Divided We Stand

A great article by Don Feder today.

excerpts:

"Democrats may be in the minority in Congress, but we speak for the majority of Americans," Kennedy insisted in a speech last week.

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Kennedy attributed his party’s shellacking in the last election – reminiscent of what Max Schmeling suffered at the hands of Joe Louis in 1938 (KO in Round 1) – to a failure to communicate its core principles to voters. "We were remiss in not talking more directly about them – about the fundamental ideals that guide our progressive politics," was the word from Mt. Olympus.

But the only time the party of plunder has managed to elect a president in the last 40 years is when it nominated political chameleons – Carter in 1976, Clinton in ’92 and ’96. When Democrats speak candidly to voters about their fundamental values and the direction in which they want to take the nation (McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis) Americans run screaming in the opposite direction.

Consider, Michael Dukakis’ brilliant 1988 campaign. Here was another product of Massachusetts politics, liberal Neverland, who actually thought his ACLU membership and opposition to capital punishment (even if his wife was raped and murdered) would endear him to the electorate.

The Democrats – who speak for the majority of Americans, Kennedy claims – have won only 3 of the last 9 presidential elections. They speak for a majority of Americans, but haven’t controlled the House of Representatives in a decade. They speak for the American people, but have been in the minority in the Senate for most of the past 20 years. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the American people that the Democrats speak for us.

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If you hold power long enough in a one-party state – North Korea, Cuba, Massachusetts – you can believe anything. Fidel Castro says he speaks for the Cuban people. Kim Jong Il believes those he holds in bondage adore him. Ted Kennedy thinks he’s a megaphone for the masses.

And to what can we attribute the public’s affinity for the Democrats? Clearly, it’s because Democratic ideals "unite Americans instead of dividing them," Kennedy explained in his National Press Club speech.

Here’s the way Democrats bring us all together, singing a rousing chorus of "We Are Family":

Affirmative Action – Does Kennedy actually imagine that middle-class whites enjoy losing educational and job opportunities to less qualified minorities, that they never feel resentment over this form of collective racial punishment? Apparently so. The Democrats’ idea of equality sets the races against each other.

Social Security – As young workers bear more and more of a burden for the Democrats’ greatest boondoggle, (workers who will never see a Social Security check, if the system remains unchanged) the generational warfare between those supporting the system and retirees grows. Just another way the Democrats – who will demagogue a pay-as-you-go system to the last breath – help us to find common ground.

Taxes – Whenever tax cuts are in the offing, Democrats resort to class-warfare rhetoric – trying to pit the poor and middle class against the affluent. It’s always tax cuts for the greedy rich, which (it goes without saying) they don’t deserve – even though they’re paying a disproportionate share of total taxes.

Judicial nominations – Through an unconstitutional permanent filibuster, the Democratic minority in the Senate has prevented a vote on conservative judicial nominees. Prior to Bush, along with the presidency went the power to shape the judiciary (a power Clinton fully utilized, with his appointments of ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court). The voters who elected Bush twice are expected to feel no resentment toward the party that has unilaterally changed the rules to prevent their votes from impacting the federal bench.

Gay marriage – The American people adamantly oppose changing the millennia-old definition of marriage. Last year (by overwhelming margins), voters in 14 states passed marriage-protection amendments to their state constitutions. Democrats used a filibuster to prevent the Federal Marriage Amendment from coming up for a vote in the Senate. Kennedy and Co. are willing to see the institution of marriage radically transformed by the most elitist, un-democratic branch of government – the judiciary.

Abortion – While the public is split here (the majority say they’re pro-life, but want some abortions to remain legal), Democrats are radical and inflexible, even opposing such modest restraints as parental notification and a ban on partial-birth abortion. Moreover, they would force Catholics and evangelicals to pay for the procedures for low-income women. If the Democrats unite us any more, it may spark another civil war.

Publicly acknowledging God – In league with the ACLU and other secular fundamentalists, federal judges have taken away a right Americans have enjoyed for most of their history – to affirm God through public display of religious symbols (including The Ten Commandments) and other discreet acknowledgements of our religious heritage. The 9th Circuit Appeals Court even tried to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Atheist Michael Newdow, the plaintiff in that case, was recently in federal court seeking to prevent what he called "Christian religious acts" (prayers) at the Inauguration. Democrats fostered the misinterpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause that facilitates campaigns of religious cleansing. The roughly 96 percent of the American people who are believers are expected to placidly accept the left’s war on faith.

This is the true conceit of the Democratic Party: While pushing policies that have Americans at each other’s throats, they insist that they are bringing us together.