Does this crowd of loons think they’re ready to govern America?

(Sorry about the insult to loons, which are remarkable birds, with their haunting calls drifting across northern lakes, and not at all like Democrats.)

Robert Novak, a once famously tough-minded and cynical reporter who seems to have imbibed (double meaning intended) the anti-Hillary hysteria of the Democratic party and made it his own, interviewed a bunch of activist Democrats about Hillary’s notorious Bobby Kennedy statement and finds them saying the most incredible (not to Novak, but to me) things. He writes:

• Without exception, they felt Clinton had crossed a line and inflicted a grievous wound in the party difficult to heal.
  [A single tasteless and insensitive, though most likely innocent, remark inflicted a grievous wound in the party difficult to heal? Are these people insane?]

• As “Hillary Agonistes,” she threatens to bring down the temple of the country’s oldest political party.
  [That single phrase, consisting of two words, threatens to bring down the entire Democratic party? Are these people out of their gourd?]

• One seasoned Democratic operative, who had voted for Clinton in his home state’s primary but was not part of her campaign, said of her comments about Kennedy, “I think it was about as hideous as it gets.” Another Democrat who five months ago rejoiced in Clinton as the first female president called her “sleazy.”

And now look at Novak’s own characterizations of Hillary remark:

• … Clinton cited the murder of Robert F. Kennedy as reason for remaining a candidate for the presidential nomination …
  [No, that is not what she meant at all.]

• Contrary to the impression given by Sen. Clinton, Kennedy was not the presumptive nominee removed by an assassin.
  [That is not what she meant at all. That is not it, at all.]

For a, ahem, reality-based discussion of Hillary’s apocalyptic comment, the equivalent of the battle of Armageddon, the Mongol hordes sweeping across Hungary, the San Francisco earthquake, and the comet that ended the Cretaceous period all rolled into one, see these VFR entries:

Hillary Clinton: target of PC America
Liberal media: Hillary has spoken the unspeakable! Ostracize her!
The media have gone insane

- end of initial entry -

Terry Morris writes:

“Without exception, they felt Clinton had crossed a line and inflicted a grievous wound in the party difficult to heal.”
“[A single tasteless and insensitive, though most likely innocent, remark inflicted a grievous wound in the party difficult to heal? Are these people insane?]”

Answer: Yes; without exception.

“Contrary to the impression given by Sen. Clinton, Kennedy was not the presumptive nominee removed by an assassin.”

Dear Mr. Novak, I submit the following for your thoughtful consideration (warning: this will require some mental effort on your part):

(1) Shouldn’t the opening statement in the above quote read: “Contrary to the impression taken by hyper-sensitive race conscious Democrats and liberals…”? Contrary to the impression you give, sir, these hyper-sensitive Democrats and liberals are not the ultimate and final authority on what Hillary intended by her statement.

(2) If Kennedy was not the presumptive nominee removed by an assassin, in your words, sir, and if we remove your premise that Hillary intended to say he was, and simply consider that fact apart from your premise, then doesn’t it make more sense to you that what Hillary actually intended was precisely and simply that; that Kennedy was not the presumptive nominee and yet was still in the race in June when he was assassinated? On what reasonable basis do you attribute the alternate intent to Mrs. Clinton? I suggest that it is purely on the basis of uncontrolled passion and emotion, and that this is common among liberals.

What better illustration could there be of the irrationality of liberals?

LA replies:

Novak seems to have entered the liberal world where it is taken as a given that a single supposedly hurtful comment will damage and haunt a person for the rest of his (or more likely her) life.

Jeremy G. writes:

The blood libel being whipped up against Hillary has mostly political motivations. It’s not about rebuking what she said and moving on. The left is looking forward to their cosmic battle against McCain. Obama is their messiah and Hillary is still in the way.

LA replies:

And sadly, as I’ve argued, the experience of having become the target of a leftist hate campaign will not wake up Hillary one iota to the nature of the left. Being a leftist, she can only conceptualize a bad thing that is happening to her in leftist terms, i.e., as an attack from the right. Thus she has said that she is being picked on because she is a woman. When she said that, she showed the absolute limits of her understanding. She coulda been a contender.

Matthew H. writes (May 29):

One of our political parties is lead and populated by people with the mentalities of the sort of fourteen-year-olds for whom the words “your” and “mother” in proximity to each other constitute an intolerable provocation to which any response, including murder, is seen as legitimate. This is all the more appalling from what is ostensibly the best educated generation of Americans ever. The leadership and media types among them are virtually all ivy-leaguers! Our potential executive branch is staffed with fools so retarded or so disingenuous that they either cannot or will not parse a simple statement. Putrid.

One is tempted to say of the Dems and the Clintons in particular, “It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch. Live by affirmative action, die by affirmative action.” Too bad the rest of us are all along for the ride.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 29, 2008 02:07 AM | Send