Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calls for creating Dem “war machine” to stop Republicans
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Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calls for creating Dem “war machine” to stop Republicans

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calls for creating Dem “war machine” to stop Republicans

While he didn’t threaten to use nukes, like Eric Swalwell once did, the military imagery and war-like rhetoric were no mistake. It’s a continuation of the type of rhetoric that almost got Brett Kavanaugh killed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeY64XgJtd0

Sheldon Whitehouse. What more can we say than we have said in the past in almost 100 posts?

In what I believe was my first post about him, on December 21, 2009, I documented how he compared Republican Senators to Nazis for …. (checks notes) … opposing Obamacare. WaPo reported at the time:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) had just delivered an overwrought jeremiad comparing the Republicans to Nazis on Kristallnacht, lynch mobs of the South, and bloodthirsty crowds of the French Revolution.

“Too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate, no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear,” he said. “History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds. Broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from southern trees.” Assuming the role of Old Testament prophet, Whitehouse promised a “day of judgment” and a “day of reckoning” for Republicans.

The day’s ugly words were a fitting finale for the whole sorry health-care debate of 2009.

That’s Sheldon. You’re a Nazi and he’s Mother Teresa.

We saw that time and again in the past 15 years. There’s nothing funny about him, and he has no self-awareness, but you probably laughed when he brought his prosecutorial talents to berating Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh about high school yearbook fart jokes:

I don’t think he ever had a childhood, certainly was never a teenager:

He also loves to threaten people, particularly the Supreme Court, Dem Senators to Supreme Court: Rule our way on 2nd Amendment case, or face possible restructuring:

A group of Democratic Senators (Whitehouse, Gillibrand, Hirono, Blumenthal, Durbin) just filed an extraordinarily vitriolic Amicus Brief in support of the Respondent, N.Y. City. The Brief was signed by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for the group, listing himself as Counsel of Record.

I would not be surprised if Whitehouse substantially drafted the Brief himself. As we have documented here for a decade, Whitehouse is extremely pejorative towards his political opponents, who invariably are portrayed as bad people with bad motives….

So it’s no surprise that the Brief signed by Whitehouse attacked Kavanaugh, the conservatives on the Court, and the very existence of the Court itself by suggesting the Court would be restructured if it ruled the wrong way.

It was a double-barrel attack — impugning the motives of those holding different views of the 2nd Amendment and threatening to damage the Court’s legitimacy….

The closing paragraph was at best a thinly-veiled threat (emphasis added):

The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.” Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.

This was not so much a legal argument, but a shot across the bow of the Court and Chief Justice Roberts in particular.

Nice Court you have there, Chief, shame if something happened to it.

You can scroll through our posts to see more. I summed it up in this post in October 2020, during the Amy Coney Barrett nomination when Whitehouse was leading the attack, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Is A Conspiracy Nutter

But all of Whitehouse’s conspiracy theories amount to nothing more than: Republican donors support conservative judicial nominations in compliance with the law. What he leaves out is that liberal donors do the same thing, maybe on a larger scale, funding groups like Demand Justice to attack Republican nominees. But Sheldon Whitehouse is shocked, just shocked, that Republicans do it.

That was on full display today during the hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. Whitehouse didn’t ask a single question of Barrett. Instead, he spent a half hour with charts and posters supposedly showing the grand conspiracy. But again, it amounted to nothing more than Republicans spend money to support conservative nominees — much if not almost all of the money being spent to counter attacks from left wing groups funded by unknown liberal donors.

Ted Cruz had a great retort to this insanity:

Whitehouse, by the way, does not have clean hands himself:

This is all a long-winded but necessary background to today’s declaration of war by Whitehouse.

From Politico:

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is calling for DNC delegates to consider how the Democratic Party’s infrastructure can support a “war machine” to lead attacks against Republicans.

