Brutally Honest Rant - 07/18/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Political Failures – Part 2
Audio Transcripts
07/18/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Tonight is the second part of a four-part miniseries of political failures. Last week I ranted on about the failures of the White House, and specifically about the Bush Imperium. Well now I’m turning my attention to the stuff that is happening… or NOT happening… just a little ways up the street from the White House.

Now I’m going to look at the Democrats in Congress. And the reason why I’ve broken down the Congress to their two dominant political parties is because their collective failures are unique. Tonight I’m picking on the Democrats in Congress, and next week I’ll be picking on the Republicans in Congress.

I know there are times when Dems and Reps are pretty much interchangeable, and there’s no great mystery behind it. It’s all done to make sure that those in the status quo will still have their special little programs and have them well-funded. But for the rest of the stuff… well that’s unique to them, and that is what I’m going to be talking about tonight and next week.

Now before we go down that road, I just want to reiterate that I’m not picking sides between liberals and conservatives, or between Democrats and Republicans. To this jaded political cynic, they’re EQUALLY guilty of failing the American people… and whether you like it or not, I KNOW that I’m not the only one who feels this way!

So trust me, if you listen to this little list of political failures and think that maybe I’m being a little too hard on the Democrats, then obviously you haven’t heard last week’s take on the Bush Imperium, or you should just wait another week or so to hear what I have to say about the Republicans in Congress… and for you to figure out who the fourth group is that I’ll be talking about.

So here we go…

Perhaps the biggest political failure that can be attributed to the Democrats is the apparent lack of planning once they have the power they have achieved in Congress. It’s one thing to have power. It’s another to actually put it to use.

And it’s funny too, because the biggest complaint made by liberals is that the Bush Imperium never really had a plan concerning Iraq… when the truth of the matter was that they DID have a plan… and for the most part it worked because Saddam was taken out of power. They just couldn’t figure out what to do AFTER that.

But with the Dems it’s a little bit worse. The Dems pretty much have this attitude as if to say “well, WE should be in charge of this”, but they don’t have any ideas of what to do once they have control.

I’ve been going over the history of the Democrats when they were in charge of Congress going back all the way to the 1930’s, and they all had one thing in common… they all took their lead from their Democratic leaders in the White House. They were only strong when they had a Democratic President leading the way! FDR, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, all the way right up to Bill Clinton… if a Democrat wasn’t in charge of the White House, then the Democrats in Congress would simply tread water until they got someone in there!

I’ve said this before but it’s pretty much true in that you can characterize the Democrats as being lottery winners. They believe that this power is simply HANDED to them, as though it was meant to be.

That certainly explained what happened in 1994, when they actually LOST control of the Congress in that year’s mid-term election. And once they lost it, they really had no plans on getting it back. It was and it has been the Republican’s game from that point on.

So their first political failure is that they lack any meaningful leadership outside of the White House. They had no idea how they got into power in the first place, and it comes as a complete surprise to them when they lose that power.

Let’s think about that for a moment… what happened in 1994 that gave the GOP their power in Congress? You had the Clinton White House mired early on in scandal – namely Whitewater and the Travel Office. You had anemically low voter turnout; maybe twenty percent of registered voters actually gave enough of a care to vote (and yes I was one of them). You had Congressional scandals such as the Lincoln Savings and Load fiasco, the collapse of the House Bank, the rampant check-bouncing problems, and their midnight pay raises. And you had the GOP with this “Contract with America” gimmick, which essentially offered an alternative to the status quo. Those who did vote saw that as a clear alternative. That’s why they won control of the Congress!

Now contrast that with the Democrats in 2006. What happened? You had the GOP-controlled Congress mired in scandal. You had a GOP-controlled White House looking more and more like one run by Caesar Nero, especially after Hurricane Katrina.

And what did the Democrats offer? NOTHING! They didn’t offer any meaningful alternatives to the status quo. The only thing… THE ONLY SINGLE THING… that they could offer the voters was the fact that they weren’t AS BAD as the Republicans! THAT’S IT! They didn’t WIN control of the Congress back, they were HANDED it to them on a silver platter thanks to Bob Ney, Mark Foley, Randy Cunningham, and Tom DeLay.

