Almost as if on cue, DailyKos, Steve Benen, Andrew Sullivan, Sam Stein and others are pushing hard on the meme that Republicans are “crazy” and Taliban-like in their ways.
The “crazy” findings are based on a poll commissioned by DailyKos using the same pollster which found, the day before the Massachusetts special election, that the race was a dead heat, when almost every other pollster was predicting a strong Brown win.
Of course, these people did not need a poll to justify their strategy. The “crazy” meme showed itself during the Brown-Coakley campaign, when Benen and others desperately tried to paint Brown as a “Birther.”
I wonder if the people pushing the “crazy” meme were part of the 35% of Democrats who, in May 2007, still believed that George Bush was aware of the 9/11 attacks in advance, or the additional 26% who were unsure? It takes one to know one, I guess.
I predicted that “crazy” would be the left-wing and Democratic strategy moving into the 2010 mid-term elections. The left is predictable, if nothing else.
Keep calling the majority of Americans crazy and dangerous and extremists and “teabaggers.” Every time you do it we gain votes.
Taking over the House and the Senate is a long shot. We can’t do it without your help, as crazy as that sounds.
Update: Bruce McQuain at QandO has a good takedown on this:
Now as I recall, the majority of the left not only wanted Bush impeached, they wanted him frog-marched before a court and tried as a “war criminal”. Most Democrats (I’m borrowing the broad brush that these two are using) believed Bush had been AWOL from his military duty and had stolen the 2000 election. A good plurality of Democrats thought (and still think) 9/11 was an inside job. And it goes without saying that a vast majority of them where convinced Bush was a tyrant, a “Nazi” and a significant number of them thought he’d declare a “national emergency” near the end of his 2nd term in order hold onto power.
I had forgotten about that last one. It was acceptable in left-wing circles to talk seriously about George Bush refusing to leave office. See my prior post from January 20, 2009 (the day of Obama’s inauguration), Stupidest Anti-Bush Comment Of The Day, Week, Month, Year, Century, Millennium. Here’s the quote I to which I was referring:
I am optimistic because of the simple fact that we are witnessing a transition of power today. Before the 2004 election, people wondered openly whether the Bush crowd would even surrender power were they to lose at the polls. While there is still legitimate doubt about what happened during that election, the outcome in 2004 did not allow us to test whether or not an overtly corrupt administration would allow itself to be replaced and would turn over the power of the government to those with whom it disagrees.
Update No. 2: Charles Lemos at MyDD notes that the sampling behind the DailyKos poll was skewed, Skewed Sample Distorts Kos GOP Poll, with the result that the poll overstates the strength of some views. I think that is interesting, and certainly worth noting, but it is somewhat besides the point.
Only Republicans get tarred and feathered as a group because a minority of the party has a certain view or answers “don’t know” to a question.
For eight years we saw the worst venom imaginable spewed at George Bush not only by the Democratic base, but by the Democratic leadership.
That venom lives on in the hearts and minds of the Democratic leadership which regularly engages in name calling, such as when John Kerry and Chuck Schumer called Scott Brown an extremist teabagger, and when Sheldon Whitehouse compared health care protesters to Nazis and warned of an approaching health care Kristillnacht, and when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi referred to townhall protesters as terrorists. Alan Grayson, who claims that Republicans want people to die, is a rock star in Democratic circles.
And that is the difference.
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Related Posts:
Dems’ Strategy of Crazy
A Warning For The Next Scott Brown
Coakley’s Disgusting Rape Mailer
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