The letter to state party chairs ahead of the DNC chair election, shared first with POLITICO, comes as Democrats scramble to figure out how to move forward after nationwide losses at the polls in November. Party leaders have bemoaned Democrats’ inability to define their own identity and push back against Republican attacks.

Whitehouse argued that Democrats have no institutional and centralized setup to attack the GOP, writing Republicans “rapidly and effectively deploy false narratives, while we struggle to bring true ones to bear.”

“We in Congress customarily say we’re ‘fighting’ for things when we really mean working or toiling,” Whitehouse wrote. “A fight means a defined adversary, a battle strategy, and actual punches thrown. Done well, it involves exposing and degrading your adversary’s machinery of warfare.”

The White House could have been a place to helm and plan offensive strategy against Republicans, but it has not effectively been used this way, Whitehouse argued.

The Rhode Island senator, an outspoken critic of so-called dark money in politics, argued that there was an opportunity for Democrats to win goodwill from the electorate by highlighting stories of surreptitious influence peddling. He proposed the addition of an “offensive coordinator” role for the party.

While he didn’t threaten to use nukes, like Eric Swalwell once did, the military imagery and war-like rhetoric were no mistake. It’s a continuation of the type of rhetoric that almost got Brett Kavanaugh killed.

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Comments

This loud mouthed pussy needs the Hairy Reed exercise band treatment.

“Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.”

That’s a nice seperation of powers you got there. Be a shame if something should happen to it?’

I’m still unclear how a constitutionally mandated 3rd branch of government can be prescribed by another constitutionaly mandated branch of govt.

Can any legal eagles explain this to me like I’m in school?

    Milhouse in reply to LB1901. | December 31, 2024 at 7:00 am

    What do you mean by “prescribed”?

    Congress decides how many justices are on the supreme court. And Congress creates all other federal courts, so it can also abolish them. And Congress can impeach and remove judges for bad behavior. That all gives it some authority over the judiciary. Also, it can propose constitutional amendments that could affect the judiciary

    What Congress can’t do is say what a law means, let alone what the constitution means. And it’s supposed to respect judicial independence, by impeaching only for actual behavior, not for decisions it didn’t like.

    One thing to bear in mind is that the notion we have of strict separation between the three branches is NOT in the constitution. For instance, members of congress can’t also be judges or cabinet secretaries (but they can be president). But judges can also be cabinet secretaries, serving in two branches at the same time. And the vice president belongs to the legislative branch, but may also carry out executive tasks at the president’s request.

      Merriam-Webster

      prescribed; prescribing

      intransitive verb

      to lay down a rule : Dictate

      I knew Congress creates all other federal courts, and can impeach judges, but I did not know Congress decides how many are on the scotus bench.

      Thanks for the clarification.

    Virginia42 in reply to LB1901. | December 31, 2024 at 8:50 am

    Proscribed?

MoeHowardwasright | December 30, 2024 at 9:32 pm

Whitehouse is a dangerous demagogue. The R’s just need to harp on his belonging to a “whites only” club. Constantly shame him. Make him the centerpiece of what’s wrong with the demonrat party. Stop with the collegiality. This is bare knuckle fighting for what’s right.

    We can harp on it because it’s politically embarrassing, and it’s no more unfair than the things he says.

    But we should remember for ourselves that it is unfair. The club isn’t “whites only”; it merely happens (or happened a few years ago) not to have any members who weren’t white. That’s only to be expected; there aren’t a lot of non-white yacht owners in that part of Connecticut, let alone ones who would be interested in joining the club. If I recall the reports correctly, it had at one time had one or more non-white members, and for all I know it may have recently acquired some again.

      The Ida Lewis Yacht Club is in Newport, Rhode Island, not Connecticut.

        Milhouse in reply to Obie1. | December 31, 2024 at 9:40 pm

        Yeah, well there aren’t a lot of non-white yacht owners there either.

        The point is that while it’s all very well to twit him about it because he’s a nasty person who deserves it, we shouldn’t go around actually believing that the club really restricts its membership to whites.

