California Conservative

Astute political observers had seen signs of dissatisfaction within the Nutroots movement ever since Congress didn’t cut off funding for the Iraq War. Their dissatisfaction with the Democrat leadership isn’t abating. In fact, it’s growing. I offer as proof this article in the Nation magazine:

The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it’s escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for “foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.” Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t. The Democrats’ game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.

There’s a low simmer to those words. Granted, this is the Nation, whose editorial board thinks that anyone even a tiny bit to the right of Ted Kennedy might not be liberal enough. They’re known for their extremism. When I read that they’re developing a laundry list like this, I know that their dissatisfaction is growing.

I don’t believe that they won’t vote Democrat in 2008. I suspect that they’ll drag themselves to the polls by saying that the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.

Sometimes bad election results happen because too many people from a large voting bloc stay home. That’s what happened last year when anti-amnesty conservatives stayed home. More often, though, bad election results happen because, though they get out and vote, they don’t talk their neighbor or their co-worker of their relative into voting their way, too. I suspect that that’s what will happen with Democrats in 2008.

The Nutroots’ demands are pretty unrealistic. Why would a political party vote in lockstep against ending the NSA intercept program when the vast majority of voters (upwards of 70 percent) think that warrantless intercepts are just fine? That isn’t political courage. That’s political suicide.

Likewise, support is building for the surge. In fact, I’ve never bought into the notion that voters threw Republicans out because of the war. Polling showed that the biggest contributing factors behind the Republicans’ 2006 defeat were their fiscal irresponsibility and their spinelessness on immigration. If the Nutroots wants to believe that the war was what drove Republicans from office, that’s their right. It just doesn’t square with the truth.

Just as the Democrats work tirelessly to demonstrate to the voters that it makes zero difference which party controls Congress, the political establishment forces all candidates for the presidential nomination to sever any compromising ties to sanity and common sense.

TRANSLATION: Democrats were voted into the majority because they promised to be change agents. Instead, they’ve reverted to being the ultimate insider establishment party. There’s too much deadwood for them to be forward thinking.

Last summer, I attended a fundraiser for Michele Bachmann. The special guest that day was then Speaker Dennis Hastert. After the luncheon, I had the chance to talk with Speaker Hastert. I told him that I thought it was a joke to believe that Democrats were change agents. His reply was that we shouldn’t expect John Dingell, who’s now been in the House for 26 terms, John Conyers, Charlie Rangel and John Murtha, who’ve each been in the House north of 40 years, of being anything more than establishment types. I agreed with Speaker Hastert then. I agree with his statements even more now.

Simply put, Democrats sold the voters a bill of goods. They’ve fallen far short of delivering on that bill of goods. That’s why their approval rating is half that of President Bush’s.

I’ll predict this: If Democrats don’t get alot of appealing things accomplished before this time next summer, they won’t be the majority party in the House or Senate in 2009.

This paragraph summarizes what’s happened recently:

A war people hate, Gitmo, Bush’s police-state executive orders of July 17–the Democrats have signed the White House dance card on all of them. And guess what? Just as their poll numbers are going down, Bush’s are going up, by five points in Gallup from early July. People are beginning to think the surge is working, courtesy of the New York Times.

Ultimately, liberal activists will ask themselves this question:

So are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress?

How Democrats answer that question will play a big part in them retaining control of Congress. It isn’t unreasonable to think that Democrats are headed for a season of disenchantment. Their electoral defeat would be well-deserved.

Technorati Tags: Nutroots, John Murtha, Anti-War Activists, FISA, Iraq War, Gallup Poll, Gitmo, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under Activism, Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Election 2008, Homeland Security, Intel, Iraq, Military, Pelosi, W. 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.