Fine Young Cannibals

When the Democrats have to be told home truths by Pat Buchanan, you know something is not only rotten, it’s shameful.

Earlier this week, in one of his many appearances on MSNBC, where he’s the Grandpa Munster of political analysts, Buchanan was amazed at how the Democratic Party were sneakily and rather unobtrusively trying to move the President into a position of isolation. Looking any other way but at him. Sniping surreptitiously about his policies to a rabid and irresponsible media, but always “under condition of anonymity.”

Suddenly, less than 18 months before the next election, the President has become Leper-in-Chief. Actually, this situation began in earnest during the Midterm hustings, when the Democratic party ran away from defending healthcar and distanced itself from the President in general. Two high-profiled Democratic Senators argued against bringing repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to a vote before adjourning to campaign. If these could have been repealed successfully at any time, the best time to have tackled the issue would have been in September 2010. Then candidates could have campaigned on the fact that the Democratic Party had secured a permenent reduction in taxes for the all-important middle classes, whilst repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest.

But Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, and Russ Feingold, were in tight Senate races, and didn’t want to have to campaign on raising taxes for anyone just yet. They pleaded with the President to delay the votes until after the Midterms.

And that worked out so well, didn’t it? Herewith was established the infinitely erroneous myth of the President “caving” on tax cuts to a revitalised Republican Party, who refused to do any sort of lame duck business until the tax cuts had been extended. Ne’mind the President got more from the compromise than the Republicans and actually got them to effect legislation important to the economic well-being of the unemployed, the working class and the working poor – that’s all by the wayside in perpetuation of the myth of Obama the “poor negotiator,”, the “pussy”, the wimp.

No matter what this President does, it’s never good enough. The standard for him has been raised to an impossible height. Not only a willfully ignorant public, but also his own spineless, indolent and puerile political party expects him not only to eforce laws legislated, but actually do the legislation, himself. There have even been some from his side of the political fence who accuse him of the murder of Osama bin Laden.

The President doesn’t chest beat, but one prominent gay rights’ activist is certainly chest-beating today in The Huffington Post bragging about how he and his ilk had achieved a bit of progress in their agenda simply by “beating up” the President.

I know it’s only a figure of speech, but what a violent one to use. And where were such voices “beating up” on Bill Clinton, Democrat, when he signed not only DADT, but DOMA?

But back to Buchanan.

Pat was reminiscing about Nixon and the period during which Nixon had become a veritable political pariah, when Watergate was at its height, when people were wondering what Howard Baker stated about what the President knew and when he knew it, when it was reported that Nixon harboured an enemies’ list, incorporating such people as Carol Channing, when Nixon stated that there was no “whitewash at the White House.”

Nixon’s party visibly distanced itself from him during this period, Buchanan reminded, and only he, Pat Buchanan, publically defended the President until and after his resignation.

Now, Pat says, David Axelrod, who’s left the Obama Administration, is the only Democrat who will defend what President Obama has achieved, whilst all around him in the party nitpicks and criticizes.

When a former plastics salesman who happens to be the Republican Speaker of the House plays politics and asserts that the President’s action in Libya was illegal, this is the Opposition speaking; but when a member of his own party, who boasts a communications degree and a pocket Constitution and who’s never been more than a political operative since his early youth, demands not onlly that a President from his own party be impeached, but actively seeks to sue him for breach of Constitutional law over Libya, then something stinks.

It’s become an ass-end-out situation when the likes of Lindsey Graham speaks up for the President with integrity and prescience, whilst Dennis Kucinich unwittingly becomes the biggest tool the Republicans have in their box of tricks to ensure that Obama becomes a one-term President.

Not one serving Democratic representative is offering this President any sort of support on anything, but they are capable of whining and wanting his support to do their work.

When a serving member of Congress and a leader in the latino community threatens to withdraw support unless the President “does something” about passing the DREAM Act, I wonder how the hell these people made it to Congress. I would like to politely remind Congressman Gutierrez, AKA Congressman Gilipollas Flamante that YOU legislate and that the DREAM Act has failed to pass muster in the Senate on TWO occasions, thanks to four Democratic Senators voting with the Dark Side. How, exactly, does he expect the President to “do something” now, especially since the lower House has a Republican majority?

Compared to Nixon, a crook who was saved from investigation and imprisonment by his successor’s Presidential pardon, this President is a saint. Buchanan, who’s no admirer of Obama, admitted as much. Yet no Democrat will stand in support of this man. Is this real buyer’s remorse or just craven fear that sometime in the future another qualified black man might seek the highest office in the land?

Or maybe they’re just waiting for a great white hope of a primary challenger to step out of the woodwork, so we can really achieve another one-term Carteresque Presidency. The last time the Democrats went cannibal on one of their own, we got twelve years of Republican rule, which meant trickledown, the Gipper, the Gulf War and a lot of the things that resulted in the shitstorm we’re negotiating now.

But this ain’t Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party who’ll triumph as the Democrats munch down on their own. These are Goldwater’s grandchildren, mutated Birchers who’ve sucked the tits of Koch whilst being read bedtime stories by Ayn Rand.  These are people who want to see literacy tests reintroduced before people are allowed to register to vote. These are people who want to reduce the working class to a undereducated demographic of peasants willing to work long hours for peanuts and be thankful. These are people who are against a woman’s right to choose and who would prosecute any woman as a murderer if she sought an abortion. These are people who want to rid the land of public schools and get rid of Medicare. These are people who would unflinchingly invoke “property rights” in dealing with anything concerning civil rights.

These are not nice people, and if they come to the fore and gain the White House in 2012, you will see an unbroken hegemony of Republican Presidents for a generation, because the Democrats will have eaten their own.