Now during those 12 years when they were a minority party in Congress, they had an obligation to try to keep the GOP honest. This was especially true during the last six years of the Bush Imperium. Did they? NOPE! Oh they PROMISED that they would! Remember? That’s what they told their liberal base when John Roberts and Samuel Alito were being nominated to the Supreme Court. Their liberal base were worried – and rightly so – that these two would bring the Supreme Court to the conservative side. And the Democrats PROMISED that they would hold these nominees feet to the fire! They would raise holy hell and stymie the process as much as they could. Filibuster! Filibuster!

What happened? They wimped out! They caved! They backed down.

So now they’re in power, and almost immediately all of the things that they told their liberal base that they would do, they quickly backed away from. Impeachment? Well new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took that right off the table. Get the troops out? Well they would propose some timetables, and of course the Imperium vetoed it – the second veto in its history – and then the Dems caved and signed on with a compromise that essentially gave the White House yet another blank check for some non-binding non-enforceable benchmarks.

I mean, you can see the outrage building from the liberals over how things are turning out so far with the Dems in charge. Back down? Negotiations? Compromises? They weren’t put in there for compromises! They were put in there to keep the Bush Imperium honest and so far they have been doing a piss-poor job of that!

How about those things they were taking the Republicans to task for right up until November of 2006? Earmarks? No effort to limit those. They’re still getting churned out faster than the US Mint can crank out dollar bills. Cleaning up the “ethically-challenged”? Well I guess we’ll just find out how good Speaker Pelosi is on that promise when Congressman Jefferson from Louisiana has his forthcoming federal trail for money laundering, racketeering, bribery, and a few other nifty crimes.

And then those newly-empowered Democrats had the utter AUDACITY to tell their liberal supporters that “they have no idea what the job entails”. Uh, excuse me jerkoffs, but you Dems in Congress are the ones with the frigging blinders on! You Dems weren’t handed this election-day lottery win because of your “adept understanding of the political system”. Your electorate – remember them? – voted you into power because they wanted CHANGE! And now… get this… you have to actually DELIVER on that!

Imagine that: actually DELIVERING what they promised! What a concept, huh?

And meanwhile the new Republican minority in Congress is doing the one thing that the Dems FAILED to do for the past twelve years! They have managed to stymie the process and mount an effective resistance to the Dems! They shot down the compromise immigration bill, which was crafted as quid pro quo so the Imperium could get their blank check in Iraq. And then when the Dems staged an all-nighter just this past evening over another Iraq withdrawl vote… the GOP minority killed that as well. They have managed to do in six months what the Democratic minority could never pull off in twelve years… they effectively CASTRATED the majority power in the Legislature!

I mean… come on, Democrats… I hate to say it, but let’s get brutally honest here… you guys got BUSHWHACKED! And it was with help from your own damn party!

And you’re probably wondering how that could happen, right? How could you get out-played by a bunch of egomaniacs with delusions of manifest destiny on their minds?

Well that lack of leadership is certainly a key reason why. Oh yeah, you got Howard Dean in charge of the DNC, but he hasn’t even uttered his infamous rebel yell since he got in there. Meanwhile you have all of these braying jackass egomaniacs who all think that their seniority makes them the “logical choice” for leadership. And that’s not counting the folks who are actually in the running for the White House in 2008! Everybody in the Democratic contingent in Congress wants to be calling the shots, and when everybody is doing that, nothing gets done.

Listen, I’ll make this really simple for you Dems… you have three people who should be calling the shots for your party right now. Their names are Dean, Pelosi, and Reed. If you guys can’t get your act together and get your people to fall in line, then perhaps you should find the people you designated as House and Senate Majority Whips and Deputy Majority Whips, and actually HORSEWHIP their sorry asses on your respective legislative floors so we can all watch on C-SPAN! Maybe then you can get the message that the voters have been trying to hammer in!

