Posted on 12/11/2003 8:48:08 AM PST by quidnunc
If Al Gore had waited to endorse the post-nomination Howard Dean, he would have allied himself with the moderated, temperate Dean that will supposedly emerge once he gets a gravitas implant. Instead, Gore's wrapped himself around a guy who's still shoveling raw meat to the roaring disciples.
It reminds us that the Democrats of '04 aren't the hopeful Kennedyesque batch we saw in '00, when Gore rose to national prominence. They've gotten angrier. They can't crack a mike without mainstreaming fringe ideas.
The question is whether Gore gives the Dean wing legitimacy — or whether Dean's untrammeled rants will bring Gore down. Three random examples show the perils of Gore's embrace of the new New Democrats.
Item! John Kerry skillfully deploys the F-word in a Rolling Stone interview, wooing that coveted demographic of superannuated rockers looking for nekkid Britney pix. If you believe that civil language is a quaint Victorian hang-up unsuited to modern times, you're cheering Kerry. But he just guaranteed public discourse will get coarser and coarser, until voters wonder whether a man who doesn't curse like a hooker thinks he's better than the rest of us. Parents across the land say, "Thanks, John Kerry! Nice role-modeling, you blankety-blank!"
Item! Dennis Kucinich's Web site runs a music video that names the soldiers killed in Iraq, lists the companies involved in reconstruction, and asks how many more must die to enrich George W. Bush's cronies. It's pure tinfoil-beanie stuff, and its use of the dead soldiers' names is opportunistic and obscene. Imagine the stuck-pig peals we'd hear if Bush displayed a counter of the Iraqis who'd be dead today if we hadn't knocked over Saddam Hussein. Tagline: "If Howard Dean had been president, Iraqis would be tortured to death by their government today, and their graves never marked." The Voyager probe would pick up the howls of protest — even though the assertion would be true. Kucinich mainstreams conspiracy theories, and everyone shrugs.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at newhousenews.com ...
Democrats of '04 aren't the hopeful Kennedyesque batch we saw in '00... They've gotten angrier. They can't crack a mike without mainstreaming fringe ideas.
In my book, gore is a nutty whack job who has goofy ideas on every topic, and who is frankly, not very smart.
Nevertheless, the writer has a good point to make. gore was a Senator (from a Southern State, no less), he was VP, and I guess he now holds the record for the most votes ever received in a Presidential election by any candidate. Wouldn't you say he is about a "Mainstream Democrat" as one could get? And here is this "Mainstream Democrat" endorsing the most extremely leftist, anti-WOT candidate in a field of candidates which abounds in extremeism. The Democrat Party, as Zell Miller notes, has crossed the Great Divide forever more, and is now run not by liberals, but by the most extreme radicals on every issue from abortion, "gay rights", race relations, taxation, defense, and on and on.
My concern is this: Someday another Democrat is going to be elected President. Probably not in '04, but someday it will happen. When it does, we will come under the rulership of the radicals from the fringe left because that is all that remains of the Democrat Party.
In "mainstreaming" really a verb?
Scary to think the other side would be Hillary. She sounded much more reasonable during her upstaged trip to the Mid-East than the current crop of Dem Presidential hopefuls.
Maybe it is all part of a master plan by the Dem leadership for a Hillary victory in '08.
It depends on what the word "in" means.
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Then they might finally realize it's not only their war too -- it always has been.
I have--unsuccessfully--pointed out to the social liberals that letting problems like Osama bin Rotten fester will threaten them a lot more than the "right-wing fundamentalist extremists" ever could, and that many of those "right-wing fundamentalist extremists" wouldn't object to strenuously to a global caliphate.
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