China Is the New Culprit, But What’s the Crisis?

Ever since I determined that President Obama has replaced that “The Buck Stops Here” placard with one that says “You Don’t Ever Want A Crisis to Go to Waste” on the Resolute Desk, I’ve been on the lookout for The Culprit.

You know who The Culprit is. It’s the person or group who is actually the sinister power behind The Crisis, whose influence can only be blunted by a large government program, preferably one that diverts a few hundred billion dollars into the pockets of Democratic campaign contributors. For a while, it was the Tea Parties, but that one fizzled out after the historic Tea Party election of November. Wall Street wore the mantle until we all learned just how beholden to wealthy bankers Barack Obama’s administration is. George W. Bush is sort of a fallback Culprit on whom the left can (and will) blame nearly everything, as are “the rich”.

The past couple days, though, I’ve spied a new Culprit, and this one’s a real doozy. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell summoned the villain to give himself a little preening room this past weekend.

The city of Philadelphia is set to host the NFL’s first Tuesday night game in 64 years, and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) couldn’t be more upset about it.

“It goes against everything that football is all about,” Rendell said Monday on radio station 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia…

Rendell viewed the NFL’s decision as a referendum on the toughness, or lack thereof, of the United States.

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said. “I think we’ve become wussies.”

“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Yep, our new Culprit is China, the bogeyman across the Pacific. According to Governor Rendell, super-intelligent Chinese peasants would have walked through a blizzard to watch football and that’s really the difference between them and us. They’re tough and smart and devoted and we’re, well, craptastically-pampered morons who can’t even do long division!

Rendell, however, was trumped by the outgoing Congresswhiner Carol Shea-Porter, who blamed her defeat on a cabal of Red Chinese intent on sending her back to the padded room from whence she came (via Instapundit).

Outgoing Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter implied the Chinese cost her re-election in November and secretly funneled money to help her Republican opponent Frank Guinta during a post-election interview with ABC News.

“They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere,” Shea-Porter said in the interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “[A]nd it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.”

Presumably they’re “everywhere” in Congress except on Sundays during football season, when they’re hiking to the games and doing calculus problems in their heads.

Memes like this don’t just spring up unbidden and this one exists for a reason. Perhaps the President is preparing the ground to more easily use the Chinese against resurgent Republican government-cutters. Perhaps he wants to gin up a little cheap public support before the Chinese President pays a visit next month. Whichever the case, I simply don’t believe these two mentions of China as The Culprit so close to each other are coincidental. Someone, somewhere has been spreading the word that “China” needs to find its way into the national conversation and you can bet that there will be a Democratic “crisis” not far behind.

Tags: China, Democrats