Patriotism, Then and Now

Democrats–instructed, we now know, by top Obama adviser David Axelrod–have been attacking Rush Limbaugh as unpatriotic for saying that he hopes Barack Obama’s political stratagems will fail. So, let’s take a walk down memory lane. When a Republican was in the White House, were Democrats rooting for his success?

It’s a silly question, I know, for anyone who lived through the last eight years. But for any Rip van Winkles in our audience, let’s recall this Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, in which a majority of Democrats said that they wanted President Bush to fail. The question asked was: Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?

An August 2006 poll conducted by FOX News/Opinion Dynamics showed 51 percent of Democrats did not want Bush to succeed. Thirty-four percent of independents also did not want Bush to succeed.

By comparison, 90 percent of Republicans said at the time that they wanted Bush to succeed, and 40 percent of Democrats said the same.

It’s really much worse than that, of course. Rush wants Obama to fail to socialize the economy and run up trillions of dollars in debt. Democrats in 2006–surely a plurality, if not a majority–wanted the United States to fail in a war in which our armed forces were then engaged. Yet, through the eight years of the Bush administration, neither the President nor his spokesmen ever accused these Democrats of being unpatriotic. I hope that someday their restraint will be appreciated.

Via the excellent Hannity show on Fox News.

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