Faster Liberal Street Fighter, Kill, Kill!
The blogs are talking about Pat Robertson’s un-Christ like call for assassination today. (A search on Technorati brings up nearly 50K posts discussing “Pat Robertson” today). The media is covering it.
So where are the Democrats on this statement, a day after he said it?
Yup, the sound of our little friends the crickets is all you hear.
Al Sharpton on Hardball is the only Democrat I’ve seen respond to this gift from one of the leaders of America’s Taliban. He rightly pointed out that Robertson was speaking like a terrorist. That’s it. Rev. Al is the only one.
How can this party ever launch an effective comeback when it can’t even respond to political opportunities like this? The Republicans strike back swift and loud when a Democratic leader, or even any liberal celebrity or writer, says anything even remotely objectionable. Hell, they yell louder when what the Democrat says is true (cf nearly anything Howard Dean says).
Yet here we have a former candidate for the Republican nomination in 1988. He is a huge fundraiser for Republican causes and candidates. He has demonstrable ties to the Abramoff scandal. We need to make him the poster boy for the modern political party. He epitomizes the eliminationist rhetoric that is a stock strategy of the Theocratic Right.
Why this silence? Yes, I know it’s only been a day, but the 2006 campaign is just around the corner. While it is important to design our own program to run on, it’s also important to show why the party in power must be rejected, and rejected firmly. While the Democrats remain silent, the Republicans launch a full bore smear campaign against a grieving mother, as well as tying her to the Democrats. Why do our supposed leaders continuously allow this to continue?
It is not enough to simply wait for Bush to become unpopular enough for the Democrats to take back Congress by default. It’s time to highlight the extremist element that now runs this country. It won’t take a lot of explanations, like trying to boil down Delay’s corruption, or demonstrating how Bush lied us into a war of choice. Most people are uncomfortable with religious scolds who tell them how to live or who assert bigoted things from the pulpit. Robertson is the Republican Cotton Mather. He’s the 21st Century Father Coughlin. We have to make him the story of the modern Republican Party. It will be easy to do: he’s said tons of objectionable things, usually with a camera aimed at his hateful mug.
As Stephen Pizzo puts it in his excellent piece at Alternet, General Dean’s Hollow Army:
So, instead of bemoaning the shallowness of today’s news media, go ahead and just use them. It’s okay, they actually like it. It makes their job easier if you just cut to the chase and tell them what the news is, otherwise they have go find it themselves. They hate it when that happens.
Pizzo, of course, is making the point that the DC Democrats are all too unwilling to attack, to fight:
They are a scared and beaten bunch. Their nerves have been shattered and frayed by ten years of no-holds-barred bombardment from GOP storm troopers. Democrats now suffer from the political version of post-traumatic stress syndrome, flinching at any sound or movement that might trigger an enemy counter attack.
Pity poor General Dean. He inherited an army that can no longer fight. Instead they surrender faster than Italian soldiers offered the choice between a fight or chocolate bars and American cigarettes. Dean’s troops have no fight left in them. They need a rest. A long rest.
Some will be afraid to attack a “religious” leader, but Pat Roberson stopped being one of those a long time ago. He’s a politician. A REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN AND FUNDRAISER. Every Democrat should say that on every show they appear on. To every reporter they talk to. “Well, as an American who believes in the rule of law, I can only ask why President Bush hasn’t repudiated Pat Robertson. I can only ask when Republicans who have accepted contribution from this man who uses terrorist rhetoric haven’t given ALL of it back.”
They say when your enemy is drowning, you should throw him an anchor. Given Bush’s recent poll numbers, rising gas prices, an economy that is leaving more and more Americans behind and an increasingly unpopular war, the Republicans are looking pretty soggy. Pat Robertson can be the Republicans anchor. The Democrats need to tie him to the ankles of every Republican they can.
If they don’t, or are unwilling, the way is clear for another party to do it. As Pizzo continues:
Which brings me to an observation my pal Tony Seton made in an email to me this morning: “This would be so the time for the eruption of a third party to take 30 congressional seats.”
I suspect most non-Republicans, (and the growing number of former Republicans) feel the way I do. They find little in either party to inspire or motivate them to even bother voting any longer. If the Dems insist on putting up one of their tired old-guard leaders, like Hillary and Biden, then they will lose four elections in a row.
So, Tony is right, this is a rare moment of opportunity for solid and sane independent candidates. And they should grasp it because the field has opened for them in ways not available before. In the past independents didn’t have a chance because they lacked the financial support and organizing muscle of a party apparatus. But there is a valuable lesson for independents in what Cindy Sheehan pulled off down in Crawford this month. I don’t even have to tell you what it was, because you have been bombarded with Sheehan’s protest on the news for two solid weeks.
It is past time for the Democrats to demonstrate that they are a viable political party, or someone else will. Hell, there is a good chance that some Republican will do it in ’08, offering to save THAT party from the extremists running it now. If the Dems don’t step up, they’ll miss a prime opportunity to recover much of the ground that has been lost to the right.
Update [2005-8-24 7:10:38 by Madman in the Marketplace]: Since I first posted this at LSF, I found that Jesse Jackson has also spoken out
Separately, the Rev. Jesse Jackson issued a statement denouncing Robertson’s remarks as “morally reprehensible and dangerously suggestive.”
crickets via U of NE Entomology Dept.
Robertson Time cover via rotten dot com.
Title thanks to Keith Olbermann
