Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
VIDEO LINK
John Gibson responds to hate mail re: MSOC on Fox:
Early Warning
Monday, April 10, 2006
By John Gibson
I got a few angry e-mails about putting on a "Blue on Blue" debate on Friday.
That's where I put two Democrats on to debate the differences and the arguments among the lefties.
So Friday it was our own Bob Beckel, a Democratic strategist, and Maryscott O'Connor, who runs a far-left blog called myleftwing.com.
This always causes gasping among the independents, conservatives and Republicans: How dare you put on those Democrats and nobody to balance them? Where's the fair and balanced?
Look, I consider putting those two lefties on as a public service.
Call me John "Paul Revere" Gibson, riding my horse through the night shouting, "The blue coats are coming, the blue coats are coming!"
Maryscott O'Connor and her cohorts are the reason you hear all those Hollywood lefties spouting that crazy stuff about Bush. She is where they get it. They can't think on their own. They borrow somebody else's lines just like it was a sitcom or a movie. They're reading the script and Maryscott and a few other far lefties are the scriptwriters.
I'm trying to show you where all this anger on the left is coming from and what they intend to do if you let them win in November.
If independents, conservatives and Republicans lay down -- as the polls now indicate they may be -- the Dems are going to win back the House.
I asked Maryscott, "You think Bush should be impeached?" She said yes without any hesitation.
Then I turned to Beckel: "So you think that's bad for Democrats?" Oh no, this is good for the party. And if my ears did not deceive me, I think I heard sensible, moderate Beckel say he'd impeach Bush, too.
So what happens to the Democrat middle when it comes in contact with the far left? With a sincere pardon me to my friend Beckel, they cave, they give in, they join up. It's the moderate middle el foldo.
So it was a warning. This is what is going to happen if a swarm of angry Democrats get elected in November. The Beltway Dems are going to fold up and let the angry left run the show. The angry left is going to subpoena, hold hearings, issue censure resolutions and eventually impeach.
The left-wing blogs are where the anger is, and that anger is moving towards the middle.
Turn your head leftward, take a good, hard look and be afraid. Be very afraid.
"The middle caves to the left?"
"The Beltway Dems are going to fold up and let the angry left run the show?"
OH, Gibby, Gibby, Gibby -- IF ONLY.
Sure, Bob Beckel agreed with me that impeachment would be a good thing. But I didn't hear him agreeing that it's the course we should take. I didn't hear "el middle el foldo." I heard a Democratic strategist asserting that impeachment won't happen and shouldn't be pursued because it would "take the focus off" the myriad other messages he thinks we should be sending. (Never mind that he didn't -- and probably couldn't -- articulate those messages.)
The word "fear-mongering" comes to mind when reading Gibby's Word ("Be afraid. Be very afraid." Duh). It's a transparent call to the right wing base, all right: "Watch out, the Democrats are going to take over in November, and when they do, they'll be making gay marriage mandatory for everyone!"
I'm afraid the far right and their base are living in a bubble:
When 50% of the country trusts the Democrats over the Republicans on immigration, when less than 38% of the country approves of the President's job performance... We're not talking about the angry left. We're talking about a strong majority of the country.
If Gibson's preposterous claims turned out to be true, if the Beltway Dems suddenly applied their perennial invertebrate approach to the "angry left," I would be a happy, happy girl. Hell, I'd be mildly gratified if they merely checked their fucking focus groups and realised the time is ripe for attack.
But my feeling is this, as it has been for a while: the Beltway Dems are loath to move further left, because they aren't comfortable on the left. The LIKE the centre, they LIKE the moderate territory.
And they fail to understand the basic political truth that a country with a far right party and a centrist party will generally take mostly right-wing roads. And end up going in circles.
It's going to take, what, a 20% approval rating, before the Centrist Dems take a stand? Before they... CAVE to the left?
Gibson has a lot more faith in the Beltway Dems than I do.