Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
I'm tired of hearing conservative friends apologize for President Trump's "go back to where you came from" tweets about the likes of Ilhan Omar. The president has the moral high ground, and the weasel war dance of the mainstream media shouldn't distract us from this fact.
Even his worst enemies (e.g. ex-conservative David Frum) concede that Trump's attacks on the anti-American extremists in the Democratic Party are smart politics. As Tucker Carlson observed in his June 16 keynote at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, a new Axios poll gives the Jew-baiting Somali an approval rating of 9%: "Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — another member of The Squad — was recognized by 53% of the voters; 9% (not a typo) had a favorable view." Not a typo, indeed. When is the last time any American politican had a 9% approval rating? Americans really detest this wretched character, and with good reason. It has nothing to do with race, but with rhetoric that breaks the boundaries of acceptable political discourse, America-hating and Jew-baiting.
But this isn't about trolling the Democrats. It's about principle. President Trump has a gift for asking the obvious questions that the elites avoid, for example: What idiot let Omar into the United States in the first place? Come to think of it, why should we admit immigrants who hate us and hate everything we stand for? I believe that new Americans are as good as old Americans, and sometimes better, if they become Americans with a passion for our principles and love for what we represent. But we are under no obligation to open our national home to our enemies. The liberal globalist idea that we need to bow, scrape and apologize to every foreigner with a grudge against us rankles the American people. That inanity appeals to a few Americans--maybe about 9%, judging from the Axios poll. The rest of us have had it up to here.
Where were our holier-than-thou Democrats when the detestable Ilhan Omar dismissed the murder of thousands of Americans on 9/11 with a wink and a nod and the words, "Some people did something"? We know where they were then Omar claimed that Jews buy the votes of congressmen with cash ("It's the Benjamins, baby"). The Democratic-controlled House passed a limp-noodle resolution deploring anti-Semitism along with hostility to Muslims after 9-11 -- in response to overtly racist statements by Omar. That's right -- racist. Mind if I say it again? Rep. Ilhan Omar is a racist, because anti-Semitism is a species of racism. The false allegation that Jews buy pro-Israel votes with money is an old racist caricature. No-one in the Democratic leadership has the honesty to denounce Omar as a racist.
President Trump's remarks had NOTHING whatever to do about race. He attacked America haters. The color of their skin is irrelevant. By attacking him as a racist, the Democratic leadership has debased the concept of racism. Racism is a wicked and terrible thing. People should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Race hatred and race prejudice are detestable. But the racist here is NOT the president of the United States, but rather Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Omar's racism has consequences. Synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego were the victims of recent mass shootings. Physical assaults against Jews are routine in parts of New York City. Omar's racist rabble-rousing puts lives in danger. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Jews comprised 58% of all hate crimes in the United States during 2018, although Jews are about 1% of the U.S. population. Anti-Semitic lies of the sort that Omar propounds are an incitement to murder and mayhem. The Democrats refuse to discipline their own rogue elements. Someone had to call them out, and President Trump did...
RACIST REPSAC = CASPER dropped in for a drive-by comment at Lawyers, Guns and Murder on Saturday, and he again offered up a variant of his pathetic delusion that there are no communists allied with the Democratic Party in contemporary American politics. Read the verbatim comment here. But to be clear: All Democrats are not socialists or communists. But old school Democrats of the Joseph Lieberman mold are a dying breed. And the Democrat hardline base is clearly populated by a large number of people either formally allied with socialist and communist organizations, or willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with them at protests and rallies and job actions, whatever. We saw this most powerfully at last year's "One Nation" rally in D.C., and earlier this yearin Wisconsin. And we have yet another example from May Day in Los Angeles last week. Zombie has an entry on this, "SEIU drops mask, goes full commie." And following the links takes us to Ringo's blog, "Unions and Communists March Side By Side at May Day Rally - Los Angeles, Ca 5/1/2011."Be sure to check the entire post. Ringo says he's never seen so many communist flags in his entire life. And he's got this video below as well, of the ANSWER contingent --- the ubiquitous neo-Stalinist organization involved in everything from antiwar protests to anti-Prop 8 demonstrations to the anti-SB 1070 marches in Arizona:
So, again, Democrats are not necessarily communists. But the Democrat Party base, made up of self-styled "progressives," are neo-Marxist collectivists who advocate statist redistributionism and social justice. As I've written previously:
In any case, progressives today are not social and economic reformers, or those who're directed toward modernization and social improvement. They're totalitarian ideologues working for the idealized utopia that always historically ends in the terror and the gulag.
The evidence is all around. It's a matter of objective fact. Those like RACIST = REPSAC = CASPER who weasel out of truth recognition are the ideological and intellectual Luddites of the day. Paul Kengor wrote on the Democrat-socialist alliance after the "One Nation" rally last year, "Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet -- Together":
A close look at the Saturday "One Nation" rally in Washington reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the "progressive" left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it happened to include -- in fact, it warmly accepted -- the endorsement of Communist Party USA.
Expectedly, a bunch of the rally's endorsers carried the word "progress" or "progressive" in their title, from People’s Organization for Progress to Progressive Democrats of America. More still unhesitatingly describe themselves as progressive, from racial eugenicist Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood to Norman Lear's heirs at People for the American Way, plus the usual suspects from the "social justice" Religious Left.
And then, too, there was CPUSA.
Why is this so remarkable? It's remarkable because historically, communist involvement at these rallies has been meticulously concealed, hidden from progressives, with the communists using the progressives as props -- as dupes. That the two sides here, on Saturday, happily accepted one another, proudly uniting, shows how far to the left progressives have moved, not to mention their unflagging confidence under the ascendancy of Obama-Pelosi-Reid.
Once more, the majority of rank-and-file Democrats --- who political scientists identify as members of the "party-in-the-electorate" --- are not communists. But the loudest, most activist segments of the Democrat coalition, most importantly SEIU, seen at May Day in Los Angeles, are now clearly aligned with the Communist Party in a coalition of "No Enemies on the Left." According to watchdog website Open Secrets:
During the 2010 election cycle, SEIU spent nearly $15.8 million on advertisements and other communications known as independent expenditures that overtly advocated for or against federal political candidates, with Democrats benefiting from almost all of them.
I do not believe RACIST REPSAC = CASPER is a communist. He may be an anti-Semite, in addition to being a racist, and he's definitely a progressive. But that doesn't matter much to the foregoing analysis. The post shows conclusively the infiltration of the Democrat Party by the long-term ideological enemies of the United States. It's fact. That said, facts to not penetrate the world of blind hatred of RACIST REPSAC = CASPER, so this is just for the record, once again. But be warned: Pathetic RACIST REPSAC = CASPER, unfortunately, is potentially even more dangerous than those hoisting banners on the street, for he works in the Alinsky mold of destroying American greatness from within. You gotta watch out for these people. They'd kill you if they get the chance.
When the New York Times starts playing Taps for your party, you know your ideological program is truly circling the crapper.
And it's not just the idiotic focus on reproductive rights issues and the faux "war on women." When the foundation of your political agenda is to demonize traditional white people as racist flyover rubes, it's no surprise when those same people run from your candidates like a boatload of West African Ebola patients.
