February 3, 2006
In Praise of Kos
By BulldogPundit
It is finally
dawning on many people what we've been telling you for over a year:
when it comes to the Democrat party, the white mice are running
the lab. And guess who's finally figured that out? The head mouse
himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, also known as Kos.
Kos made
a very perceptive observation yesterday in the wake of the Alito
loss (which proves the adage about blind squirrels and nuts).
But the bad news for Democrats is that he was so correct in his
analysis.
In a relatively
sane post-mortem analysis on his party's failure to stop Judge
Alito (well, except for the part where he said the GOP was trying
to take the country back to the 18th century), Kos
wrote:
What
you guys accomplished the last week was amazing -- the outpouring
of emails, letters, faxes, and phone calls was unprecedented
for the netroots and particularly surprising given how weak
our issue groups organized against Alito.
We
should've played a supporting role to strong efforts by NARAL,
People for the American Way, and others. Instead, we ended up
being pretty much the entire effort.
But
say what you will about blogs and the netroots, we are not effective
organizers for this type of large-scale effort, with an opposition
wielding tens of millions of dollars. That we got this much
accomplished in the fact of that is simply incredible.
So
we are now on the map. The Alito vote may have fizzled, but
you better believe the Dem establishment knows we exist.
Kos was absolutely
correct in crediting the true believers on his site with ensuring
that a filibuster was attempted. He's also correct that it was
his readers and those like them on other far-left websites that
did the "heavy lifting" to get the filibuster vote,
and that well known front-groups like PFAW and NARAL failed miserably
in their attempts to get some Democrats to take a stand.
Do you honestly
think there would have been any filibuster without the constant
faxes, phone calls and emails the Kos kids and other like minded
lefties placed to the Democrat Senators? I sure don't.
Most telling
is that not one of the potential 2008 Democrat Presidential hopefuls
dared to vote for cloture. Bayh, Clinton, Biden, Feingold and
Kerry all went down with the ship. You have to ask yourself why
that happened. I submit that it's because the Kos and Atrios crowds
put all Democrats on notice that a vote against cloture was a
litmus test that had to be passed. Clearly, all the Democrat Presidential
hopefuls did the political calculus and came to the conclusion
that a vote for cloture was akin to political suicide, which goes
to show you who the real kingmakers are for the Democrats these
days.
In a way,
what Kos has done to the Democrat party is a good thing and is
admirable. The tail shouldn't wag the dog. And they are rightly
telling the people that run for their nomination that if you want
our money, you will toe the line. (Republican activists are trying
to tell the leadership much the same thing on the issue of immigration.)
But for the Democrats this is a double-edged sword, and one that's
going to chop their heads off.
Why? Because
in being forced to pander to the true believers they have to take
positions that the rest of the country rejects. Kos and MoveOn.org
can say they're in the "mainstream" till they're blue
in the face, but election results (the only thing that matter)
say exactly the opposite.
Think about
this: let's say NARAL and PFAW had done all that Kos and the rest
wanted them to do. How many more cloture votes would they have
gotten? Maybe 5 at best? Kos made the correct observation that
there was no way the red-state Dems were going to vote against
allowing a vote on Alito because they'd have been thrown out by
their conservative constituency come next election. Which is another
part of the problem - outside of the coasts, Michigan and Illinois,
a Democrat can't afford to drink the Kos Kool Aid.
What they
also fail to realize is that the reason they didn't stop Judge
Alito was not because of what the PFAW, NARAL, or the Senators
did or didn't do. It was because of their message. For all the
energy and passion the far-left “netroots” community
brought to this fight (and to ignore that they were indeed a big
factor is to be blind to reality) they are incredibly tone-deaf
to the fact the majority of Americans just don't agree with them.
Some Democrats
say that what the next Presidential nominee must do is have a
"Sister Souljah" moment with the far-left internet crowd,
just to prove they’re not going to be captive to that particular
brand of lunacy.
The only
problem there is that in 1992 many in the party, especially the
old Reagan Democrats, agreed with Clinton's sentiments when he
called out Sister Souljah. But it's not 1992 anymore. Any Democrat
who takes on this bunch will find him or herself short on funds
but loaded with vitriolic insults coming their way. Think I'm
crazy? Ask Joe Lieberman how quickly that worm turned for him.
Ironically,
the ultimate beneficiary of this anger will be the Republicans.
By purging all the sane members of their party, the Kos Kids have
pretty much ensured a long time in the political wilderness.
But you know
what? The country is strongest when it has two SANE political
parties competing in the arena of ideas. And as the far left has
begun to dominate the Democratic Party, we're increasingly one
short. And no, for all its faults, it's not the GOP.
Ankle
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