| Submit your comments on this article | |||
| Home Front: Politix | |||
| Clinton official: Lamont supporters seethe with hate, anti-Semitism | |||
| 2006-08-08 | |||
| by Lanny Davis, Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON--My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I
This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." . . . I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right. Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. (Not that it ever did.) Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:
• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005). • On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005). • "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006). . . . And these are some of the nicer examples. One Sunday morning on C-Span I debated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on the Lieberman versus Lamont race. Afterwards I received a series of emails--many of them in ALL CAPS (which often suggests the hyper-frenetic state of these extremist haters)--that were of the same stripe as the blog posts, and filled with the same level of personal hate.
Mr. Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton between 1996-98, is the author of "Scandal: How 'Gotcha' Politics The rabid visciousness of the common North American moonbat (Liberalis ieffinghatebushis) is no news to anyone who's spent any amount of time here in Rantburg observing some of the pathetic creatures caught in the municipal Sink Trap, or peeked in at the DU/Kos/MyDD/TimesSelect fever swamps, but it is interesting that (1) now they're turning on brother liberals like Lanny Davis with a fury equal to what they use on us conservatives, (2) Davis (to his credit) is sufficiently bothered by this that he actually breaks the "no enemies on the Left" rule to speak up about it, and (3) Davis seems to be on the ragged edge of recognizing (and admitting out loud) that this is the logical end of the attack machine politics he and the other Clintonistas perfected in the 1990s. | |||
| Posted by:Mike |
| #24 Dhimmicrats cry easily when out of power. What is a "centrist?" |
| Posted by: SamAdamsky 2006-08-08 23:36 |
| #23 I saw something today I had never seen, 2 cars w/at least 5 bumper stickers each attacking Bush and the Grand Oil Party....... |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2006-08-08 23:21 |
| #22 Not as much as this from Rodger's blog: "...When he started investigating President Clinton 's Whitewater dealings, Jim Leach knew he wouId be playing hardball. But the Iowa Republican never expected to see Jack Palladino lurking around his house. But there Palladino was, scoping out Leach's Northwest Washington premises one evening as the congressman arrived home in 1994. Palladino, a San Francisco private detective who had been paid more than $100,000 by the Clinton campaign in 1992 to deal with what Clinton intimate Betsey Wright called "bimbo eruptions," quickly scurried away, and Leach never went public with what he saw. But the House Banking Committee chairman privately told colleagues the intended message was clear: You mess with us, we'll mess with you. William Clinger got the same treatment. When the now-retired Pennsylvania Republican congressman was probing Commerce secretary Ron Brown's business dealings in 1995, a New Jersey detective named Louis Stephens suddenly started snooping around. Stephens had been hired by Brown's ex-business partner and mistress Nolanda Hill to button up Clinger's sources. About the same time, a member of Clinger's staff got a call from a reporter working on a Clinger profile. She'd been tipped by a supposedly solid source that Clinger was a wife-abuser who'd once viciously pushed his spouse down a flight of stairs in a rage..... "Can I prove it was the White House behind the story? No," concedes a well-informed source. "Do I think it was them? Absolutely. They do have a pattern of getting into your past." .... The president's impressive people skills and abundant personal charm mask a streak of political cold- bloodedness and score-settling worthy of a Mario Puzo novel. That's particularly true in the way he and his lieutenants deal with anyone-critic or innocent victim alike-who poses a potential menace to the massive effort to keep the lid on the various scandals dogging Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, and his administration...." Weekly Standard 8/4/97 Thomas M. DeFrank and Thomas Galvin |
| Posted by: Pappy 2006-08-08 22:10 |
| #21 Ouch, #19 Pappy. That's gonna leave a mark. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-08-08 21:43 |
| #20 On the case NS |
| Posted by: Broderick Crawford 2006-08-08 21:43 |
| #19 You know damn well that when Kos and pals try this stuff on Hillary, theyll live to regret it. As long as they stay out of remote parks and check their cars for brake problems, they should be okay. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2006-08-08 21:39 |
