Bush and Republicans still being rescued by Democrats’ madness

Just the other day, a friend remarked that Bush and the Republicans were really in trouble now. I said, “Yes, but the Democrats are crazier than ever, and therefore the essential situation that we’ve had for the last few years hasn’t changed: The Republicans do not offer adequate leadership, but the Democrats are so completely off the chart that the Republicans will still prevail.” Today columnist E.J. Dionne, a Democratic partisan to the tips of his fingers, confirms my point: The Democrats are, as he puts it, in such disarray (he doesn’t say that they’re insane anti-Americans) that they are unable to take advantage of Bush’s troubles.

But the Democrats’ cognitive problem is even more fundamental than a failure to grasp that their party is insane. Dionne writes:

[T]he party’s problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.

So, according to the poll, and to Dionne, no voters in America, including Democrats, are leftist. All voters in America are conservative, moderate, or liberal. This means that the ideological core of the Democratic party (which Dionne worries is far too small) is “liberal,” while the less committed majority of Democrats are “moderate.” The truth of course is that the core of the Democratic party is leftist, and that the so-called “moderates” are liberals. If Democratic pundits such as Dionne are unable to grasp these simple facts, how can they even begin to think straight about their political problems?

Ironically, leftists began calling themselves “liberals” in order to make themselves acceptable to mainstream American voters. But the name cannot wholly disguise the reality, and most voters still reject these “liberals.” But the left are now caught in their own deception. Thinking of themselves as “liberals,” they believe that their electoral problems stem from their not being sufficiently leftist, and so they call for more ideological “commitment,” i.e., for more leftism, i.e., for yet more insane anti-Americanism, as the way of overcoming their disadvantage with mainstream American voters.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2005 08:20 AM | Send