WASHINGTON — For all the finger-pointing among Democrats over Tuesday’s election calamity, the White House, Congress and party establishment all share responsibility for weaknesses that the defeats laid bare, critics say, and should confront them as the 2016 contest takes shape.
The problems are fundamental, involving questions of where Democrats focus their party-building efforts, what voters they talk to, and most crucial, what they say to those voters. Missing this year, many Democrats say, was a broad economic message to enthuse supporters and convert some independents.
While the Democrats’ loss of their Senate majority owed much to the fact that they were defending so many seats in the Republican-friendly South and West, that dynamic only underscored the lost promise of Barack Obama’s famed 2004 declaration that there is no red and blue America, only a United States of America — a belief he reiterated, “for all the cynics who say otherwise,” on Wednesday.
However naïve his pronouncement — both then and now — as a candidate in 2008 Mr. Obama built up organizations and hopes among Democrats even in conservative places like Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho. In February 2008, more than 14,000 people jammed a Boise State University hall to hear him speak. “They told me there weren’t any Democrats in Idaho,” Mr. Obama exclaimed. “But I didn’t believe them.”
Yet during his presidency, the national party has set aside that build-it-and-they-will-come approach and allowed the 50-state strategy that Howard Dean, the former chairman, oversaw to wane, focusing instead on Democratic strongholds and battlegrounds. And rarely has Mr. Obama visited states that are not Democratic blue or swing-vote purple.
“We’ve suffered from the neglect of the campaign committees out here,” said Larry LaRocco, a former Idaho congressman. He and other state Democrats had sought help from the national party for local Democrats, given hopes kindled by Idaho Republicans’ infighting and flawed candidates. Despite Tuesday’s Republican wave, Idaho Democrats did gain a state legislative seat and came close in other contests. “With some resources in here we could have a field day,” Mr. LaRocco insisted.
But even he does not argue that conservative Idaho should be a party priority, only that to forfeit states and regions ensures Democrats cannot compete.
More broadly, Democrats across the country are increasingly debating how or even whether they should be doing more to win voters largely lost since the 1960s civil rights era — men, and especially working-class white men. Some Democrats are resigned, if not content, to all but give up since white men are a shrinking share of the electorate, while the expanding ranks of single women and Latino, African-American and young voters strongly favor Democrats. But while that gives Democrats the edge in picking presidents, it hurts them in midterm elections because so many of their supporters skip voting in nonpresidential years, leaving a whiter, older and less female electorate that favors Republicans.
The midterm drop-off of Democrats’ core supporters “has reached historic levels,” Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, analysts at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote after the election.
When combined with white men’s overwhelming support for Republicans, the outcome, as on Tuesday, is Democrats’ defeat. In North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa — states where Democrats lost Senate seats after campaigns that emphasized abortion rights, birth control coverage and pay equity for women — support from female voters was disappointing, and swamped by men’s margins for the Republicans.
In North Carolina, where more than a third of voters were white men, Senator Kay Hagan lost their votes by 42 points, 27 percent to 69 percent, exit polls showed. Senator Mary L. Landrieu got support from just 15 percent of white men who voted in Louisiana’s multicandidate contest, a result that helps explain why she is considered likely to lose a Dec. 6 runoff election against the Republican Bill Cassidy.
Yeah, well, I guess all that emerging Democrat majority palaver was just a bunch of crap all along. Brain-dead leftists have been marinating in the hope-and-change myths for so long now that the reality is coming as really quite a shock. Whites are still 75 percent of the midterm voting population. It's going to be quite a few more election cycles until all the so-called "old, racist white people" die off. Meanwhile, the Democrat-uterus losers can't even hold onto their numbers among Latinos, women, and Millennials.
She had a killer interview with Harris Faukner on Fox this morning. She's spunky and fired up. I love her message. Last night's primaries were a disaster for the Democrats, and she's expecting the GOP to sweep into power and start shutting down the left's radical agenda next January.
It's no wonder Democrats are now trying to destroy her, alleging her campaign spots have invoked the dreaded "great replacement theory."
Stefanik rejects any tie between party rhetoric and racist violence as Cheney criticizes Republican leadership.
WASHINGTON—Some GOP lawmakers are calling for Republican Party leaders to forcefully denounce white supremacy, after the deadly shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., sparked renewed focus on political rhetoric related to race and immigration.
Eleven of the people shot at the supermarket were Black, and two were white. In documents posted online that police think the alleged shooter wrote and compiled, he cited racist conspiracy theories he discovered on Internet message boards. At several points, he condemns both Democrats and Republicans as being controlled by a Jewish conspiracy.
In the documents, the writer presents racist and anti-Semitic views and references the “great replacement,” a conspiracy theory centered on the notion that whites are being systematically replaced with other racial groups and immigrants. Police said he targeted the grocery store because of its location in a Black neighborhood. In one document, he attacks immigration as “ethnic replacement.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, in which 10 people were killed, Democrats and some Republicans who are vocal critics of former President Donald Trump and his political movement called for other GOP lawmakers to condemn white supremacist rhetoric. Mr. Trump rose to prominence during his first presidential campaign in part by deploying harsh language about illegal immigrants that his critics said often was dehumanizing and racist.
After a woman was killed at a 2017 march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Trump wavered on condemning the marchers, at one point saying there were “very fine people, on both sides.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), who was kicked out of the Republican House leadership last year after sharply criticizing Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, said House GOP leaders have enabled white nationalism and anti-Semitism and must renounce those views within the party. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Ms. Cheney tweeted.
Back in February, she said party leaders should have been tougher on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) for speaking at an event organized by a white nationalist.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) tweeted that the “replacement theory they are pushing/tolerating is getting people killed.” Mr. Kinzinger, who isn’t running for reelection, said Republicans need to oust Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, along with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).
“We’ve never supported white supremacy,” Mr. McCarthy said Monday night. “The suspect is the very worst of humanity and for political individuals to try to make some political game out of this shows how little they are.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, Liz Harrington, said, “It is truly disgusting to use an evil act of mass murder by a mentally ill individual against your political opponents. But nothing is beneath the Democrat Party. Our prayers are with the victims and their families.”
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House Republican Whip, said Republicans have been very vocal against white nationalism. He also referenced the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball game practice that left him badly wounded, saying he knew from experience that the aftermath of a tragedy is a time for prayers, not ratcheting up the rhetoric and blame.
Ms. Stefanik, in a statement, said she was “heartbroken and saddened to hear the tragic news of the horrific loss of life” in Buffalo. Her camp rejected the idea that being tough on illegal immigration amounted to promoting white supremacy or racism.
Stefanik senior adviser Alex deGrasse said any attempt to tie the shooting to Ms. Stefanik “is a new disgusting low for the left, their Never Trump allies” and the media. “Ms. Stefanik has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.”
The comments came after scrutiny of her past campaign ads. The Washington Post reported that Ms. Stefanik’s campaign committee paid for Facebook ads last year that said Democrats were seeking a “permanent election insurrection” by giving millions illegal immigrants citizenship in an attempt to bolster their election chances...
