The day before Barack Obama's inauguration as president, "Purple Nation" columnist Lanny Davis pleaded on this page for a return to civility in our nation's politics.Chutzpah? Oh, well, you wouldn't want to accuse Democrats of having . . . what's that word, Michelle?
Mr. Davis, a proudly self-professed liberal Democrat, announced his co-founding of what he is calling the Civility Project in a bid "to change the polarizing, attack-oriented political culture that has become all too common in recent years and, instead, to bring civility back as the staple of American politics and life."
Sorry, Lanny, as worthy as your aims may be, that horse fled the barn long ago. And it was your side that battered down the barn door.
Beginning shortly after President Bush assumed office in January 2001 and running through his departure from the White House eight years later, Democrats directed nonstop invective at Mr. Bush, and his call for a "new tone" in Washington went unheeded on the left. From "selected, not elected" to then-Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri calling Mr. Bush "a miserable failure" in September 2003 to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid calling him a "loser" during a civics discussion with a group of teenagers at a high school in May 2005 to Howard Dean's many rants to the MoveOn crowd likening him to Adolf Hitler, the political incivility of "recent years" Mr. Davis decries has originated almost entirely on his side of the political aisle.
For the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee now to feign outrage (for fundraising purposes) at radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh's saying "I hope he fails," referring to President Obama's socialist economic agenda, takes some serious chutzpah - even for the DCCC.
UPDATE: The PW-lanche!
All screaming revolutionaries become pillars of rectitude and decorum once they sit in the palace...much easier to purge the old regime that way.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean you think the American people voted for someone they believe a screaming revolutionary ? Or you do ?
ReplyDeleteDamn. I didn't even know Obama had Anarchist connections!
The chutzpah of 'civility'
ReplyDeleteThe odd-assity of dope.