Crush Liberalism

Blue cannibalism

No, not the kind of cannibalism that Hanoi Ted was yammering about, but this kind:

How Did We Reach The Point Where Air America Calls Hillary a ‘Whore’?

Randi Rhodes called Hillary a ‘[bad word]ing whore.’

In and of itself, it’s shocking, but it’s otherworldly when we think about what Hillary Clinton has meant to liberals for most of the past sixteen years.

Maybe Bill Richardson owes James Carville money, because that would help explain the bitter jihad the former Clinton strategist seems to be on, so relentlessly decrying the New Mexico Governor as “Judas” that Richardson stopped doing media appearances. It didn’t take much for Obama-backing General McPeak to declare Bill Clinton the equivalent of Joe McCarthy. And if you’ve read any Hillary vs. Obama thread on a liberal blog lately, you know that there have been friendlier back-and-forth exchanges in snakepits.

There’s something vaguely reassuring about all this, from the view of sitting on the right. It reveals to conservatives that the nastiness exhibited in our earlier disagreements with these folks was never personal; these people are clearly nasty to anyone who disagrees with them. Geraldine Ferraro’s long service to the Democratic party means nothing to many Obama backers; she’s a racist, “David Duke in drag,” as Rhodes put it. I’m sure Senator Patrick Leahy thought his decades of work on the left side of the aisle had bought him some street cred from feminists, but no, he was called sexist when he called on Hillary to leave the race.

Hillary gets called a “monster” by Obama’s surrogates; Hillary’s surrogates wonder out loud if Obama ever sold drugs. Today Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell speculates that Americans know only half the story of Barack Obama. Day in, day out, in this race it continues.

Is there nastiness on the right? Sure. But it’s hard to imagine somebody being the equivalent hero to the right the way Hillary was a hero to the left, so suddenly and severely pitched overboard – no, that’s not it, denounced and demonized — when somebody else came along.

Last night I said to Cam, “I like our base.” The right had a vocal, mostly policy-oriented fight earlier this year, and tempers did flare. But bit by bit, week by week, those on the right are either making their peace with McCain. And in some cases, some righties aren’t; but you rarely if ever hear them calling McCain a “[badword]ing whore” on the airwaves. By and large, a sense of decency and respect permeates conversations on this side of the aisle. There are exceptions, obviously, but the GOP race (thankfully) never turned into this bile-strewn mess.

They may be the stupid party, but they’re also the decent party.

Those of us on the right have been used to this kind of discourse from the left for a couple of decades or so.  But I’m giddier than Jim McGreevy at a Village People reunion on Fire Island now that the masters of mudslinging are slumming in the sewers to take out each other.

April 9, 2008 - Posted by crushliberalism | moonbats