Demonization, the effort to portray a political rival as an inhuman monster, has long been a means to mobilize public support. The ancient Romans did it. The Soviets didn’t know there was another option.
While negative campaigning has long been a tried and true method for winning elections in the free world, actual demonization was fairly rare, particularly in the United States, actual demonization was a fairly rare phenomenon until after the turn of the century. But in recent decades, and with unprecedented intensity and venom since 2016, the Democrats have aped the Soviets and adopted demonization as their main political tool for winning elections. The primary object of their hatred is former President Donald Trump.
Last Sunday, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi showed how it is done in an interview with CNN. The interview focused on the Democrat Party’s concern that the conservative majority in the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the federal mandate for abortions and letting the separate states decide for themselves whether to place limitations on the procedure. Concerns among Democrats and the party’s progressive base rose exponentially earlier this month when in a shocking break with the past, a source at the Supreme Court leaked a draft judgment on the issue authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito to Politico.
Sunday, CNN‘s Dana Bash asked Pelosi if the fact that conservatives are now the majority on the Supreme Court means that the Democrats dropped the ball on abortion rights. Pelosi rejected Bash’s assertion and instead blamed Trump.
Brimming with rage Pelosi seethed, “Who would have ever suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States, waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far-right, and appointing those anti-just freedom justices to the court?”
In that one sentence, Pelosi managed to demonize Trump, demonize Trump voters and delegitimize three sitting justices of the Supreme Court. It bears noting that as Pelosi made these remarks, Democrat activists were staging threatening demonstrations outside the homes of conservative justices.
Pelosi’s statement wasn’t an isolated event. It was part of an overall partisan strategy ahead of the Congressional elections in November. President Joe Biden gave voice to it in a speech last Friday where he spoke of “Ultra MAGA Republicans.” Just to make clear what he was talking about, he called Trump “King MAGA.” MAGA, or Make America Great Again, was of course Trump’s election slogan in 2016. Since then, MAGA has become shorthand for Trump supporters.
The obvious purpose of Biden’s coinage of “Ultra MAGA” was to link all Republicans to Trump and to make the 2022 elections a referendum on Trump, the demonic “creature” even though Trump isn’t on the ballot and the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress.
The administration is so excited by the new term their invented that Biden’s spokeswoman bragged that “Ultra MAGA” was the product of six months of market research.
Wednesday, Politico reported that the progressive fundraising giant Moveon.org is launching a $30 million “Us vs. MAGA” ad campaign ahead of November. Moveon.org executive director Rahna Epting told the progressive online publication that the purpose of the campaign is to tie Republicans to Trump, who all right-thinking people hate because he threatens the very existence of America.
The idea of using demonization as a political tool was most powerfully introduced to radical US politics by political guru Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s 1971 book Rules for Radicals became the political bible for revolutionary leftists in the Democrat Party. There Alinsky warned his disciples that in light of the unpopularity of their America-hating agenda, the way to win is by distracting the public from their actual agenda and to focus their target audience instead of on their political opponents, whom they would defeat by presenting him as the devil.
One of Alinsky’s star pupils was a young coed at Wellesley College named Hillary Rodham, better known by her married name Hillary Clinton. Alinsky’s methods were adopted and taught in the 1990s by a community organizer in Chicago named Barack Obama.
As the US moves into elections mode, the last thing the Democrats want to talk about is policy. The only issue they may want to run on is abortion, and it’s unclear how popular the issue will be in swing states and districts. The more the US public feels the impacts of the Democrats’ economic, energy, and social policies, the lower the party’s polling numbers drop. Every day another shocking story appears about the fruits of the Democrats’ revolutionary agenda.
This week, for instance, the school board in Kiel, Wisconsin, a small town of some 3,000 people decided to charge three middle school boys with sexual harassment.
Their crime?
They didn’t refer to a girl in their class as “they” or “them” after she said she decided she is no longer willing to be referred to as “her” or “she,” because she no longer considers herself a female.
According to Critical Race Theory expert Christopher Rufo, depending on the questions asked, between 60-80% of Americans oppose revolutionary sexual policies. The more stories appear like the one from Kiel, Wisconsin, or even more distressing ones about children given sexual hormones by school officials without their parents’ knowledge or consent, the more voters abandon the Democrat Party in fear.
The Democrats’ response to the public’s rejection of their agenda isn’t to move toward the public by ending their support for sex-change operations for minors. They remain stridently committed to their agenda.
The Democrats’ response to the public’s rejection of their policies is to castigate the Republicans as the evil acolytes of Trump who share his demonic characteristics – first and foremost, “racism.”
Last weekend, an 18-year-old racist antisemite murdered 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Biden, Democrat politicians from coast to coast, the progressive media, and Hollywood stars all rushed to blame Trump, Fox News, and the entire Republican Party for the slaughter. Never mind that the same day, a Chinese man motivated by hatred of Taiwanese entered a church attended by Taiwanese immigrants in California and opened fire killing one and wounding four other worshippers. Last December, a black racist mowed down six people, and wounded 77 more, (all white) at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Republicans didn’t blame Biden and the Democrats.
Tuesday, Democrat advertising executive Donny Deutsch explained the Democrats’ post-Buffalo massacre efforts on MSNBC. In Deutsch’s words, the Democrats’ mission post-Buffalo is to, “Brand every Republican,” as the party of “racist, violent replacement theory.”
“Take a branding iron, put it on them so any mainstream Republican has to wear that badge.”
Notably, the Democrats’ “Ultra-MAGA campaign hasn’t raised any concern among Republicans. Indeed, immediately after Biden launched it, the Republican National Committee began printing “Ultra MAGA” t-shirts to give away to party donors.
Some 95% of Republicans voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020. Despite its near-unanimous support, the Democrats’ demonization of the former president did have an impact at the margins of the party and among independent voters. Members of these groups were convinced that Trump and the Republicans are a demonic force that threatens the soul of America.
It wasn’t the likes of Deutsch who convinced them. That job was carried out by a smattering of former Republicans who share the Democrats’ visceral hatred of Trump. In the 2018 Congressional elections, and to an even greater degree in the 2020 presidential race, members of this tiny minority of Republicans appeared nearly around the clock on progressive media organs to castigate Trump and his voters as dangerous, racist and evil. While their overall impact was indiscernible, in all-important swing states where Biden’s margins of victory were miniscule, they appear to have made a difference.
Today the same group of former Republicans is working full throttle at the side of the Democrats to prevent their former party from winning the mid-term elections and taking control of Congress.
Sitting at Deutsch’s side on the MSNBC panel Tuesday was political activist and former Republican Miles Taylor. While serving as a mid-level official in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, Taylor anonymously published an op-ed in the New York Times and a book where he claimed that many officials inside the administration believed that Trump was a danger to the United States. These officials, he said, were working together to subvert Trump’s policies and save America from its duly elected president. Now Taylor is running a well-funded Super-PAC, where “former Republicans” run campaign ads against Republicans.
Taylor explained that the goal is to shame Republicans into leaving the party.
“I tried and failed to save the party in my own little way,” he said.
