The Tsunami

John Hinderaker on the latest polls on the Tea Party:

Tea Partiers are people who have a more sophisticated understanding of current events than those who describe themselves as anti-Tea Party. Anyone who doesn’t realize that the exploding federal debt represents a serious threat to our future either is a fool, or doesn’t have children. (That, actually, would make for an interesting survey.)

Here was the part I thought was interesting:

The responses on terrorism are interesting, too: there is evidently a common thread between obliviousness to the dangers of debts we can’t pay and to the dangers of Islamic terrorism, but it is hard to see what that common thread might be, other than blind, stupid loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing?

As the economic news continues to worsen, voters are appropriately growing more surly. That is reflected, I think, in this Rasmussen survey finding that 60% of likely voters–a figure that matches the all-time high–want Obamacare repealed. Maybe that is due to recent news reports about the effects of the government takeover bill, perhaps in part due to a general lack of confidence in the administration’s economic competence.

I did learn one thing (emphasis added):

Disillusion with the Obama administration, which can hardly be disentangled from disgust with the Reid/Pelosi regime in Congress, is reaching dangerous levels–dangerous, anyway, if you’re a Democratic office-holder. In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza points out that President Obama’s approval rating among whites is almost exactly the same as President Bush’s was two years ago. (I had forgotten, actually, that in 2008 Obama lost the white vote by 12 points. This was, however, a significant improvement on John Kerry’s performance.) It took President Bush seven and a half years to fall to that level; Obama, just 18 months.

So apparently the only reason not to vote for John Kerry was racism, too?

27 thoughts on “The Tsunami

  1. A link from the Powerline post:
    Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History
    http://www.atr.org/sixmonths.html?content=5171

    Back in April, when there were tax day protests going on, the dems were pushing the notion that, by means of the “making work pay” tax credit, Obama had actually lowered taxes, and so the tax protesters were teh stupid. They weren’t stupid.
    For years the dems have been blathering about Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich” with very little push back from the GOP and none from our “unbiased” journalists in the mass media. Next year the Bush tax cuts will expire, and taxes will increase significantly for virtually every tax payer.

  2. I’ve seen Barack Obama and he’s no John Kerry. As a matter of fact, he makes me miss Bill Clinton, who was at least competent.

  3. Clinton was and is a despicable snake in the grass. This is from Clinton’s eulogy of Robt. Byrd:
    I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollers of West Virginia, he was trying to get elected,” Clinton said. “And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does.
    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/bill-clinton-byrd-spent-rest-of-his-life-making-up-for-kkk-association-video.php
    Do you see what he’s done here? He’s transferred the guilt from Byrd — who actually put on a hood, burned crosses, etc — to the people of West Virginia.

  4. If you read down to ‘the Daily Caller’ link at the bottom of the TPM piece, it takes you to the KKK, who claim that Byrd wasn’t a klansman ‘long enough to get his sheet broke in’. (kinda folksy how they talk isn’t it?)

    and goes on to suggest that there were not very many KKK members around in WV, during the mid-40s when Byrd was a member:

    “A lot of this gets hyped up. The odds of having that huge a group, even in that area, are really unreal, especially for a new untried EC,” Pierce said. “In reality, if there were over 10 or 12, I’d just be shocked right out of my mind.”

    Pierce also defended Byrd’s membership in the organization.

    “Just like in Truman’s day, it was a thing you did. It was a fraternal organization,” Pierce said. “There’s no proof that he committed any kind of crime or anything while a Klansman.”

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/01/kkk-defends-the-late-sen-robert-byrd-he-wasnt-a-klansman-long-enough-to-get-his-sheet-broke-in/#ixzz0suhJYNBU

    I think Clinton was pretty on target suggesting that joining ‘fraternal’ organizations was part of getting elected, seeking support. Just in this case, not a very good one. Byr made mistakes, and he worked at correcting them. So Byrd wasn’t perfect, and changed as he matured during his life — again, so?

    How this makes Clinton a snake in the grass is logic that eludes me.

  5. I think Clinton was pretty on target suggesting that joining ‘fraternal’ organizations was part of getting elected, seeking support.

    So the Klan was like the Elks Club but with a more targeted community outreach program, then. Thanks for clearing that up, Mrs. Teasdale.

  6. Using the word of some wannabe Klan leader to “clear” Byrd.
    Wow . . . just . . . Wow.

  7. Using the word of some wannabe Klan leader to “clear” Byrd.
    Wow . . . just . . . Wow.

    I hadn’t realized that the word of a Klansman was probative, either, Terry. Today has been pretty instructive.

  8. goes on to suggest that there were not very many KKK members around in WV

    Ah. So in other words, it wasn’t mainstream, and it did take a little special effort to join up?

