Democrats Unhinged?

Commentary by Greg Lewis / TheRant.US
November 4, 2005

I've really been trying to make sense of the Democratic strategy of late — let's put aside for a moment the fact that I seriously question whether that's even possible. Are Dems really so bereft of serious issues to address that they have to keep flogging this "Bush lied" thing until it eventually sinks them?

The questions I have to ask are these: "Why are they continuing to go on in such an apparently irrational manner? Do they actually know that there's a smoking gun out there — maybe in the form of an e-mail or memos or something of the sort — that's going to implicate Bush and Cheney and Rove in lying about WMDs? Or are they just grasping blindly and desperately at anything they can in order to seize another news cycle? Or are they so beholden to the unhinged leftist money that flows in from wackos such as George Soros to organizations like MoveOn.org that they have to keep pushing the leftist agenda, even though it shows little promise of going anywhere?"

I'm just trying to get inside the liberal collective (pun intended) mind and figure out what's driving the seemingly dead-end tactic of pursuing an investigation of the Bush administration for, I guess, falsifying intelligence.

Can you imagine, for instance, that a national political party has been highjacked by the left lunatic fringe? More and more I think it's true that the Democrats have been forced to give in to the folks with the money. I occasionally listen to Air America, and it's just unimaginable how puerile their programming is. I've heard 10-year-olds in name-calling fights who were able to generate more legitimate content than these bozos. (I can't imagine that WROC radio 950 in Rochester, New York, where I live, is able to attract serious local ad revenue with this kind of programming; it will be interesting to see how they're doing in the ratings.)

At any rate, it still seems unfathomable to me that Harry Reid would pull such a public stunt as shutting the Senate's doors if he didn't have something to go on. It seems as if the consequences of coming up empty would be so devastating that it just wouldn't be worth the risk. Or maybe they're just that blind and stupid and core-valueless. They certainly don't show any signs of relenting.

But wait! There just might be an answer, a wild card in this whole Dem charade. The mainstream media! I've failed to take into account the fact that the media are lapping up Harry Reid's histrionics, and they'll continue to do so ad infinitum, not to say, ad nauseam. MSNBC ratings chump Chris Matthews will headline it, and CNN's Andrea Mitchell will ask unutterably stupid and obvious leading questions to the lefties she interviews, and various other leftie flaks, from Wolf Blitzer (who still seems to be taken somewhat seriously by news junkies) to Keith Olbermann (who has long since relinquished any claim whatever to credence) will flog this non-event mercilessly until it results in yet another non-event. It's actually difficult to believe that the news organizations don't show a bit more sympathy to the oil industry, considering the number of dry holes they've attempted to exploit lately.

There you have it: the unholy triumvirate of 'stupid' (in the sense of 'disgustingly overabundant'; the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, for instance, has 'stupid game') money, Democrat Party leadership that couldn't find a meaningful direction with a GPS, and the mainstream media. Where's the risk for Harry Reid? When you think about it, he's really putting nothing on the line. If this fishing expedition doesn't pan out, well, on to the next one. Bound to get a bite or two if you move around enough.

And there's less than no chance that the networks or CNN or MSNBC or the mainstream print rags will ever call the Dems out on this sort of wasted effort.
That's precisely what the Democrat "strategy" has devolved to: a series of fishing expeditions based on the left's collective loathing of George W. Bush and of the values on which America was built. Anything to undermine the effort to combat global terrorism (in case you haven't checked lately, Europe is beginning to go up in flames as a result of its "tolerance" of Islam) and anything to undermine the spread of Democracy would seem to be the Democrats' rallying cry. The fact that Senate Democrats, the occasional delusional billionaire, and the mainstream media support this cause is all the more reason to continue to promote relentlessly the values on which George W. Bush's Presidency rests.