“We tried to prevent Trump from rising in 2016. Some of us tried from within to contain his reckless impulses. We thought we beat him in 2020, but we didn’t. Trumpism is alive and it’s well and it’s fueling this so that what conservatives need to do is convince other conservatives to quit the Republican Party.”
It’s hard to know what these former Republican conservatives tell themselves when they see empty shelves in supermarkets, $4.00/ gallon gas, cratering stock markets, and boys being persecuted for being boys in schools across America. It’s hard to know what they tell themselves when they see children indoctrinated to reject their biological sex and hate their parents and their country.
But what is clear enough is that through their efforts to demonize their fellow conservatives, former party and former president, these Trump-hating former Republicans enable the progressive revolution. Under the mask of anti-Trump paranoia, this revolution rejects the foundations of the United States and seeks to transform the country from the land of the free and the home of the brave into the land of the unfree, and home of the bullied, cowed and socially engineered.
Everyone knows that the country is more politically polarized than ever, but most don't know why. Data from the highly respected Pew Research Center provides a definitive answer. It's because Democrats have moved sharply to the extreme left.
The Pew report — titled "The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider" — is the latest in a decades-long series of surveys it has conducted to gauge people's views on various key issues, including the size of government, immigration, corporate profits, race relations. The authors of the report note the "divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values ... reached record levels during Barack Obama's presidency. In Donald Trump's first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger."
Given the way politics gets reported these days, it's easy to conclude that the widening gap is the result of Republicans become more extreme in their views. That is, after all, a mantra among Democrats and the press. The GOP is the party of racist, sexist, xenophobic, right-wing extremists, we hear over and over again, while Democrats are but humble centrists.
The Pew data, however, make it clear that the shift toward the extreme has happened among Democrats, not Republicans.
This can be seen in dramatic fashion when you look at where the center of each party was in 1994, and where it is today. Pew used a 10-item scale of political values to determine ideological purity among those who claim affiliation with the two parties. The results show that while the Republican center moved only slightly to the right over the past 23 years, the center of Democratic part shifted far to the left. (See the nearby chart.)
Take a look at specific value questions Pew asks and you can see why.
Pew asks, for example, whether poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. In 1994, 63% of Republicans agreed with this sentiment, as did 44% of Democrats.
This year, 65% of Republicans agreed — a 2-point increase — while just 18% of Democrats did — a 26-point drop.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Democrats used to believe that most people who want to get ahead can do so if they work hard. Today, just 45% of Democrats believe this. Among Republicans, the change was negligible — it went from 73% in 1994 to 77% today.
How about the question of whether racial discrimination is the "main reason many black people can't get ahead these days"?
In 1994, just 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans felt this way. That was 14 years before the U.S. elected a black president.
Now, after eight years of Obama in the White House, 64% of Democrats say racism is the main reason blacks can't get ahead, while 14% of Republicans do.
“One of my objectives, quite frankly, is to lock Willie Horton up in jail.” — Joe Biden, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, bragging Democrats were tougher than Republicans on criminals, 1990.
The nation’s 2022 top-tier fear is crime. Three quarters of Americans say violent crime is a major problem, and getting worse. Democrats’ cashless bail laws, attacks on police, and other liberal soft-on-crime policies have unleashed unrestrained criminality across the country, particularly in Democrat-run cities, where dangerous criminals are no longer locked up in jail. At all. “Arrested-and-released” is now the most common phrase in every crime article.
And this is not just theory to people, or some kind of political talking point. According to a recent Golden/TIPP poll, a record 16 percent of Americans themselves or a family member have been victims of crime — and the distressing numbers are particularly elevated among African Americans, Hispanics, and urban voters, where close to 25 percent — one in four — are crime victims.
Republicans are campaigning hard for the midterms on the real problem of crime — and gaining traction everywhere. The Democrat response: “That’s racist! It’s Willie Horton all over again! Shut up!” ....
To Democrats, Willie Horton is shorthand for: “Racist Republicans using racist dog whistles to get racist votes.” Democrats spit out this name like a two-word incantation, with total confidence that few current voters have any idea what the real story is. Well, let me lay out some essential details — because everything you think you know about Willie Horton is bull...
Leftists are desperate. People are increasingly frustrated with Racism! Racism! Racism! all the time. It's near the bottom of priorities that Americans say are important this year.
In any case, click through at that top link to read the rest. Lots of links embedded in the piece.
I have to confess that of late I have become increasingly pessimistic about the future of our country. For awhile I was hopeful that the electorate would finally cut through the fog of political correctness: the racist, collectivist, America-and-white people-are-guilty party line of the Democratic Party. Not so any more. Both the conservative punditry (with a few notable exceptions) and the Republican establishment are proving as feckless in resisting the left’s attacks, and as unfocused on the Democratic adversary as the Republican congress. The Democrats are at it full bore. Having gotten away with disarming the nation in the face of its enemies, and with promoting systematic racial discrimination, along with racist lynch mobs in the streets, the Democrats are busy on the attack. In their election campaign year, they are accusing Republican candidates of being racist and recruiters for ISIS. The only serious - i.e., bloody-minded - fire coming from the Republican side is directed at Donald Trump. (Think about it – all the Democrats need is a damaged Trump. Then they can condemn Republicans for merely associating with him.) If Republicans want to join Democrats and match their viciousness in taking down the Republican front-runner, Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president.
The most recent explosion of outrage at Trump is his proposal for a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration “until we figure it out” – i.e., figure out how to vet Muslim immigrants so that we don’t allow anymore Tashfeen Malik’s into the country where they are determined to kill innocent Americans. Otherwise perfectly intelligent conservatives have joined the Democrat smear squad in denouncing Trump’s suggestion as unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American. In fact, as a cursory Internet search should convince anyone free of anti-Republican bigotry, Trump’s proposal is not only constitutional (foreigners seeking entry into the country have no rights under the US Constitution – only US citizens do. It is also perfectly legal. There is an actual U.S. code that says the president has the authority to ban “any class” of individuals he deems a threat to the American citizens.
Moreover, Trump’s proposal is obviously sensible – i.e., is justified by a realistic confrontation with the facts. According to a Pew Poll, 64% of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan believe that leaving the Muslim faith should be punished by death. In Afghanistan the figure is 78%. While 64% of Muslims are not active terrorists, there was not a single member of the Muslim community in San Bernardino willing to alert authorities to the hateful, indeed murderous ideas of the shooter couple. Punishing apostasy by death is only a crystallization of the jihadists’ belief that all non-Muslims who refuse to submit to the Islamic faith should be killed. That is what the war that Islamists have declared on us is about. Donald Trump has done the country a service by putting this issue – previously unmentionable – before the American public. Thus far he is the only candidate with the guts to do this, and that is why he is leading in the polls by a wide margin.