| #18 Lanny is an idiot, even for a donk. The Angry Left will sink the Good Ship Reid/Pelosi/Dean |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-08-08 21:28 |
| #17 10-4. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-08 20:25 |
| #16 Hey sis. |
| Posted by: Broderick Crawford 2006-08-08 20:16 |
| #15 yeah, right |
| Posted by: Juanita Broaderrick 2006-08-08 18:53 |
| #14 "You know damn well that when Kos and pals try this stuff on Hillary, theyll live to regret it." Damn right they will! Then we'll REALLY see the Clinton Hate Ma-- Oops, I forgot: that didn't really exist... |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2006-08-08 18:34 |
| #13 lh, do you really want to bring it all up again? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-08 18:25 |
| #12 Clinton hate machine? er no. Clinton was the victim of hate politics on the right. He was also hated by the more savvy folks on the left (ie Howell Raines, Lewis Lapham, the Nation, etc) That the sillier folks on the left (Im talking about you, Salon) were fooled into supporting him cause the right hated him is neither here nor there. The savvier folks on the center (like Dick Morris) fully understood this. They hit back when they were hit, and got vicious when they were slimed. Why should centrists always play nice, and lose. Lieberman, maybe, should have hit back harder. You know damn well that when Kos and pals try this stuff on Hillary, theyll live to regret it. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-08-08 18:14 |
| #11 Lanny, you took the damn Red pill didn't you? |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-08-08 17:57 |
| #10 Liberals always seem so amazed when this either hits them in the face or they finally figure it out. Cracks me up... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-08-08 16:06 |
| #9 I'd like to think that this is Lanny Davis' first halting, uncertain step away from the dark side. Cynic that I am, I expect he's just being his sleazy self getting into a win-win position for the post election punditry. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-08 13:15 |
| #8 Sometimes, your on a horse heading for Damascus and God pops you out of the saddle with a lightening bolt and you join the good guys right then and there and start a new career writing epistles. Most conversions are just not that spectacular. Optimist that I am, I'd like to think that this is Lanny Davis' first halting, uncertain step away from the dark side. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-08-08 12:47 |
| #7 So when do the Donk Show Trials[tm] and Party Purges[tm] start? I want to stock up on soda and popcorn and program the Tivo. |
| Posted by: Phaith Croque8236 2006-08-08 12:20 |
| #6 sure, I remember Lanny condemning - "a vote for Bush is like more black churches burning" and James Byrd's daughter in the NAACP ad saying "a vote for Bush would be like dragging her father behind a truck again".... lying sack of shit has just begun to realize what his 24/7 Clinton campaign cohorts has done to American politics. He decides to come clean, yet still tries to invoke moral equivalence. Motion Denied, counselor |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-08-08 12:06 |
| #5 The Demmys and the MSM have been sowing the wind for 30 year now. Its coming time for them to reap the whirlwind. |
| Posted by: Oldcat 2006-08-08 12:05 |
| #4 "I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right." Mr. Davis, seeing how you’ve long refused to believe enlightened individuals that just happen to be minorities such as Shelby Steele or Thomas Sowell you might have tried asking your Poverty Pimp and Race Baiter pals behind closed doors if they had ever experienced any intolerance from the Liberal elite. If you had, you may have not been so “reluctant” to come to your most recent conclusion. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-08-08 12:02 |
| #3 (2) Davis (to his credit) is sufficiently bothered by this that he actually breaks the "no enemies on the Left" rule to speak up about it Only to strike a "these guys are acting like rightwingers" pose while doing so. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-08-08 11:39 |
| #2 (2) Davis (to his credit) is sufficiently bothered by this that he actually breaks the "no enemies on the Left" rule to speak up about it I'm not sure this should be given to his credit. His boy is losing. This would still be true if Lieberman were winning, but Davis wouldn't be saying any of it. |
| Posted by: Thereth Gluck9480 2006-08-08 11:01 |
| #1 The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. It took The Church [tm] a couple hundred years to acknowledge that Galileo was in fact correct. It's taken this writer only forty years to figure out what the rest of the Rant community has known for as long. Hey Mr. Davis ever read George Orwell? Four legs good, two legs better. |
| Posted by: Snaviting Angulet5501 2006-08-08 09:16 |