying this doesn’t jinx the election for the Republicans, but my sense is that the Kavanaugh hearings may have pushed many women Democrats too far. Women have husbands, sons, grandfathers, grandsons, sons-in-law, fathers-in-law, and brothers. Women may not be talking too much about their fear of living in a world without due process, the rule of law, and the rights of the accused, but they may be feeling it. I’m guessing the Democrats went too far this time. I think we will see Republicans holding onto their majority. At the moment, Republicans may look like the party that is more likely to protect the little guy.
No matter who wins, the Left will act like lunatics. If they win, they’ll be frothing at the mouth to start every investigation imaginable and stop those that were actually unearthing some valuable information. If they lose, they’ll be frothing at the mouth to protest that the election was fixed, unfair and untrue. Sheesh.
You know, when Obama won in 2008, I thought to myself that at least the left would finally calm down after 8 years of shrieking about George Bush.
But even during the Obama years they just got crazier.
Anyone who thinks the left will EVER be satisfied is fooling himself.
For most people I know on the left, Progressivism IS their religion.
And they deal with heretics exactly how all true believers treat heretics.
Clinton campaigned as a moderate, but governed in 1993-94 mostly as a progressive. That’s what let to the ’94 shellacking, and since Clinton had done the same thing in 1979-80 in Arkansas and was then thrown out by the voters, he went back to Dick Morris after the ’94 rout and followed his triangulation strategy by doing things like signing welfare reform, and that allowed him to win in 1996 over Dole (Obama in contrast, won re-election after the 2010 shellacking, but used his ‘phone-and-a-pen’ executive order strategy to continue governing like a progressive, and got the Dems shellacked again in 2014).
Prager said it best this week. Their smears and lies are justified because we’re all Nazis. When you’re opposing Nazis, the rules of civility don’t apply.
The angriest of the left thought Barack Obama wasn’t just lying about some of his political positions in 2008, he was also lying about his personality, and would turn into a hyper-aggressive alpha male once elected who would go after the Republicans they hated in an overt, not covert matter. But Obama wasn’t that guy, anf it angered them that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld weren’t arrested for war crimes and the FCC hadn’t shut talk radio and Fox News down.
Now, going into 2020, they want ‘their’ Trump to run for president — a hyper-aggressive candidate who if elected really will do things like that to the current guy in the White House (not realizing that Trump’s bark is far worse than his bite, and his governance in terms of policy, not style, has been within the normal conservative parameters. They can’t see it because they’re too busy calling Trump Hitler and waiting for the dark night of fascism to descend upon the country).
They have simple wants:
Then there can be civility.
In many ways I’d take the Clinton of 1994-8, governing with a Republican congress, over anything we had from 2000 to 2016. In that period he seems like a moderate compared to Obama and the now-insane Democratic Party.
If this happens it will be further proof of Russian interference and GOP racist voter suppression.
Those Russians are so canny.
Yes. And if they win, they will ascribe it to their loony left stance and double down. If they lose, they will decide they weren’t loony left enough and double down.
Well put.
I think you may be right. Tonight I plan to remind my kids about how to be aware of their surroundings at school on Wednesday and to make sure they steer clear of large groups of protestors (on either side)…we live in a very blue part of the country in a fiercely blue public shool. I think a Democratic loss might blow the last hinge off. A Democratic win (at least in the House) might do nearly the same thing.
Win or lose, Democrats will red-line the crazy meter.
I expect a sizable Democrat win. In 2016 they slipped and allowed Trump in. This will not be allowed to happen again. I expect them to take the gloves off on cheating and dirty tricks relying on the media and the various governments to cover for them. They thought they had 2016 in the bag, that the fix was in and let their guard down. It is unlikely to happen again.
Lots of ballot boxes to be found in the trunks of cars in any Blue areas with close election races, a la the 2008 Al Franken Senate race in Minnesota (where you could see the same thing with the Keith Ellison AG race after Tuesday night).