According to a 2009 “World Opinion Poll” conducted by the University of Maryland, between 30% and 50% of Muslims in Muslim countries approve of the terrorist attacks on America. If 64% of Muslims think that infidels deserve death – and an impressive percentage approve of the attacks on America and the West – that amounts to between 500 million and 800 million sworn enemies of our country and our culture. Say it’s only a tenth of those numbers. That’s 50 million or more potential killers for Allah, and supporters of killers for Allah. Keep in mind that these terrorists already have chemical and biological weapons. Is there any person not blinded by leftwing ideas that doesn’t think this presents a vetting problem for us in dealing with Muslim immigrants and visitors? Moreover, a vetting problem that we obviously haven’t begun to solve? However, perhaps Trump’s blanket ban, though constitutional, legal and temporary - is also impractical. The details as Trump himself would be the first to admit are still negotiable. A practical plan even one of reduced scope is better than none.
So why are conservatives treating Trump as a pariah? Clinton and Obama have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Christians and non-ISIS Muslims on their hands not to mention the American victims of their rules of engagement. It is they and their party who have undermined the war on radical Islamists for 22 years since Bill Clinton refused to visit the thousand victims of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Democrats have fought to try terrorist soldiers in civil courts where they would be given the rights of American citizens; they have fought to close Guantanamo, and have deliberately released terrorist generals to return to the battlefield and kill more Americans; Democrats have fought to abandon our military presence in Iraq, surrendering a hard won victory to ISIS and Iran; Obama and Hillary overthrew – illegally, immorally and unconstitutionally – the anti-al Qaeda government of Libya and turned that country into a terrorist hunting ground. Where are the Republican litanies high-lighting these betrayals?
In the meantime, jihadist mosques protected by Democrats continue to function – including the one attended by the San Bernardino shooters – the city of New York continues to bar first responders from monitoring mosques to see what they are preaching, 350 Sanctuary cities still refuse to cooperate with Homeland Security. All under the enemy-friendly doctrine that all Muslims belong to a protected species that cannot be scrutinized about their commitment to a religion that preaches hatred of non-Muslims, particularly Jews, and whose avowed goal is the political submission of the entire world to the Islamic faith. On the other side, a Republican/conservative chorus has so tarred and feathered the Republican front-runner who is doing by default the work that they should be doing, that they have made it virtually impossible for him to win a general election. And make no mistake, they have also made it virtually impossible for any Republican candidate to speak frankly about the Democrats’ perfidy and the danger it poses to our country.
How much innocent blood do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have on their hands? How much innocent blood will be spilled in the next four years if Clinton is elected? These are the questions Republicans should be asking, not whether Donald Trump is a bigot. He obviously is not. Impolitic yes. Racist no. Donald Trump has many faults but lack of political courage is not one of them. He seems motivated by concern for the pit into which this country has fallen under an administration with catastrophic priorities and uncertain loyalties. That is what Republicans need to think about when framing their next attacks. Otherwise the future is dim indeed.
I have agreed to participate in a "How to Be an Anti-Racist Book Discussion" on my campus (an event based on the currently "all-the-rage" book by Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist).
Here are the discussion points for the participants for the book discussion, which is to be held on Zoom:
* What did you learn from the book that will help set you on a path to be an antiracist educator? * In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi shares his own experience with racist thinking. How does his honesty help give us space to acknowledge and name our own racist behaviors and attitudes?* Kendi writes, “The only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it—and then dismantle it.” Why does he believe we need to call out racism when we see it, even if it can be uncomfortable to identify?* The book’s central message is that the opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” The true opposite of “racist” is antiracist. “The good news,” Kendi writes, “is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” What does it mean to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? Is there any benefit to the fact that you can’t just decide you are “not racist” or an antiracist and be done with it?
* What is the first step you, personally, will take in striving to be an antiracist? How will you check yourself and hold yourself accountable if you notice you, or someone else, is being racist?* Anyone who values immigrants from European countries and devalues immigrants from Latin America is guilty of racism. Have you ever been guilty of this type of racism? Discuss the unique resilience and resourcefulness people possess if they leave everything in their native country behind and immigrate to another, as Kendi examines in the chapter on Ethnicity. * Identify two practices at the course level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.* Identify two practices at the department level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.* Identify two practices at the institutional level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.* Why do you think it is so hard for people to not assess other cultures from their own cultural standards? How does doing this trap people in racist ideas?
And I gotta say it: Don't get mad a me, bro.
I know there's a huge push on the right to actually shut down thinking, and, in a few cases, to actually completely embrace and evangelize the most wild claims and conspiracies against the radical left and the Democrats (but I repeat myself). At some point, you have to draw a line on how far you'll go to demonize and destroy the other side -- and to defend yourself against the other side. I'm a good person. I want to make things better: "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, then dwell on these things" (Philippians 4:8).
But being good as I am means I will also defend myself. And to the death. And once again, lately, I'm defending myself against a lot of ideological hatred, obsessive leftist anti-conservative and anti-religious bias, and the once-again leftist condescension and hubris on social media that is even stronger than usual when a leftist Democrat "wins" the White House. Back in 2016, Facebook comments and posts I wrote after the election were reported to my college, and the same trolls have come back out of the woodwork this time around, now that I decided to give Facebook another try (for the new era, same as the old era, alas). But nah. Leftist are not driving me off the site this time. I'm sick and tired of their attacks. Defend against the left's hate. Defend against the left's destruction. Defend against the left's lies: "Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said to Him, 'All these things I will give you if you will worship me.' Then Jesus said, "Go, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only'" (Matthew 4:8-10).
The left has abandoned the Lord and is doing the work of Satan. There's no other way, as a Christian, to understand this, and thus we must gather strength in faith and gird for the battles ahead.
So I'm defending myself. I'm holding the line for truth and facts. I mean, ask yourself: Do leftists say and advocate things that have any basis in factual reality (for example, L.A. County's latest total restaurant lockdown is entirely devoid of any basis in scientific fact)? Nah. But frankly, if I'm going to remain employed at my college, then I've (somewhat) got to go along to get along. I've got to at least be professional and collegiate, and it's hard. Longtime readers will know that I've been fighting a ten-year war against radical leftist harassment, cancelling, and multiple attempts to get me fired. And I've been fighting against a college administration that rarely, if ever, gives me the benefit of the doubt, one that in the past has investigated the most absurd claims by anonymous trolls who tagged me and my college in the same tweets (this was after I got a lot of viral coverage for my on-the-ground reporting of the ANSWER/HAMAS protest against Israel, for example, "Communists, Hamas Solidarity Protesters Demand Israel's Extermination in Los Angeles — #ANSWERLA"). It was me who was investigated. I mean,fuck! Trolls had gotten the home phone number of the vice president of academic affairs at my school. They harassed him. They claimed I was "stalking" Cassandra Fairbanks, the erstwhile militant SoCal leftist who volte-face went all Cernovich or something shortly before Trump was elected. Now she's the doyenne of the Gateway Pundit set in D.C. (Weird, I know.) In any case, I had my administration threatening me to get this trolling "stopped," even though I literally had nothing to do with these completely anonymous randos working their evil to make things bad for me. I KNOW WHAT EVIL LEFTISTS DO. Seriously. I had an attorney at one point, and I now have an accommodation with the college on my "private First Amendment activities," as my human resources department labeled my blogging and tweeting at the time.
