The Democrats have achieved a public relations coup that any ministry of propaganda would be proud of. Worried that the United States is $17 trillion in debt? Radical! Unconcerned about deficits that pile up as far as the eye can see? Responsible! Unhappy about an anemic economy in which a generation of young people struggles to find full-time employment? Traitor! Content with record levels of poverty and non-employment? Moderate! Want to get rid of a law that is opposed by most Americans, decimates the economy and is patently unworkable? Crazy! Delighted at the sight of millions of Americans losing their health insurance and being demoted to part-time employment? Public-spirited!
Only our one-party press makes this topsy-turvy world possible. But there is, in fact, craziness abroad in the land. We see it at MoveOn.org, where Democratic Party activists have started multiple petitions demanding that John Boehner and Ted Cruz be arrested for sedition. At least one of these petitions, as Byron York has noted, has been signed by tens of thousands of Democrats. The left has always been totalitarian at its core, and I really do think that if they could get away with it, liberals would try to criminalize disagreement with their policies. Another incentive to hold the House in 2014!
It isn’t just nutty activists, either. On MSNBC, Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen said of House Republicans, “we take an oath to support the country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and these are the domestic enemies.” But really, how shocking is that? Over the last few weeks, just about every prominent Democrat has described House Republicans as terrorists.
Then we have CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, another loyal Democrat, who, at the end of a long screed, assured his television audience that conservatives “love America in theory, and hate it in fact.” Which must be what makes us traitors and terrorists.
Given that level of intemperance, it is no surprise that one Democratic Party activist on Twitter has already published Ted Cruz’s home address in Houston and urged violence against Cruz. That particular threat was public, but no doubt there have been others that have not been reported.
President Obama says that he hopes the Republican “fever” of opposition to his policies will break soon. There is indeed a fever infecting our body politic, but I think Obama has his eyes on the wrong patient.
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