THE DECLINE OF THE LEFT – AT 8:32 P.M. ET:  It's sad to see the left in such decline.  Well, not really, but we have to say that to sound gracious and open.  But the dive of liberalism into what it is today – a kind of snotty, top-down movement run by those who'd never rub shoulders with those they claim to weep about – is pretty evident.  Charles Krauthammer has been out front in pointing that out.  Here he comments on the latest indicator:

Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" — this part is less remembered — "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

Beautifully said.  I was watching a CNN reporter go crazy over the Ground Zero mosque again.  I felt like e-mailing her to recommend she seek professional assistance.

Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Charlie nails it.

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion...

...What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.

Finally...

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

COMMENT:  It is a sad time for a once dynamic and decent party.  And to think, this is the party that formed much of the basic American defense doctrine that eventually won the Cold War.  Harry Truman wouldn't recognize his party today.  He would probably leave it.

August 26, 2010