Therefore sometimes I have to just roll my eyes at folks, on either side, who literally can't entertain an idea that contradicts their political ideology and positions. I blame the left most of all. But I see conservatives copying the left when they engage in the exact same kinds of speech suppression campaigns. (Wayne Dupree? C'mon.) It's out of control, and an honest person should and will call it out, from wherever it may come. (And one more time, it comes overwhelming from the left.)
So, yeah, I'm actually reading Kendi's book, with an open mind, for the college's Zoom book discussion, I'm gonna calling be myself an "anti-antiracist" lol.
And with that, here's Glenn Loury and John McWhorter at the Bloggingheads video. McWorther name-drops Coleman Hughes, at City Journal, "How to Be an Anti-Intellectual," and Kelefa Sanneh, at the New Yorker, "The Fight to Redefine Racism."
It's amazing, actually. I was mostly kidding at first, amid the flamewars, when I called Larisa Alexandrovna an "airhead." But seriously, the woman truly is thick.
I mean, damn! It's not just that she's actually libeling me with a series of pathetic allegations of "racism." It's that her posts have nothing even remotely to do with what serious poeple call "evidence." You know, some kind of empirical fact that normal people use to substantiate truth claims. It's not all that hard -- well, for people who aren't pathological liars.
Ms. Alexandrovna's latest attacks are in response to my suggestion that she's a runner-up "candidate for race-baiter of the year." And that's not a joke. Janeane Garofalo's a cinch for 1st prize, but Larisa's hot on her heels: As she alleged previously, "Donald Douglas, is an ultra-nationalist, openly racist professor of political science." And what was the factual basis for that claim? Well, nothing actually, only that I'm conservative. So, in response to my post today, where I denounced the Patrick Lanzo incident -- fully, comprehensively, and unambigously -- Larisa still can't resist to let go again:
Donald Douglas is really just hoping to show himself as not a racist. He points over yonder and says "see" that is what racism looks like and I don't support that. But if you read his blog you will see a exactly why he is a racist. Douglas then goes on to claim the following:
"Larisa recently attacked me with this odd description, "Donald Douglas, is an ultra-nationalist, openly racist professor of political science." I guess that puts me in good company, with Michelle Malkin, for example: "Malkin and the Racists..."I'm putting up Larisa Alexandrovna with Janeane Garofalo as a candidate for race-baiter of the year."
Odd description? Malkin is a racist. There is no debate on this from rational people, including actual Republicans, not the knuckle-dragging glue sniffing kind. Odd description? Not hardly. It is an entirely accurate description of a Muslim hating, birther peddling, racist, white power nationalist. If those terms offend you, then stop supporting those movements and championing those talking points. Otherwise embrace what you are and get it over with already.
Notice that? Her evidence that I'm racist is that -- wait for it -- Michelle Malkin is racist! And we know that because -- don't hold your breath! -- "rational people, including actual Republicans, not the knuckle-dragging glue sniffing kind," say so!
Well, blow me down! That is devastating. I think there's an actual philosophy of science term for that kind of logic: Argumentum ad verecundiam, which is an appeal to authority. And in Larisa's case, it's not just amorphous "rational people" and "actual Republicans ... it's well, nobody. But wait! She does actually refer quite liberally to one of America's greatest experts on racism, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs!
That's right! Who would have guessed? Charles Johnson is the kind of "rational person" that Ms. Alexandrovna cites as a source of authority for her theories of conservative racism! And then, by logical implication, the libelous claims at LGF provide the evidence that I'm racist by way of Michelle Malkin being racist! Oh well, that's kind of round-a-bout, so let's go to Larisa's earlier post (because remember, Larisa makes allegations with any actual evidence). Note that I took issue with her post, "Republicanistan - A Country of Its Own," which was basically setting the table for her race-baiting smears cited above:
Obama has been attacked for efforts of diplomacy and attempts to dismantle the violence of the previous administration. Although IMHO, he has not gone far enough on many of the issues of diplomacy and ending our illegal war in Iraq - his achievements are still remarkable in this political climate and in such a short-time in office.
The Glennbeckistanians deploy their hatriots
So, while I have no problem with legitimate criticism from both the left and the right (as I have said previously, Little Green Footballs continues to earn my respect) of the Nobel Peace Prize in general and of Obama's award in particular, what I do have a serious problem with is those who attack rather than criticize and not on legitimate points, but out of pure hate.
The only problem there being that Charles Johnson's no longer on "the right." And he hasn't been for a long time now. Not only that, C.J.'s certifiably crazed. We find a new example of his megalomaniacal paranoia virtually every day. My friend John Lilyea had his account blocked most recently. Jonn, who admired C.J., and who stayed out of C.J.'s blog flamewars, had this to say after finding that error message below:
I know you’re so damn petty that you Google your name and chase links looking for LGF infidels…so eat shit, Charles. I hope you get your ponytail caught in your bike spokes, you dick. See, I can be petty, too. Dick.
And just today, Little Green Footballs found evidence of "racism" at this thread at Fox Nation:
The most damning piece of evidence there? A link to Lew Rockwell's homepage. Of course, the Lew Rockwell-types not only hate the GOP, but Rockwell himself is in bed (literally) with the neo-communist left!
Wow, that Larisa's a real Nobel-caliber scientist! Impeccable evidentiary analysis!
And it's like I said earlier today at my post: Airheads like Larisa Alexandrovna have drained the word "racism" of any significant meaning, and thus they've in essence "joined folks like Patrick Lanzo in the racist hall of shame." For in assuming that everything in society is institutionally racist, one automatically condemns blacks to systematic non-achievement: They're always going to be shufflin' fools, looking out for Mr. Charlie. The Democrats love it that way, since they'll always have a dependent lumpenproletariat population to exploit for its dependency. The irony of it all is that it's the Democrats themselves who are the real racists in today's day and age. They can get away with it, and they do so all the time: I mean if a top GOP figure argued that he'd like to string Barack Obama up and castrate the mofo ... well, there'd be hell to pay. But it's okay when you've got the Democratic-leftist race card to play. Hey, come to think of it, maybe Larisa Alexandrovna's pretty clever after all!
They are both Democrats: Joe Biden, the 76-year-old former Vice President, and Ilhan Omar, the 36-year-old freshman Congresswoman. An old white man, with blind spots on race and gender and a penchant for bipartisanship; a young Somali-American Muslim who sees compromise as complicity. To Biden, Donald Trump is an aberration; to Omar, he is a symptom of a deeper rot. One argues for a return to normality, while the other insists: Your normal has always been my oppression.
How to fit those two visions into one party is the question tying the Democrats in knots. What policies will the party champion? Which voters will it court? How will it speak to an angry and divided nation? While intraparty tussles are perennial in politics, this one comes against a unique backdrop: an unpopular, mendacious, norm-trampling President. As Democrats grilled Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, on July 24, their sense of urgency was evident.
The one thing Democrats agree on is that Trump needs to go, but even on the question of how to oust him, they are split. Ninety-five of the party’s 235 House Representatives recently voted to begin impeachment proceedings, a measure nearly a dozen of the major Democratic presidential candidates support. The party’s leadership continues to insist that defeating the President in 2020 is the better path. Half the party seems furious at Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not attacking Trump more forcefully, while the other is petrified they’re losing the American mainstream, validating Trump’s “witch hunt” accusations with investigations into Russian election interference that most voters see as irrelevant to their daily lives.