          Obie1 in reply to Milhouse. | January 1, 2025 at 5:19 pm

          Why not? That’s exactly what the other side does and this IS the Internet. Also, it seems perfectly reasonable to twit (i.e., tease or taunt) a twit (i.e., a total dipshit).

          Edward in reply to Milhouse. | January 2, 2025 at 9:29 am

          Did the club have a written policy of excluding “certain demographic groups”? Of course not. Was there a clearly understood by all members effort to ensure some members of society would never become members of the club? Probably not “all”. Was there an unofficial ban on accepting certain members of society from becoming club members? Quite possibly. Such things were common when I was young, not only among the well to do and not just in the South. It would not be surprising to find such attitudes still exist, though greatly diminished in frequency.

“The Rhode Island senator, an outspoken critic of so-called dark money in politics…”

Except when it benefits his own party, of course…

Whitehouse should just be labeled for what he is, an extremist who does not speak for mainstream values, but simply to obstruct for his elite sense about what matters. He is such a blowhard and pretender.

A quibble. Why is a list of golden oldies necessary before getting to the news of his latest pathology?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse knows about all the dirty deeds Dems committed, and that while they had to make up stuff, we will not. Knowing the scope of Dem criminal activity, he is scared s less.

Can the Dem party survive all the bad karma they have cultivated.

Weldon Sh!thouse is symptomatic of a desperate dying party.

I think when we see Biden’s final list of pardons there will be plenty of opportunities “to win goodwill from the electorate by highlighting stories of surreptitious influence peddling.”

Oh, come on. The use of military language in politics is absolutely routine, and everyone does it. Didn’t Trump just go through a “campaign”? And didn’t he do that after assembling a “war chest”? Did he not “target” certain states and certain voters? Did he not look for “ammunition” to use against his opponents? Did he not deploy “foot soldiers” in his “campaign”? I distinctly remember Kash Patel described as such.

So this is just standard political talk, not remarkable, and certainly nothing like Swalwell. It’s more like Sarah Palin’s famous map targeting vulnerable Democrat seats.

    Peter Moss in reply to Milhouse. | December 31, 2024 at 5:02 am

    You must be a hoot at parties. No lampshade is safe when you walk into a room! Nyuk, nyuk.

    Respectfully, I disagree with you on this. If you recall, Palin’s famous map was blamed for the shooting that wounded Gabby Giffords and killed a judge, and anything else the Dems could pin on it. Imagine if we were looking at President-elect Harris and someone like Mike Lee or Josh Hawley was saying what Whitehouse is saying. The media certainly wouldn’t be holding back, despite his ridiculous assertion that the GOP is the one that can “rapidly and effectively deploy false narratives, while we struggle to bring true ones to bear.”

    Sure, military rhetoric is used all the time in politics, but it doesn’t take long to realize that Sheldon isn’t just spewing talking points or rhetoric, he truly believes what he says, including that the GOP is all things sinister and this is a war.

      Milhouse in reply to p. | December 31, 2024 at 7:10 am

      Again, Trump just “campaigned” against Harris, and nobody accused him of anything for it. Even with all the TDS, nobody ever said “How dare you use such dangerous rhetoric, are you going to shoot her?” Nor was there any such reaction to his “war chest” or any of the other examples I gave. So no, there would be no such reaction to Republicans running a “war room” or “war machine” against her. We know this because we literally just saw it not happen. Why would it suddenly happen now?

        CountMontyC in reply to Milhouse. | December 31, 2024 at 7:26 am

        I would like to add that the Democrats have spent the last 4 years claiming that Trump incited an insurrection by saying “fight like hell” and even impeached him over it.

        In my area of the country for the past year people who think they’re well-informed have been spouting off letters to the editor that come January 20, Trump will usher in a Christian nationalist theocracy, trample on the rights of or imprison those who disagree with him, and so on. And talking with people whose beliefs fall in that vein, they could never say that they heard Trump specifically say any of that, and when asked if he did any of that in his first term, it’s like the first term never existed. Where are they getting that stuff? Dem talking points with MSM cooperation.

