Here we are, on the moderate, adult, traditional American values (the REAL traditional American values), speaking for the people of the United States in the liberal heritage of the Founding, and we are on the DEFENSIVE?
Someone from the radical right spouts something controversial and off we go, commenting from 12 different perspectives on how stupid, how radical, how pitiable, how unfortunate, how silly, how predictable, how low, how provocative, how angry, how uninformed, how illiberal, how untruthful, how hypocritical is that someone.
Always, always, IN RESPONSE.
By remaining on the defensive, the field is conceded to the attacker! Whom is in control of the popular dialog these days? It's almost too surreal to be believed! The Obama Administration and the Democratic Party are taking responsibility for fixing the ills of the nation left to them by 30 years of conservative ascendancy and the RIGHT controls the national dialog?
Come on, people, this is incompetence on all our parts!
Look at the diaries. Mitch McConnell, what a doof. The Party of No rides again. John Boehner, off in the weeds. Eric Cantor either does or doesn't get his window shot out. Filibuster this, filibuster that. They are saying there is a government takeover of car companies, healthcare, banks, good Lord, 60, no 80, no 90% of the economy is under government control, so they say. What a bunch of idiots they are to think that Obama wasn't born here. What horrors, they say that Obama lies.
This set of shrieks reminds me of the scene in Woody Allen's film, Manhattan, where the nice, genteel folks at the cocktail party wring their napkins over the coming Nazi rally in Central Park. The nice people talk about what a biting piece of satire was written in the New York Times last Sunday. Yes, a really biting piece of satire is the most effective weapon in response to Nazis. Woody's character's response is a bit more direct ("I think we should get a bunch of people with baseball bats and really go explain things to them."), but it's still a response.
Where should we be? What should we do?
Get on the offensive! Seize the initiative!
Not a news cycle should go by without the right being discredited -- Right = Republican = Fail.
The failed policies of the conservative movement.
The conservative dictatorship of the airwaves.
The stream of lies that come from the right. Nothing truthful comes from the right.
The conservative betrayal of American values.
The Republican betrayal of hard-working Americans.
Government of, for and by the powerful economic elites is not the government of the Founders.
Republicans have taken government out of the hands of the people and put it in the hands of the gilded elites.
The right supports Wall Street over Main Street.
The right defends and depends upon ignorance being a virtue.
Thirty years of the right in the ascendancy have given the center and left of this country plenty of targets to demonstrate the failure of the right. We need to use it, rather than cede EVERY news cycle and every headline to the right! Why do Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin and the rest of the flaming red right radical spewing heads matter? Because we allow them to and encourage them!
Why did the right flame out in 1964? Because they lost credibility in the harsh, war-mongering, overly aggressive and silly positions they took. LBJ's campaign showed where that idiocy leads in one ad with a mushroom cloud and a little girl. THAT is imagery that takes back the initiative. And the ridiculous positions on the radical right haven't softened, they've gotten crazier! The rhetoric has only changed for the worse. The important change, though, is that the rhetoric has had time to go from untested theory to discredited policy. And we, on the side of American values, have allowed the failures to be painted over with every fresh splash of creepiness from the right! EVERYTHING that is said from the right distracts from the main point that the right has failed America and Americans.
Hard-working, by the rules, honest American values-holding citizens have been victimized by the radical pursuits of the right to put ever increasing amounts of power in the hands of the already powerful. THAT is the conservative ideal in this country over the last 30 or so years. And that is what we cannot let stand in 2010.
Do you want bipartisanship, less inflammatory rhetoric from the radical right? The best way to get conciliation is through an epic beatdown! The least amount of success on the right only serves to encourage the crazy!
Take back the headlines, take back common sense and take back American values from the pretenders and usurpers.
This is for Americans and for liberty.
Another conservative sway would lead to further disaster for the greatest country on Earth.
We can't let it happen.
We have what is truly right and truth on our side. We are the remaining defenders of Truth, Justice and the American Way, not the radical right dictatorship of falsehood!
Get out front.
Show the way.