These divisions have come into focus in recent weeks. Two parallel conflicts–the fight among congressional Democrats, and debates among the 2020 candidates–have played out along similar lines, revealing deep fissures on policy, tactics and identity. A consistent majority of voters disapprove of the President’s performance, do not want him re-elected and dislike his policies and character. Even Trump’s allies admit his re-election hopes rest on his ability to make the alternative even more distasteful.
But for an opposition party, it’s never as simple as pointing out the failures of those in power. As desperate as Democrats are to defeat Trump, voters demand an alternative vision. “You will not win an election telling everybody how bad Donald Trump is,” former Senate majority leader Harry Reid tells TIME. “They have to run on what they’re going to do.”
The Democrats’ crossroads is also America’s. As Trump leans into themes of division, with racist appeals, detention camps for migrants and an exclusionary vision of national identity, the 2020 election is shaping up as a referendum on what the country’s citizens want it to become. This is not who we are as a nation, Trump’s opponents are fond of saying. But if not, what should we be instead?
“That little girl was me.” With this five-word statement at the Democrats’ June 27 debate in Miami, Senator Kamala Harris did not just strike a blow against Biden. She showed where the party’s most sensitive sore spots lie.
Harris explained that she had been bused to her Berkeley, Calif., public school as part of an integration plan; Biden, as a Delaware Senator, had worked to stop the federal government from forcing busing on school districts that resisted integration. On the campaign trail this year, Biden had boasted about being able to work with political opponents, citing his chumminess with Senators who were racists and segregationists. “It was hurtful,” Harris said, “to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States Senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.”
It was a powerful appeal, drawn from the personal experience of a woman of color whose life’s course was altered by the public-policy choices made in the halls of power. What was exposed wasn’t so much a real policy difference–after the debate, Harris took essentially the same position as Biden against mandatory busing in today’s still segregated schools–but a dispute about perspective. Biden, clearly ruffled, became defensive and eventually gave up, cutting himself off midsentence: “My time is up.” Biden remains the front runner, but the line had the ring of a campaign epitaph.
Presidential primaries are always the battleground for political parties’ competing factions, and some of the debates Democrats are enmeshed in now are ones they’ve been having for decades. Swing to the left, or tack to the middle? Galvanize the base, or cultivate the center? Tear down the system, or work to improve it? These familiar questions are now shadowed by the specter of Trump and his movement. If Americans are to reject Trumpist nationalism and white identity politics, what’s their alternative?
With two dozen presidential candidates and the race only just begun, the majority of Democratic voters say they are undecided. But a top tier of five candidates has emerged as the focus of voters’ attention: Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Harris and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. At the moment, it is Warren and Harris who appear on an upward trajectory, while the three male candidates trend downward.
Biden’s pitch to voters is moderation, electability and a callback to the halcyon days of the Obama Administration. Sanders seeks to expand the fiery leftist movement he built in 2016. Warren has staked her campaign on wonkishness and economic populism, while Harris paints herself as a crusader for justice. Buttigieg offers a combination of generational change and executive experience. To imagine each of them in the White House is to conjure five very different hypothetical presidencies come January 2021.
On Capitol Hill, the party has been spread along a similar axis of race, power, perspective and privilege. To address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border, Pelosi pushed a compromise bill this summer that sought to fund migrant detention while protecting the rights of asylum seekers. She was opposed by members of the so-called Squad–a quartet of outspoken freshman Representatives who have become champions of the party’s rising left wing: Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All women of color, all 45 or under, all adept with a Twitter zinger and prone to inflammatory statements, they seek to build a movement and shake up the party–a markedly different theory of change from Pelosi’s dogged insistence on vote counting and the art of the possible.
The ugly sight of a President luxuriating in “send her back” chants laid down a marker for 2020. As much as traditional Republicans might like the President to campaign on a healthy economy, a tax cut that put more money in the pocket of two-thirds of Americans and a slate of new conservative federal judges, Trump plans instead to plunge even further into fear and division. And as much as Democrats might like to talk about health care, climate change and the minimum wage, their candidate will inevitably be dragged into his sucking morass of conspiracy mongering and tribalism.
For a moment, the controversy unified the bickering House Democrats, who passed a resolution condemning Trump’s comments. But behind the scenes, Democrats’ reactions to the spectacle were a test for the electoral theories of their feuding factions. Progressives (and many Republicans) argued that Trump was only making himself more toxic to swing voters. But some in the Democratic establishment fretted that Trump’s repellent statements were a political masterstroke, elevating four fringe figures as the face of the party...
Okay, should Ocasio-Cortez take her seat in Congress next year, it's also safe to assume she's be one of the most fervently anti-Israel Democrats in the House.
I haven't seen the major newspapers, such as the New York Times, for example, pick up on this aspect of the Ocasio-Cortez story, but it's a big one. It's not just that the Democrats are openly embracing a Marxist ideological program, but also that virulent anti-Israel ideology has bubbled up into the mainstream. This is of course not new to conservative bloggers and top Twitter personalities, but a focus on Ocasio-Cortez's public comments will put the Democrats' oft-hidden anti-Israel animus in the spotlight.
Here's a roundup of commentary from conservative blogs and pro-Jewish outlets.
Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned the political world and rank-in-file Democrats by defeating incumbent Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s New York primary. The Ocasio-Cortez win signaled the growing swing leftward for national Democrats, a party undergoing a power struggle and identity crisis after Trump’s election victory in 2016. The platform Ocasio-Cortez ran on was deeply progressive, calling on the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nationalized health care, universal jobs guarantee and getting America to 100 percent green energy.
However, footage reveals that Ocasio-Cortez also has associates with regressive views.
One of Ocasio-Cortez’s most enthusiastic campaigners and a man who stood behind her at her victory party, Thomas Lopez-Pierre, is a known anti-Semite and racist. Lopez-Pierre has regularly used slurs against Jewish and black New Yorkers in public forums and while running for office himself.
While running for office in 2017, Lopez-Pierre specifically campaigned on “protecting tenants from greedy Jewish landlords.” Lopez-Pierre’s own campaign website shows his rantings agains “Greedy Jewish Landlords.” His campaign website applauds the arrest of “Greedy Jewish Landlords” and says that “Jewish Landlords” are “punishing” black and Hispanic families...
Again. As hysterical #NeverTrumper Jewish commentators attack the most pro-Israel president in history, their new party elects another Hamas supporter.
I dare you to attack this bigot and
her Jew hating voters on MSNBC. https://t.co/i1fveOl9GT
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old democratic socialist who became an instant Democratic Party heroine by unseating party caucus chair Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in Tuesday’s New York primary, is an anti-Israel radical.
Her victory is a further sign of the Democratic Party’s slide toward the extreme left — and toward the anti-Israel left in particular.
During her primary election, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted passionately about an alleged Israeli “massacre” of Palestinian “protesters” at the Gaza border, citing an Al Jazeera article.