        Even on the local news around here during the campaign reports would always show Trump in what could be called aggressive posturing, with short snippets of speeches to show him in the worst light, while Kamala and Walz were shown smiling, waving, and often not even quoted at all.

        Not to mention that in the immediate aftermath of Butler, the “We need to calm down the rhetoric” was really “the GOP needs to lay off” while the Dems picked it right back up days later.

        All these words to say that the media can saturate their coverage with “GOP/Trump rhetoric bad” without saying it outright.

      AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to p. | December 31, 2024 at 1:57 pm

      Democrats supporting democrats.

    CommoChief in reply to Milhouse. | December 31, 2024 at 7:23 am

    In this case Sen Whitehouse explained the deliberate choice of this language. He castigated the use of these ‘warlike’ terms when they actually meant something else.

    ‘We……, customarily say we’re fighting for things when we really mean we’re working or toiling’.

    He then laid out not just the deliberate linguistic choices he prefers but made the distinction between his words and what you describe as ‘common political talk’.

    ‘A fight means a defined adversary, a battle strategy and actual punches thrown. Done well it involves exposing and degrading your adversary’s machinery of warfare’.

I’ll see your Sheldon Whitehouse and raise you one Elizabeth Warren.

That is to say that in the wake of Kamala Harris’s loss to a loudmouth realtor from Queens, the left is faced with a reckoning – either move back to the center or go off the cliff.

Personally, I’m so entirely sick of people like Whitehouse, Warren and dozens of other on the loony left that I wish they’d hire Wile E. Coyote as the next DNC chair and get sponsorship from Acme.

A great chance for a horse’s ass was ruined when teeth were put into Sheldon’s mouth! He is so partisan as to be stupid.

Young Sheldon is less loathsome than old Sheldon…and I thoroughly dislike the younger.

His hackneyed prose referencing historical upheaval is risible, but sadly, is deemed profound by the modern, college-educated who smugly bask in the ignorance their degrees have conferred upon them.

Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite | December 31, 2024 at 8:03 am

Ah, yes; Representative Whitehouse and the party of “Peace and Love”.

starlightnite50yrsago | December 31, 2024 at 8:23 am

The democrats have had a war machine for years. This is not new and shows the party as it really is. This type of rhetoric will come to haunt them. This last election is prove of that. I am tired of them trying to destroy our country with their socialistic ways.

If people would vet these zeros none would hold office.

Just more proof that the Democrat leadership still have no real idea why they lost on a truly legendary scale. His basic argument is not that they need to rethink, but that they just need to say the same stuff louder.

What sustains clowns like Whitehouse is favorable press. That is the real problem.

“Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) calls for creating Dem “war machine”

Merely a stratagem to get Santa to bring him a 3D printer.
It failed.

MartelCharlie3 | January 2, 2025 at 11:49 am

Sheldon Outhouse, a cretin in the mold of Patrick Kennedy.

    henrybowman in reply to MartelCharlie3. | January 3, 2025 at 12:41 pm

    And if you want to know how unbeatable that makes you in Rhode Island, watch this short excerpt from PBS’s “Taking On The Kennedys,” which seems to have been miraculously wiped from every single streaming service and internet repositorie except this one (although you can reportedly still buy a DVD copy from Amazon for $25).

I don’t know why you call them “liberals” professor.

The hard, radical leftists who believe in totalitarianism, maybe outright communism in many cases are not liberal. Real liberals believe in the free market and civil liberties under the rule of law. Whitehouse and his lefty ilk are not liberals.

Please, Mr. Whitehouse, take some illegal aliens into your house and block ICE from doing its job, so we can drop you into a deep dark hole. Let’s say, Guantanamo for Mr. Whitehouse!