If the Left is Winning, Then Why is there Fear in Their Eyes?
David Harsanyi has an excellent column today on the Tea Parties and the capriciousness of politics. Were I a Republican staffer, I’d make sure my boss got a copy of it, pronto.
It was a mere four years ago that the Republican Party governed — and I assure you I employ the word “govern” reluctantly — every level of federal government. Few experts construed this to mean that the Democratic Party was forever irrelevant or a rotting cadaver.
What were the future apparatchiks up to as Republicans were busy breaking every promise, crime and piggy bank they could get their paws on?
Well, they did what any enlightened individual should do: They found themselves. They started blogging. Getting angry. Raising money. Marching. Caring. They began purging imposters and crafting catchy platitudes that the non-ideological voter could digest.
Today, a comparable, spontaneous grassroots effort has materialized. This one celebrates free-market principles rather than statism. Not surprisingly, there is also a sudden shift in perception. The once-glorified citizen activist is now nothing more than a radical, slack- jawed, proletariat yokel.
The Tea Parties are ridiculed, their participants demeaned and falsely portrayed as venomous radicals. As we all know by now, deniers of hope and change, by definition, are extremists.
The confidence level of the left is almost tangible. They feel so comfortable that they can let their misogynist flags fly without so much as an aggrieved belch from NOW or anyone else in the She Womyn Man-Haters Club. They can crane their necks upwards at the President’s onrushing tsunami of debt and shrug it off as nothing but a ripple. The left swaggers down the street with our language in one hip pocket and the entire Federal government in the other believing with all their hearts that they have all the power.
But they are very, very wrong.
See, there’s something progressives have forgotten and it’s a very important thing. They have forgotten that America’s voice is not the voice of the self-appointed Keepers of the Almighty Narrative nor does America’s power emanate from the puffed-up panjandrums in Washington.
It is the everyday, average American – the soccer Mom who challenged the powerful pols in her state and won, the beauty pageant contestant who politely and plainly spoke her mind, the plumber who asked a simple question, and the hundreds of thousands of your neighbors and friends – who really control the destiny of our nation. The truth is, until the tanks roll down Main Street and jackbooted thugs start rounding them up into reeducation camps, the real power of our nation still belongs to the very people the left insults, dismisses, and ridicules every single day.
And those people are getting pissed off.
The thing is, the left hears the distant rumble of America’s real muscle and they are worried. You can see it, if you brave the shrill bloviations and glib japes and get close enough to look in their eyes. They feel the real change coming and they know. That’s why they’ve gotten louder and more shrill and are taking shots at anything that moves. The gnawing feeling in their guts is telling them, more and more, that they don’t have the stranglehold on us they think they do.
So take heart, folks. The battle is far from over. In fact, to quote the great Paul Williams, “We’ve only just begun”.
(Cross-posted at The Green Room)
UPDATE: Linked by DaTechGuy. Thanks!
Other Posts of Interest:
- Ignore the Anonymous Cowards
- Rachel Maddow History FAIL!
- Senators, Please Think! Kill the Big Three Bailout Bill.
Category: Conservatism, Cool Columnists and Wicked Writers, Oh, THAT liberal media., Progressives
This is the truth spoken on a higher level. I have a friend who *hates* conservatives. His vote, last november, was 'putting a nail in the coffin of conservatism.'
Recently, he said he couldn't get comfortable since conservatives could still get elected.
"Fear… their city is rank with it. Let us ease their suffering!"
If he hates conservatives, how is he your friend? Or does he just not know yet?
I have known people who have professed conservative-hatred right up until I told them I was one. It's interesting to see how they re-evaluated their beliefs.
[...] (Cross-posted at The Sundries Shack) [...]
I guess when you're at a 21% approval rating, it can only go up from there. Surely tomorrow will be a sunnier day. But the reality here is pretty simple. Progressives have won over the regular folk in America. Yes, we used to be the hippies and college elites. And we still are, but we're also the soccer moms now. And the hockey moms who don't live in Alaska. But Alaska is a socialist state, so maybe we can win that one too. But probably not, Republicans are always the ones who depend on federal subsidy, and the Democrats don't like such things. But with the current Congress, who knows? Maybe we'll stop subsidizing the Red States. But that would involve the Democrats growing a spine. And they won't do that. So Republicans can cash their welfare checks and rest assured that they can always filibuster the bill that sends them those checks.
Yes, and the Democrats in Congress have enjoyed a much better rating. Weren't they in the single digits just a few months ago?
Congress as a whole was in the single digits a few months ago according to the same pollster who measures Pres. Obama's approval in single digits now.
So, yeah, you're right.
Who's measuring the President's approval in the single ratings?
Rasmussen has the 'Presidential Approval Index' at +1. They had never expressed approval numbers in that way until this president.
Rasmussen was also the pollster who decided that 'fair' as a judgement of job Congress was doing was a negative, resulting in the single digit approval you referenced above.
As I recall, they have.
You know what that +1 means, right? It's the difference between his approval and disapproval ratings and I've been hearing about it since I was a teenager.
We were friends before I really got into politics. I've always had a libertarian tilt when it comes to government, it just never solidified until I began paying attention to the 2008 election.
Of course I know what it means. I'm the one who put the link there.
Also, I checked Rasmussen for Bush approval ratings every day starting around 2003, and they never had the numbers expressed that way on the main page. It always looked like this and didn't have the language, "The Index is updated daily for both President Bush and President-elect Obama," until this last report.
Here's the page from February 4, 2007. The word 'index' is nowhere on the page.
But yeah, run with that "I’ve been hearing about it since I was a teenager," if it makes you feel better.
You've seriously never heard a news report about the gap between a pol's approval and disapproval numbers ever before? Never, ever? Hell, it was one of the stories of the Democratic primaries. If I heard one story about how the gap between Hillary's App/Disapp numbers was small and Obama's large, I heard a hundred. So Rasmussen has given it a more graceful name than "Gap between ratings". Good on them.
[...] pointed in the direction to do so. Well apparently the Sundries Shack via the green room sees the same potential that Rush and I do: The thing is, the left hears the distant rumble of America’s real muscle and [...]
So why the switch with Rasmussen between their Bush and Obama reporting ya think?
The gap between approve and disapprove using Rasmussen's numbers are more useless, and I might add deceptive, than with other polls because they separate the responses out into 4 categories. If Rasmussen did approve/disapporove like other polls, it at least would be at +9 instead of +1 but still a huge outlier.
You want to break the scoop that Rasmussen is generally a conservative pollster? I'm afraid you'd be a few years late on that as you would on the scoop that Zogby is generally liberal.
The problem with your argument is that you still haven't shown me anyone who has said that the President's approval rating is in the single digits, which was your initial claim. You've moved the goalpost nicely, though.
"measures Pres. Obama’s approval in single digits now" is what I said, and carefully so.
I know that Rasmussen is doing this purposefully, and that it's no secret. It's what people pay for.
It's also pretty clear that you know what I meant, so no, I didn't move anything.
Hardly. Rasmussen is very clearly not measuring the President's approval. They are measuring a difference between strong approval and disapproval ratings. It's not hard to find their methodology on their site. To say otherwise is to stretch the point to breaking.
Thanks for the link, Jimmie!
Maybe we’ll stop subsidizing the Red States.
We out here should be so lucky… as it would enable us to set our own tax and regulatory structures free from Federal greenmail. After a few years of this, you could say bye bye to the NYSE and hello to the Omaha Stock Exchange.
Seriously though: the 'subsidies' about which the moonbats prattle on are entirely attributable to military installations. Nice try liberals; show work next time.