These Are the Times That Try Liberal Bloggers’ Souls

And more and more recently, I’ve been thinking of officially making myself and this blog politically independent, with no allegiance or affiliation to the Democratic party. It would be a defection that, to quote the man who put the “lie” in “Lieberman“, would really hurt.

And how pathetic is it that time and again, we have to depend on liberal activist groups like the ACLU and Moveon.org to drag ugly truths kicking and screaming into the harsh light of day while so-called Democrats like Nancy Pelosi (who, you may recall I never wanted as House Speaker while misinformed liberals on Daily Kos were having squirting, gleaming clusterfucks over the prospect last fall) and Harry Reid keep clutching their pearls?

I doubt that even Moveon’s top level management never anticipated that their full page ad in the NY Times would stir up such a hornet’s nest but I’m sure they were pleasantly surprised, as were a good number of liberal bloggers. True, their word play on David Petraeus’ name was obviously stolen from rhyme-conscious bloggers but the ad did more than merely pre-emptively warn that Petraeus would be somewhat less than forthcoming in his two day testimony to 107 members of Congress:

The full-page ad also revealed how hide-bound the Republican party is, how utterly stupid they are in actually basing their platforms on a plainly illegal, costly and losing war at a time when they’re more vulnerable than they’ve been in a decade and a half and at how easily they can revert back to their tried-and-untrue “You’re a traitor if you criticize the war!” tactics.

It forced Giuliani to take out his own ad in the NY Times when he tried to weld, staple, Velcro, Super-Glu and otherwise fasten Hillary Clinton to the Moveon ad despite Sen. Clinton never embracing or even endorsing it. Fred Thompson woke up long enough to drawl some slime out of his manly jowls to insult the New York senator for daring to ask a tepid question of Petraeus.

How soon they forget something that even a well-informed elementary schoolchild knows, that Hillary voted for the war, refuses to apologize for it and is lobbying to not only continue the war under her administration but is even now shaking her bony fist at Iran.

The reason why these invertebrate Democrats are trying to crawl away from the Moveon.org ad and why the likes of John Kerry, who has our eternal gratitude for choosing not to run for president, and Pelosi are so critical of the ad and of Moveon in general is because Moveon.org is trying to keep them honest both on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail.

It’s not good enough to speak truth either to power or to the people and it’s been that way for longer than most of us realize. Whatever the Democrats’ reasons for thinking they can handle this bull by its many horns, whether they still fear Karl Rove now that he’s buried himself in the tall grass beneath our sight or want to claim credit for ending this war after Bush leaves office (Yes, I’m that cynical. How can I not be?), the fact is it’s not working.

Sure, Petraeus may have wined and dined 38 lawmakers with lobster tortellini in Iraq but it’s not quite the same thing as squatting in a trench dug into the sand and witnessing the deaths of US troops (close to two and a half a day since the 3/19/03 invasion) and Iraqis (if we’re to believe the figures that we’re seeing from Just Foreign Policy, then over the course of this nearly 1650 day-old war, we’re talking about over 6365 Iraqis getting killed daily). Getting White House spin from the likes of Crocker and Petraeus is merely a rarified level of embedding.

And the idea of our lawmakers being stuffed with lobster tortellini and being given the ten cent tour of the palatial home of Ryan Crocker neatly encapsulated the entire American attitude in a nutshell: The well-moneyed political elite eating five star restaurant-class food from a four star general with presidential ambitions and being kept in posh accommodations while those not as wealthy or politically connected were dying outside.

Luckily, a few lawmakers, including the ultra-liberal Jan Schakowsky (9-IL) was able to see through the smokescreen but Congress obviously needs a couple of hundred more like her.

And the fact that Hillary Clinton is drawing so much fire from Republicans who ought to be grateful that she’s momentarily the Democratic frontrunner (since her last name alone will drag Republican voters to the polls in wide-eyed terror) over this ad shows how deeply the Moveon.org’s ad struck the national nerve. We never heard any Democrats in Congress predict, as did we and Moveon, that Petraeus and Crocker would be less than completely transparent and honest with them because our Democratic representative are stupid, politically cowardly and gullible.

And the deeper these jackasses fall in the well, the more it becomes obvious that we need activists like Moveon.org more than ever.

Otherwise, if things keep on like this, Americans will start looking longingly at Michael Bloomberg and the superficial attractiveness of a well-moneyed independent third party.