From the Department of Gloating
And I quote:
"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate."
-- Grover Norquist, Bush advisor and president of Americans for Tax Reform, cited in the Washington Post and on Meet the Press
So, are the Democrats effectively neutered?
posted by Farai @ 7:11 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
pretty much.
I voted Kerry because I dislike Bush and absolutely despise the crazies (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney). But thinking back, I never really was inspired by Kerry. I just disliked Bush and what he's done - enough so to vote Kerry. Running a 'hate-the-other-guy' campaign is not sustainable for the Democrats, they need more substance. yes, there were facts, but people can, and did, choose to ignore them. People want to be impressed, not governed...sadly.
That said, if Colin Powell ran for president I would campaign for him.
Are Democrats neutered? Not with 55 million voters that wanted to remove a wartime president. Let Republicans have their gloatfest. They may become complacent and forget that taxation without representation makes people angry. That would be their downfall.
Hmmm. Minorities in both houses of congress. Lost the Presidency. Minority of governorships. I don't think Dems are neutered per se, but they are becoming less relevant with every election.
my commiserations... i have to say i thought this would happen though. the GOP campaign machine is simply too effecient for the threadbare job the democrats ran this year. Kerry was undoubtedly smarter, and had his integrity mercifully intact despite the GOP's best efforts, but he just wasn't prepared to stoop as low as the damn republican swine. have to say too, that as an outsider, were i to know nothing of either's policies and to be stupid enough to vote on the basis of charisma and rhetoric, Bush would have won my vote hands down. shameless plug: see my post on this if you want. think the post was called "how to make money on the US presidential election".
Democrats are not neutered in a sense that they will not be impotent. We may have to give them couple of rabies shots to prevent the spread of the disease. Democrats should rename themselves Socialists or People's Democratic Party because that's what they really are. At least those who are in control. I believe that Democrats will be true to their Bolshevik ways and will try to sabotage everything from judges to tax cuts to Social Security. I think it is immensely advantageous to us that Democrats just don't get it. I think we should support them in their endeavour to re-educate America as Geraldine Ferraro suggested because it is sure to backfire on them.
I watched and listened to an interesting discussion between Grover Norquist and Bill Moyers last week (on November 5). Grover is an idealist as well as an ideologue. He believes in a utopia in which there is very little government, very low taxes, and enterpreneurs are pretty much free to do whatever they want. He visualizes the resulting society as one in which everyone owns something, specifically shares of stock in corporations that pay good dividends. Without taxes and government interference, he believes that this utopian society would come into existence. Everyone would have a savings account that would grow to provide a decent retirement income. It would also provide money to pay for medical expenses. It would be wonderful.
I agree it would be wonderful. However, I don't see how Grover gets around the fact that we had a century of small government and low taxes while the capitalistic entrepreneurs could do pretty much whatever they pleased. It didn't lead to anything like the utopia he imagines.
We progressives, liberals, Democrats, socialists, etc., are not going to accept minority status quietly. We have truth and history on our side of this argument. Grover Norquist is not the only one who has this impossible utopian dream. President Bush recently talked about achieving the "ownership society." It sounds as though he and Grover Norquist have the same dream. It's hopeless to try to wake them up, but we must show the rest of the nation the basic fallacies in their beliefs.
Hello all. In answer to the question: are the Democrats effectively neutered...
Well I think the Dems have been suborned, on the national level, by the kind of people who collude with the Republican party on mass voter fraud in a Presidential Election. Neutered? It depends on your perspective. Are they being beaten or bought? I don't know for certain. Chances are, neither does anybody reading this, no matter what our political identification is.
mischevously, merrily
EG
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