You’ve heard all this before from me, so let’s use our Friday creatively and hear it instead from a Democrat — albeit from an inauthentic Democrat, according to the Czar of the New American Center.
From the WSJ:
Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar is today fond of quoting a famous Lyndon Johnson line: “You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals only eat their enemies.”
[Hector Cuellar]Mr. Cuellar would know, having found himself the main course on liberals’ election menu just last year. A centrist Democrat who is pro-business, free-trade and strong on law enforcement, the congressman was designated an apostate by the left-wing Netroots crowd. They decamped to his district and bankrolled a liberal primary challenger. Mr. Cuellar triumphed, though Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas would later swagger on his blog: “So we didn’t kill off Cuellar. But we gave him a whooping where none was expected and made him sweat.”
Which is the point. If the liberal blogging phenomenon deserves to be known for anything, it is the strategy to intimidate or silence anyone who disagrees with its own out-of-the-mainstream views. That muzzling has been on full display in recent weeks as Mr. Moulitsas and fellow online speech police have launched a campaign against the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. was even thwacked last week for daring to speak to this editorial page (my sincere apologies, Mr. Ford) — the clear goal to discourage him from making such a free-speech mistake again.
Yet a lively midweek chat with Mr. Cuellar suggests that this campaign of threats isn’t necessarily having the intended effect. If anything, it might be backfiring. “They win when they intimidate people,” says Mr. Cuellar. “I’ve taken everything they’ve thrown, plus their kitchen sink, and I still stand proud as a moderate-conservative Democrat.” He says his triumph over blogger fire has only strengthened his conviction that his party will only win elections if it continues to be a “big tent” open to all views. “To make that tent smaller, to force people — not to persuade, but to force, because these are threats — to quiet down, that’s destructive in the long term and the short term.”
[...]
[...] perhaps the Netroots biggest failure, suggests Mr. Cuellar, is that it hasn’t bludgeoned his party’s leadership into abandoning the middle. It was moderate Democrats who won their party the majority last year (the New Democrats now boast 60 members; 13 new additions), and Mr. Cuellar claims few people understand that better than Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I’ve seen her behind the scenes, and I’ve always thought she was liberal, but she’s done a good job of trying to bring us more to the middle.”
For proof, Mr. Cuellar suggests a look at “all the passes” the leadership has given red-state Dems on tough votes like Iraq, missile defense and immigration. This is an obvious recognition by the top ranks of the party that getting moderates re-elected is the only way to stay in power. They know that “if we go the way these Internet groups want us to go, we’ll be the shortest-lived majority in congressional history,” he says.
Don’t take this to mean that the liberal juggernaut hasn’t shifted the debate. Some moderate Democrats, while reticent to admit it, are tacking left in hopes of dodging further assaults. Ms. Tauscher, long known for her national security credentials, has toned down her hawkish impulses, voting against the recent surge and taking a harder line on missile defense. Even Mr. Ford’s DLC these days seems a little more comfortable talking about “trade enforcement” than it does “free trade.” Mr. Cuellar admits that while some centrists are willing to say “who the . . . blank-blank do [these Internet groups] think they are,” others don’t want “to be the center of the attraction.”
In a match-up on “Meet the Press” this past weekend, the Daily Kos’s Mr. Moulitsas extolled those who use his site to trash thoughtful folks such as Mr. Cuellar as a shining example of “democracy.” In the same breath he then commanded the DLC’s Mr. Ford to “control” his moderate members, and force them to stop disagreeing with liberal Democrats. If you get that logic, you might just be a Daily Kos reader.
Asks Terry Hastings, who sent along the Opinion Journal piece:
“How bad does it have to get before the legacy media calls attention to the dramatic contradictions between what the hard left claims to stand for and what they actually do?[Jeff] Jarvis and company are big on [the media teaching] lessons [(an opinion his expressed as taking precedence over reporting "facts" alone during the sensationalist coverage of Hurricane Katrina]. What sort of lessons should we take from KOS media industrial complex.
Dunno — though “submit or die” seems to about cover it.
But I do believe that rallying cry’s been taken — though I can’t remember by whom…
Comment by mojo on 8/17 @ 11:31 am #
“Rule number one: Anyone disobeying an order, any order, will be shot.
Rule number two: There is no rule number two. Rule number one seems to cover everything.”
– The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968)
Comment by Shawn on 8/17 @ 11:42 am #
All your (Democratic) base are belong to us?
TW: Oh, how I was wishing to be fishing in 1868 ishing.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/17 @ 11:49 am #
What do I know, but it would seem that this tactic is less effective heading into a presidential election than heading into a mid-term. Wake me up when Cuellar positions himself as “the Democrat who can stand up to Hillary.”
Comment by The_Real_JeffS on 8/17 @ 12:08 pm #
Pandering seems to be a genetic imperative (i.e., they are born without a backbone) for elected Democrats, else they would simply tell Kos and the rest of the nutroots to get out of the way and grow up while the grown ups deal with the real problems.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/17 @ 12:10 pm #
So whi died and made Kos Kwisatz Haderach?
