Lefties are aglow as protests spread like a rash through Manhattan and other big cities, sure this is just what their side needs.
The offensive protesters took them off the defensive. This is their first jolt of speed since Grant Park and Barack Obama. After many false starts, this is their Tea Party. If they can turn mobs out, what can't they do next?
For one thing, they could mobilize, organize and elect their own candidates. They could elect a really left-wing and liberal president, and huge majorities in the House and the Senate, and have them fix everything.
But wait: They did that three years ago! They elected the Senate's most liberal Democrat, along with supermajorities, and gave them a chance to stop "greed." Their president and congressional majorities did nothing.
They still have the White House, along with the Senate, and they're still doing nothing. The Tea Party began at rock bottom and locked out of power, yet clawed its way upward.
Its "clone" on the left begins near the top with friends in high places, no visible blueprint and no clue whatsoever as to the next step.
The differences between the Tea and Pee parties (which is what some of its members are doing in public) are many, and large. The protests are against "greed," which is a sin, not a program, and therefore hard to pin down.
By contrast, the Tea Party began as a protest against concrete steps by the government -- the Obama stimulus program, the bailouts, Obamacare -- and were specifically programmed at getting them stopped.
They began with rallies, to let politicians know they were out there. When Obamacare was pending, they showed up at constituent meetings to express their displeasure.
When Obamacare passed, they organized, recruited candidates, and campaigned for them, with results ranging from Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, who would be the ridiculous, to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who would be the sublime.
They followed the rules, went through the due process, and, unlike several defeated establishment figures, took it with good grace when they lost. They protested in public places for which they had permits, and inconvenienced nobody.
They did not tie up traffic, annoy people or leave piles of refuse. They were clean, their signs weren't profane (and were often quite funny) and they also picked up their own trash.
In l968, the original hippies had the good sense to get "Clean for Gene" in New Hampshire and elsewhere, knowing rude, crude and boorish plays poorly with voters.
The newer-than-new left seems to have misplaced its sense of expedience, if not of propriety, first in the union wars in Wisconsin and now, it appears, nationwide.
The Tea Party rebelled against particular legislative acts with the intent of evicting the people who passed them, and which were done only by Democrats.
"Greed," on the other hand, is amorphous, and also bipartisan: it refers to CEO paychecks, but also to Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry's yacht, former North Carolina Democrat Sen. John Edwards' house, first lady Michelle Obama's vacations, and the salaries of film stars cheering the protesters.
In 1968, Democrats seeking to oust President Johnson found credible leaders in Clean Gene and in Robert F. Kennedy, and, if there were a President McCain or a President Hillary Clinton in office, theirs would be firmly in place: biracial, "clean and articulate," the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, a former community organizer devoted to redistribution, who prefers "fairness" to revenues.
But their optimal hero is also their target. And who can they put in his place?
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment