House of Eratosthenes

Democrats have done very well politically by convincing voters that they are, in a very broad sense, on the side of the little guy. “Republicans,” they say, “take care of the rich, but we Democrats are the party that brought you Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, the Civil Rights Act, free school lunches, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and Obamacare. We are the party that will tax rich Republicans to fund government programs that help poor and middle-class Democrats.” Like mothers, Democrats are nurturing and supportive.

There are a few little problems with this narrative. Most of those programs, for good or ill, had bipartisan support. Further, Head Start has been a colossal failure; the school lunch program is overly broad and encourages waste; civil rights laws have been interpreted to permit quotas and “reverse discrimination”; AFDC wound up encouraging unwed childbearing and arguably contributing to poverty; and Obamacare is causing the middle class to pay higher premiums for more limited medical care while still covering only a fraction of the uninsured.

Still, the “mommy party” retains its “caring” image.

The Democrats have another reputation. They are perceived as the party of weakness — against both criminals at home and enemies abroad. Events of the past several weeks and months have underlined that second reputation in (pardon the expression) red ink.

The Democratic senators’ decision to release a report excoriating the CIA for “torture” after the 9/11 attacks was designed to impugn the Bush administration and the nation’s security agencies. In weak-minded fashion, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her colleagues insisted that the harsh interrogation of terrorists was immoral and also completely ineffective.

There is nothing intellectually dishonest about rejecting torture or anything close to it. But when the senators insist that it didn’t work — despite the contrary assessment of five CIA directors of both parties — they betray a fundamental unseriousness. Of course it worked. That’s why it presents a moral dilemma. Otherwise, they’re asserting that the CIA is manned by sadists who did these things for kicks. Presumably, if that had been true, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, which conducted a lengthy investigation, would have brought charges. But it didn’t. Finally, the senators’ claims that they were kept in ignorance have been abundantly contradicted by the public record and by statements from the CIA officers who did the briefings.

The attempt to discredit the Bush administration and engage in moral preening failed. Polls showed that despite the Senate report, Americans support the limited use of harsh interrogation by a 2-1 margin.

I’m not in complete agreement with all this. The corollary of motherhood with the democrat party, to me, seems flimsy. When mothers are nurturing, it’s supposed to be out of a vision that the child should eventually become stronger. Admittedly, some small-em moms present some problems for this, some of them even become emotionally attached to their childrens’ lack of ability to provide for themselves. But, they are the freaks, the exceptions that prove the rule.

The democrat party, on the other hand, is deeply invested in weakness. Of everybody. If we can think for ourselves and provide for ourselves, we’re less likely to vote democrat. They know it, we know it, they know we know, we know they know.

We only pretend otherwise out of a lazy, habitual form of misguided etiquette, just to prop up the empty “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties” narrative.

The “party of the little guy” thing doesn’t hold up either…

Democrats bagged the bulk of big dollar donations in the 2014 midterm elections according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

Out of the $128 million spent by the top 10 individual donors to outside groups, Democrats hauled in $91 million or 71% of donations.

“Among groups that funneled more than $100,000 to allies, the top of the list tilted overwhelmingly toward Democrats—a group favoring the GOP doesn’t appear on the list until No. 14,” reports the AP.

Democrats also enjoyed a 3-to-1 cash advantage when it came to the 183 groups stroking checks of $100,000 or more. The liberal National Education Association (NEA) topped the list of big money donors at $22 million. The top ten list contained zero Republican-leaning groups.

“They’re total hypocrites when it comes to this subject,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “They’ve made a living off campaign talking points when, in reality, they’ve been raking in more money from millionaire donors than Republicans for quite a while.”

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The Party of WeaknessSunday, December 28th, 2014

The Party of Weakness
Sunday, December 28th, 2014