Comment by Jeffersonian on 8/17 @ 12:17 pm #
This is the Frankenstein’s monster the Democrats created in the 1960s come back to strangle its erstwhile master. They carefully cultivated the lunatics, just as Arafat tilled the ground in which Islamic Jihad and Hamas grew. Sewing the wind, reaping the whirlwind.
Comment by nikkolai on 8/17 @ 1:00 pm #
The nutroots are not quite running the asylum, they just think they are.
Comment by Tman on 8/17 @ 1:27 pm #
The sheer hypocrisy of Kos is easily the funniest part of this saga. When the Harold Ford’s of the world remind him how the democrats previously were able to get their candidate RE-elected to the Oval Office (by tacking to the center) Kos demands they shut-up and get out of the way of his “people powered” movement. Then he goes on to brag about how open DailyKos is in terms of what people are allowed to say.
And he says this without even realizing what a hypocritical windbag he is.
If the nutroots truly take the Dems further left, it almost won’t matter who the GOP nominates. By any historical standard that GOP candidate would systematically destroy a Kos-approved candidate. Just ask Cuellar and Lieberman.
What’s the Kos victory record again? 1 for 80?
Comment by Scape-goat Trainee on 8/17 @ 1:46 pm #
I commend this guy big time.
The first serious Democratic Candidate that stands up and tells the Kos Klowns, DU and Huffington idiots to go fuck themselves and decide to govern from the center, (not the silly pseudo-center that Kos pretends to represent), is the one that I might give serious consideration to. What’s interesting is that of the top three, the only one I could ever see doing that would be Obama, which puts him above the other two in my opinion.
Comment by BJTexs on 8/17 @ 1:52 pm #
Yea, T-Man. Exactly right.
You would think that after the debacle that was “Nedrenaline” and thier other conspicuous failures they wouldn’t be talking so tough.
Fat chance.
These immature little turds are so full of themselves they think they’ve already wrestled control of the Dem. party from “mainstream politics.” Remember after the ‘06 election when Moveon was crowing about “owning” the Party? Perhaps they’ve now figured out that moderate Dems were the defining force in recapturing Congress. Putting these boneheads in charge of any election would be a suicide pact.
Ideals and anger do not an election win. Although Cuellar should frequently look out his window for large white balloon like balls.
And gas coming under his door.
Well it’s been quite a while since we’ve had a “Dune” reference. Bravo!
Comment by serr8d on 8/17 @ 5:47 pm #
Kos, as Kwisatz Haderach? He’s a bit shortsighted for that role.
Maybe Piter de Vries…stick him in there with Michael Moore, and you have the Baron with his favorite toy!
tango birds, now there’s no call for that…
Comment by Karl on 8/17 @ 6:08 pm #
Maybe Kos is the “center” of US politics:
…and it gets wackier from there.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/17 @ 6:23 pm #
I hate to say it, but it kinda works for me Karl. What kills it is that we would be ascribing net-savviness to the same agency that just got busted altering Wikipedia. The CIA, they are not particularly adroit - the Plame thing only worked because the media fell into line… It would be cool if the CIA were competent with any consistency, but that just doesn’t seem to be the way they are wired.
Comment by McGehee on 8/17 @ 7:57 pm #
Happyfeet, that’s what they want you to think!
(TW: glasses O’Conor — I think I went to school with her.)
Comment by happyfeet on 8/17 @ 10:39 pm #
Maybe, but mostly I just get a kick out of typing stuff like that, a subversive little kick. But I think that’s from this time at a party where this German intelligence guy put his hands on my throat and told me I could be dead in two seconds. I thought that was pretty ill-mannered, really.
Comment by ducktrapper on 8/18 @ 7:28 am #
I think I’ll read Sometimes a Great Notion again. Sometimes the hero is out of step with the community even when the community is in step with the left. It really is a “mob” mentality that allows no dissent. As a long time union activist and former member of its national executive, it took me a long time to learn that.
Comment by CraigC on 8/18 @ 11:49 am #
Wow, BJ, a “Prisoner” reference. Nice.
But I do believe that rallying cry’s been taken  though I can’t remember by whom…
Um……The Borg?
Comment by Merovign on 8/18 @ 10:20 pm #
They say that history repeats itself as tragedy and farce.
I guess sometimes it does both at once.
Though it is clear that the Kossacks took their cue from Soros and his minions - heck, the Kossacks, or some of them, may even BE Soros minions, which would be one of those “late night radio conspiracies come true” kind of things.
TW: satisfied unstable (Damn, that thing is good)
Pingback by Inoperable Terran » Democrats eat their own on 8/19 @ 7:30 am #
[...] from a moderate Democrat whom Kos failed to unseat. Posted by Ian S. [...]
Comment by McGehee on 8/19 @ 8:02 am #
For some reason every time I scroll past this post I misread the title as “Democrats and Cannabis.”
Why no, Dr. Freud, I don’t see anything at all significant in that. Do you?
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