Peggy Noonan’s piece in the WSJ is funny beyond words — especially for a non-partisan like Polimom.
She started off with the Clintons:
There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are “high minded” on the surface but “smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years.”
That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.
“Hahahahaha!“, laugh the right of center folks. “We’ve known this for years! Welcome to the party!”
But Noonan had some choice words about the GOP, too:
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party. It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it!”
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.
“Hahahahaha!” chortle the left of center folks. “We’ve known this for years! Welcome to the party!”
*snort*
Welcome to earth, everybody. Remember to roll when you hit the ground.
* * * * *
Added: This is what “thump” sounds like.
I think I hear a chuckle here.
Here, too.
Polimom,
I withheld a response to this post, so as to avoid becoming the Master of the Obvious, but here goes:
Admittedly, the CW is as reflected in the Noonan piece, but I would argue that the revelation provided by the article is the part about the Clintons. I do however, disagree as to how and when the two sides of the political divide arrived at their current and publicly stated positions.
The left has arguably been in public denial about the Clintons since at least 1992 and, certainly, for the last ten years. There were, IMO, three principal reasons for this looking away from reality: 1) They weren’t going to give the “VRWC” the satisfaction of being proved right about Bill ‘n Hill and 2); Bill did, after all, deliver the “goods” and gave all of the coalition members a “seat at the table.” The third reason is that as long as Hillary was seen as “inevitable”, nothing should be allowed, including the truth, to interfere with destiny.
What’s changed? The most important thing is that Obama is now seen as a viable candidate. If there is an alternative to the Clintons and all that entails, people want to pursue this possibility.
Secondly, Bill’s in trouble because he has exposed, for transparently self-serving purposes, the internal contradictions of the post-’68 Dem Party construct and has set these opposing forces against one another. He must be stopped before he does permanent damage.
I would argue that the Republicans have frequently been much more public about their dissatisfaction with the prevaling power center of the party. The current President has been routinely criticized by prominent members of the national security realist and fiscal conservative wings of the party (i.e., Hagle, McCain). Also remember, Clinton didn’t so much win in 1992, as the republican electorate threw Bush I “under the bus” because he broke ranks with the fiscal conservatives and was seen as going wobbly on national security post-Gulf War I.