  9. How this makes Clinton a snake in the grass is logic that eludes me.

    Don’t you worry, DG. You just go throw that on the gigantic, mountainous pile of logic that eludes you.

  10. Byrd, by his own admission, aggressively pursued membership in the Klan. He got in the door by recruiting 150 citizens into joining a racist, conspiratorial, anti-semitic, anti-government organization with a violent history.

  11. Clinton starts by diminishing Byrd’s involvement in the Klan (“fleeting association”). He shifts the blame for Byrd’s Klan membership from Byrd to the people of West Virginia as though Byrd was an outsider (Byrd, of course, was one of those people, born and bred). He diminishes Byrd’s error again (“maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done”) and, finally, Byrd’s soul now cleansed, Clinton pronounces Byrd a “good person”.
    And he does it all without mentioning the name of the Ku Klux Klan.

  12. The KKK was founded as and has always been the militant/terrorist arm of the Democratic Party and people like Clinton understand that stomping on the KKK in an election year could dry up some contribution sources.

    DG never fails to find an apology for a scurrilous mountebank as long as they have the tag D after their name.

  13. Well she did defend the Black Panther thugs who violated election law by intimidating voters outside a polling place.
    Hey, so did Eric Holder. And Barack Obama. I sense a trend.

  14. “joining a racist, conspiratorial, anti-semitic, anti-government organization with a violent history.” – Sounds like the new GOP *laughing*

  15. AP headline on the death of Strom Thurmond(r), in 2007:
    STROM THURMOND, FOE OF INTEGRATION, DIES AT 100

    AP headline on the death of Byrd(d):
    ROBERT BYRD, RESPECTED VOICE OF THE SENATE, DIES AT 92

    The implication is that Flash spends a lot of time reading AP political news.
    The only quotes on this thread excusing and diminishing Byrd’s membership in the klan come from democrat supporters Clinton & Dog Gone.

  16. Dog Gone wrote:
    “I think Clinton was pretty on target suggesting that joining ‘fraternal’ organizations was part of getting elected, seeking support. Just in this case, not a very good one.”

    A “Progressive” rationalizing the Ku Klux Klan as just a fraternal organization? Would would have ever thought we’d see the day.

    Dog Gone: I’m on the DFL SCC. Are you active in the DFL as well?

    I think you should explain yourself.

  17. Now, DG? Given your blog’s intense (and largely off-base) excoriation of conservatism for its purported racist roots (even if based entirely on quotes from various conservative figures that were, in at least half the cases, ludicrously out of context and in the other half just stupid quotes from fringy figures), I’d think that a FORMER PRESIDENT making excuses and rationalizing MEMBERSHIP IN THE KU KLUX FREAKING KLAN, ever, for any reason, to be nausea-inducing.

    Sorry to see I was wrong.

    Perhaps it’s only “progressives” who get the benefit of that kiind of doubt in the world of Penigma?

  18. Doggone, if you don’t see a difference between how Strom Thurmond was treated from how Robert Byrd (KKK-WV) is being treated now, I don’t believe you can be helped.

    Sorry, Byrd’s participation and eager endorsement of the Klan is something that should appall liberals–never mind the hilarious and appalling spectre of Democrats quoting Klansmen to justify their position. (did we somehow get transported to the set of Blazing Saddles without my knowing it?)

  19. Byrd was a Grand Kleagle in the KKK. A Kleagle is a recruiter. a Grand Kleagle would imply he was some sort of “Senior” recruiter. Senior recruiters of ANY organization have to put serious time in to reach that level.

    Intellectual honesty. Get some.

  20. Well Mitch, that all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

    (I think we call this “situational ethics”)

  21. Clinton literally excuses Byrd (He had to do it to get elected) and minimizes his membership in the hardcore racist group in the US at the time (being a leader in the Klan was something he shouldn’t have done).
    Byrd and Clinton. Character tells.

  22. The KKK was a fraternal order that you needed to belong to in order to get elected in West Virginia?

    And the National Socialists were a party you needed to join if you wanted to get ahead in Germany in 1934.

    I keep thinking of line from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”: “Is you is, or is you ain’t my constituency?”

  23. I think Clinton was pretty on target suggesting that joining ‘fraternal’ organizations was part of getting elected, seeking support.

    This is all anyone needs to know about how deep the well of depravity is on the other side of the isle – excusing KKK as a fraternal organization. What’s next – Hitlerjugend was just a Boy Scout Organization?

    Blazing Saddles? More like Twilight Zone.

  24. Why did Byrd say that he joined the violent, racist KKK? Because it was . . . anti-communist! Good grief.

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