Click the link to see anti-Israel tweets from Ocasio Cortez. Pollak continues:
The Jewish radicals of J Street will, no doubt, be thrilled to have another member of Congress who supports Hamas over Israel, and will rush to her defense. But for the few Democrats who still support Israel, her victory is worrying.
Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views are of a piece with her radical policies in general — such as government health care for all, free college tuition, guaranteed federal jobs, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (At least she is consistent: she does not believe in a border fence with Gaza or a border wall with Mexico.) Her campaign even adopted the zombie-like “mic check” first seen at radical Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.
Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views, like her other socialist policies, are ill-informed and would have devastating consequences if enacted. She is not stupid: far from it, the Boston University graduate is whip-smart. But like other far-left millennials, she has mastered the finer details of a fictional universe.
These are positions she will not easily walk back. Her victory has thrilled the Democratic base, but it spells trouble for the party, and for the country.
New York’s New Socialist Candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tweets: Israel Guilty of ‘Massacre’ of ‘Palestinians’: New York's new socialist candidate for Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just sent out a tweet that condemned Israel for its supposed… https://t.co/EfEAVUXNY4
Prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and activist Linda Sarsour are vying with each other to laud Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who notched a David-and-Goliath upset victory over 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York.
Her victory — with 57% of the vote — raises larger questions about the party’s direction, including whether she won despite or because of her stinging comments about Israel on the campaign trail. Could her upset win be another sign that Democratic voters want the party to be more critical of the Jewish state?
“We’re seeing a pattern where the activist core of the Democratic Party is becoming highly critical of Israel almost as a default position,” Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, who has written about this shift, told the Forward on Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign in a fast-changing Queens district was almost solely focused on domestic causes like “Medicare-for-All” and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her campaign website doesn’t mention anything about foreign affairs on its issues page.
But she did attract attention in May for calling the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza a “massacre.”
— Israel News Links (@IsraelNewsLinks) June 28, 2018
As noted, this radical anti-Israel sentiment isn't new. Back in 2012 I wrote about Democrat Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who's now the frontrunner to replace retiring Republican Senator Jeff Flake in the upper chamber.
The refusal by Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of Virginia, to resign after the revelation of a racist photograph is threatening his party’s political fortunes in Virginia, where Democrats are on the brink of consolidating power after a decade-long rise in the once-conservative state.
With Mr. Northam’s turmoil erupting during a legislative session in an election year, Democrats and Republicans said Sunday that his fragile hold on power risked his party’s policy ambitions and its aspirations for this fall, when control of both the state’s legislative chambers is expected to be bitterly and closely contested.
“You can’t govern without a mandate, and all you’re going to do is make things worse for the state,” said Representative A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat who served alongside Mr. Northam in the Virginia Senate.
Mr. Northam met with some of his staff members on Sunday night, prompting speculation that he might announce his resignation during the Super Bowl. Most of the people he met with told him that resigning was the way to clear his name, according to a state Democrat briefed on the meeting by an attendee.
Both chambers of the Legislature are scheduled to meet on Monday morning for sessions that could bring fresh condemnations of the governor. As of Sunday evening, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who would succeed Mr. Northam if he resigned, had not been notified that the governor was stepping down.
Mr. Northam’s troubles began on Friday with the surfacing of a photograph on his medical school yearbook page, which showed a person in blackface posing with another in a Ku Klux Klan robe. The governor at first acknowledged that he was one of the figures in the image, and then denied it on Saturday, all while drawing widespread calls for his resignation. Until this episode, Democrats appeared to be on a steady roll in Virginia, a state that had increasingly become a source of strength for the party in major elections.
Since 2008, when Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades to carry the state, Virginia has shifted steadily leftward. For the last decade, both of the state’s senators in Washington have been Democrats. And more recently, the party has gained greater sway at the Capitol in Richmond.
Two years ago, Democrats picked up 15 seats in the House of Delegates, where they had been locked out of the majority for more than two decades. They are now two seats away from control in both chambers. The biggest prize in controlling the statehouse would be the power, under current law, to draw congressional and legislative districts after the 2020 census.
More power in the Legislature has already translated into significant policy wins for Democrats. Since Mr. Northam was elected in 2017, the party has achieved long-prized goals, like the expansion of Medicaid, and seized new credit for the state’s economic growth.
And this week is arguably among the most crucial of the year’s 46-day legislative session, with an important deadline for bills to advance. The speaker of the House of Delegates, Kirk Cox, and other Republican legislators warned that Mr. Northam’s “ability to lead and govern is permanently impaired.”
Even to his Democratic allies, Mr. Northam now seems hobbled.
“You’ve got to work as one unit to move your commonwealth forward, and he’s just not going to have that ability to do it,” Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who preceded Mr. Northam as governor, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mr. Northam’s difficulties can be traced, in part, to his shifting accounts over the photograph, published in a 1984 yearbook for the Eastern Virginia Medical School, which said on Sunday that it would investigate how such “unacceptable photos” came to be published...
I've said it many times by now, but Rachel Maddow's show is simply a platform for the left's unsubstantiated smears against conservatives. Last night, she looked at comments in support of Joe Wilson as evidence that the right is "uncivil" and that the movement is "unhinged." Check at 2:45 minutes:
Maddow goes on to present a far-fetched "history" of right-wing extremism and postulates that the fate of groups like the John Birch Society is in store for today's conservative and libertarian activists. Maddow's elevation of Joseph Farah and Dick Armey to the center of the "movement" is a classic straw man fallacy.
Of course, the public's not buying the left's "racism" scare tactics. As Rassmussenpoints out this morning, "12% Say Most Opponents of Obama Health Care Plan Are Racist":
Twelve percent (12%) of voters nationwide believe that most opponents of President Obama’s health care reform plan are racist. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of voters disagree, and 21% are not sure.
In recent days, several Democrats have suggested that racism is a factor. The most prominent to make that accusation is former President Jimmy Carter.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans reject the notion that most of the opponents are racist. So do 78% of voters not affiliated with either major party. However, just 39% of Democrats share that view. Twenty-two percent (22%) of those in the president’s party say that most of the opposition to his plan comes from racists, and another 39% are not sure.
Okay, think about this: Two-thirds of respondents reject Rachel Maddow's hard-left claim that opposition to the president is racist. And 9 of 10 Republicans along with 8 of 10 independents reject the view as well. Maddow's appealing, in fact, to a genuine fringe element herself. Of those 39 percent, a large segment would be the same fever-swamp radicals who have burned George W. Bush in effigy.
Basically, the common responses see ObamaCare as an unnecessary expansion of big government. And the response for "government should not be involved in healthcare" measures support for a total government takecare of health markets, not simply a government role, since we know Medicare is a traditionally popular program for the elderly.
Most importantly, there's nothing here that indicates racist sentiment. Democrats are playing the "race card" because they're desperate. If you noticed at the video, Maddow repeatedly refers to President Obama as a "relatively popular president." The only problem is that he's not relatively popular. As early as March analysts were indicating how President George W. Bush (the evil "Chimpy") was more popular than President Obama at the same stage in the presidential term. And as this essay indicates, "George W. Bush was in office 37 months with an unpopular war before he fell to the Obama historically low level according to Gallup."
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