by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hy do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.<\/p>\n Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Crotchety Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in “cold blood” before they were tried. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said our soldiers have “terrorized” Iraqi women and children.<\/p>\n Then there is the constant anger from Democratic ex-presidents. It used to be that out-of-office chief executives kept relatively hush. Presidents Ford and Bush Sr. \u2014 both voted out of office \u2014 did not bray when President Clinton had his trials, personal and otherwise.<\/p>\n Not so now with Presidents Carter and Clinton. They repeatedly harp about the sins of the current administration. By now, everyone has seen clips of Clinton losing his temper (complete with finger-wagging) and lashing out at the “right-wingers” on television. He lectures on political extremism, even as one of his wife’s staff members slandered John McCain by saying he broke under torture while a POW in Hanoi. And even at 82, Jimmy Carter almost daily carps over Bush’s foreign policy.<\/p>\n Do not forget the unhinged billionaire leftist philanthropists. Ted Turner said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9\/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush improved on Nazi propaganda methods.<\/p>\n The frustration with Bush & Co. has driven a few in the media almost to the point of clinical madness. In 2004, a clueless Dan Rather imploded by airing clearly forged memos that called into question Bush’s National Guard service \u2014 with the result that he was eased out by an embarrassed CBS News. More recently, Keith Olbermann, the foaming news head on the struggling cable channel MSNBC, keeps his ratings low with uncontrollable rants about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pushing a “new fascism.”<\/p>\n On college campuses, the old leftist intolerance of unwelcome free speech is back with a fury. A guest spokesman for the Minutemen immigration reform group was shouted down at a recent Columbia University lecture. Earlier, Harvard’s liberal president Larry Summers was forced out, after timidly questioning academic orthodoxy about the role of women in science and engineering.<\/p>\n W<\/span>hat sends liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria?<\/p>\n Is it that George Bush is a polarizing figure, not just in terms of his Iraq policy, but also because of his Christian Texan demeanor?<\/p>\n Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to “artificial” cultural restraint? Why should graying veterans of the barricades, then, remain “polite” when their country’s less sophisticated red-state yokels are taking it in the wrong direction?<\/p>\n The Democrats have not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they’ve occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left’s current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration \u2014 that they can’t gain a national majority based on their core beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism \u2014 these liberal issues don’t tend to resonate with most Americans.<\/p>\n To compensate, leftist pundits, billionaire philanthropists and politicians, from current officeholders to ex-presidents, work to ensure that isolated moments of Republican ineptness (George Bush strutting on a carrier deck in his flight suit) and wrongdoing (repulsive e-mails from a perverted Congressman Mark Foley) blare out as the only issues of the day. This distracting drumbeat, not their own agenda, is the only strategy for success in the next election.<\/p>\n True, reactionaries in the 1990s expressed a Neanderthal hatred of Bill Clinton. But now shouting leftists have lowered the bar. The danger, of course, is that by emulating the rhetoric of a Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the feral Democrats \u2014 when they come back into power again as tamed leaders who must govern \u2014 will have created Frankensteins. And, as we know, such monsters always turn on their creators.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[766],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-YU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-new-civility\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":0},"title":"Obama and the New Civility","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The heated rhetoric of the Bush years gone. A new age has dawned. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse \u2014 another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hitler-hitler-everwhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":1},"title":"Hitler, Hitler, Everwhere","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was not alone when he recently compared American behavior at Guantanamo Bay to that of \"Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings.\" Tarring Bush\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2005"","block_context":{"text":"June 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/june-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2343,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/on-dishing-it-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":2},"title":"On Dishing it Out . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner What is weird about the liberal hysteria to the obstreperous (and occasionally rude) town meetings is the complete amnesia about what constitutes reckless public discourse. At one time not so long ago, those on the Left, and mainstream Democrats as well, apparently believed inflammatory\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4409,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/senators-who-live-in-glass-houses-shouldnt\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":3},"title":"Senators Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Vote on Bolton's experience and qualifications if you can. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The marathon confirmation hearings of John Bolton to be the American ambassador to the United Nations have become pathetic. Bolton is supposedly discourteous to subordinates. He was a hands-on-his-hips boss! Heaven forbid, he sometimes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2005"","block_context":{"text":"May 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/may-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3561,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/surging-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":4},"title":"Surging Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Critics of the U.S. troop \"surge\" in Iraq, called for by President George Bush in January, early on cited American losses and then announced the plan's failure. Supporters, on the other hand, have seen progress from new tactics (which, many argue, should have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2007"","block_context":{"text":"August 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/august-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4305,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-strange-metamorphosis-of-senator-clinton\/","url_meta":{"origin":3776,"position":5},"title":"The Strange Metamorphosis of Senator Clinton","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services \"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.\" Who recently blurted that out? Pat Buchanan? Congressman Tom Tancredo? Nope, it was Hillary Clinton. 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