For eight years during the Bush Administration, we saw an endless parade of left-leaning pundits decrying the “incivility” in American politics – especially the “hate” hiding in the rhetorical bushes on talk radio. 

Now, I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those people who whinges about how “politics is the nastiest it’s ever been”; the 1824 election pretty well takes that cake, and 1928 and 1932 were no walks in the park.

And it’s not like casual defamation has never cropped up its ugly head; Hillary Clinton famously wrote all opposition to her husband off to a shadowy “vast, right wing conspiracy”.  It was a dumb, clumsy, incoherent effort that ended up backfiring, albeit not in a big way. 

But I’m not aware of a sitting administration that has ever tried to systematically portray its entire opposition as depraved and anti-American – indeed, anti-human – ever.

And for a movement that spent eight years wetting its pants about “civility”, it’s an interesting switch.

It’s a predictable one, of course.  The Obama Campaign, trained as it was in the Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” school of campaigning, has absorbed most of the biggest, ugliest lessons from its radical forebears:  make it personal, do whatever it takes to separate the target from their supporters, and don’t let little things like facts get in the way of sliming the opposition.  And I certainly don’t recall a conservative doing any such thing to a Democrat.

(“But wait!  What about Limbaugh?  He makes everything personal!”  Well, no – Limbaugh’s an entertainer, not the voice of the GOP.  And I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claims to get the vapors over Limbaugh but is fine with Keith Olbermann or James Carville).

(“But what about the Swiftboaters!”  Look – you can believe them or you can disbelieve them – I happen to believe them, obviously, and for good reason – but if you can’t see the difference between attackign a candidate over a point of fact, rightly or wrongly, and attacking an entire class of people, then you truly belong in the Dem party).

Still, over this past week it sorta came home here in the Twin Cities.

• On Sunday’s At Issue, DFL operative Blois Olson said that Tea Partiers were “Birthers” – people who believe that Barack Obama doesn’t meet the citizenship requirements to be President.  To kype a line from Walt Whitman, I refute Olson thus; I attended a Tea Party, and I spoke at another one, and I’ll be speaking at at least one more – and I’m not a birther.  Not at all.  I don’t suspect more than one in ten people at these rallies gives the “Birther” conspiracy the faintest credence.
• On Ron Rosenbaum’s show over the weekend, Pat Kessler, the (media cliche alert) Dean of Minnesota Political Reporters, claimed that opponents of the President’s healthcare proposal are motivated by “racism”.

If you believe that the Obama campaign administration, and especially its tactical brain trust, are taking their cues from Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that they seem to believe people are going to sit still and take that kind of mass defamation lying down.

Do they believe that people are going to sit back and let the “elites” call all of us racists?  That we’re going to take “swastika” and “nazi” references in exchange for exercising our God-given right to participate in Democracy?  That we’re all going to get labelled with the dumbest conspiracy meme since “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?”

That we’ll not spend a few years showing the American people about the real, abiding racism that drives the Dems’ approach to education and social welfare?  Or the whole “Royalty Vs. Peasants” nature of Obamacare, the Education system and so many of the left’s other sacred cows?  How the left systematically attacks things like charter schools and vouchers – minority parents’ only escape valves from the current, broken system?  The number of Dems who believe that 9/11 was an inside job?  The ones who still furtively grump that Bill Burkett was right, and Dan Rather wronged?

The number of Democrats who put their kids in private schools while voting against school choice?  The Democrats’ custom-built escape hatch from socialized medicine for them and their union benefactors?

Are you sure you wanna tie your politics to casual group defamation?

Good grief, I hope not. It’s getting old.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Culture War, Democrat Party, Slander Files. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.