Next, you have a party that doesn’t really KNOW what they stand for! Apparently it is to support whichever special interest group that contributes the most. You guys think that you stand for civil rights, but let’s face it… prior to 2001, the ACLU declared your icon – Bill Clinton – to be THE most UNCONSTITUTIONAL president in American history! THE ACLU!

Bear in mind as well that some of the most repressive anti-freedom legislation and regulation has come from DEMOCRATS! The “Fairness Doctrine” – which is an abomination of the very word – is being shoved back into life by DEMOCRATS! Censorship by regulation has been pushed on MULTIPLE occasions by DEMOCRATS, most recently by Congressman Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia… A DEMOCRAT! That in and of itself is a blatant violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and a blatant VIOLATON of the very OATH each and EVERY member of Congress is required to take! As far as this commentator is concerned, Rockefeller and any other member of Congress that signs on to that law are GUILTY OF PERJURY and they should be PROSECUTED and CONVICTED and sent to PRISON on that charge!

You think you Democrats support freedom? If you back thugs like Rockefeller then you don’t know ONE TENTH of what freedom means!

And speaking of which, one of the older political FAILURES that the Democrats are guilty of is one where they will sign onto any kind of repressive moralistic law simply to avoid confrontations with the freedom-hating bible-thumpers. These losers then have the utter audacity to say “well, I don’t support this law and there are some constitutional concerns, but hey, we’ll let the courts decide.” Well guess what? That’s a violation of your oath of office too! “Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”… THAT is what your oath says! It does NOT say “pass it now and let the courts decide if a law is constitutional later.” Guess what? The courts are tired of cleaning up your crap so they’re fobbing it back to you! And I’ll just leave it at that for right now…

Finally there is the last political failure, and that is the failure to take action when action is NEEDED!

Every single missed opportunity the Democrats have committed since they lost power back in 1994 can all be written off according to them as simply being “ammunition” for the next election. Every time the Bush Imperium or the GOP-controlled Congress proposed some boneheaded measure that they KNEW would be wildly unpopular, the Democrats said NOTHING about it!

It was like they were channeling Gene Wilder from the original “Willy Wonka” movie and saying in a super-low voice “help, stop, police” anytime one of the children were about to do something stupid. They let the opportunity to do something slip because they think that it would only get the people pissed off at the Republicans that much more and help them out on Election Day.

Well guess what? You’re only HALF right. But the other half of the equation is that you actually have to DO SOMETHING to show that you’re a better alternative!

You see, here’s what happens… you see something messed up with the GOP and you say nothing, hoping that the people will remember it come Election Day. Then they do something else messed up, and again you say nothing. And this happens over and over and over again. Then Election Day comes along and the people say “Well the GOP was really screwed up, but what did the Democrats do about it? They did nothing! They didn’t speak up. They essentially allowed it! Why should we reward that?” So guess what? Your supporters stay home because they’re just as disgusted at your inability to speak up as they are about the messed up things the GOP did! That is another form of political FAILURE.

Remember how you Dems got into power in 2006. You didn’t WIN it. You were handed it because your GOP counterparts were seen as the WORSE of the two parties!

You know, you only get ONE chance to make a first impression. Once that chance is shot, you can’t go back and do it over again. Believe me, there were plenty of times where I wished I could correct some first impressions.

Likewise, the Democrats in Congress had only ONE chance to prove that they really were the agents for change that they claimed they wanted to be. THIS was it… and they blew it on useless non-binding resolutions and compromises. Now they have to work overtime to prove that they are still worthy of that power after next year’s elections.

And if, by some chance, they end up losing that power in 2008… well then just like the GOP, they will only have themselves to blame for it!

(Computer – some stuff, but you won’t care because you won’t listen anyway no matter how many times I criticize you about it.)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Well that’s part two of this four-part look at political failures. As you can probably figure out, next week’s look will be at the Republicans in Congress. They actually have a few unique failures all their own that I’ll get into.

And if you were paying attention, you probably caught wind of which group I’ll be lambasting in part four. I think you’ll find that my scathing commentary on them will be very original.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

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