An interesting look at the history of today's Democratic Party
Rick Moran at
Rightwing Nuthouse takes a look at the Democratic Party of 1972 and of today and draws some interesting conclusions:
DNC PREVIEW: �COME HOME, AMERICA� REDUX
It was long past midnight on July 14, 1972 when George McGovern, a good and decent man, stepped to the podium in Miami Beach to give his speech accepting the nomination of the Democratic party for president. A genuine war hero who hated what the Viet Nam War was doing to the country, McGovern rode to the nomination on the scruffy coattails of the young, the disaffected, the grudge holders, the racialists � the entire victimhood society that now controls the Democratic party.
You knew this convention was going to be different when the Illinois delegation headed up by Richard J. Daley was summarily booted from the premises when challenged by a faction led by Jesse Jackson. Daley�s �elected� delegates did not contain enough women, minorities, or homosexuals according to the new party rules pushed through by McGovern and his revolutionaries. Humiliated, Daley vowed to show McGovern who ran the Democratic party in Illinois by barely lifting a finger for him in the general election campaign. Nixon gained nearly 60% of the vote to carry the state in November.
McGovern never knew what hit him. He thought that if he allowed the crazies who rioted in 1968 to take over the party, that he would expand the base and create an entirely new coalition of the young, the left, and minorities along with traditional Democratic allies like organized labor and the intelligentsia that would open a new era in government and politics.
What McGovern didn�t count on was backlash. He himself recognized this when he remarked �I opened the door to the Democratic party and 20 million people walked out.�
In Denver this year, graduates of that 1972 laboratory in identity politics are now firmly in control of the Democratic party. They have gone from revolutionaries to party insiders. They are in Congress, the Senate, the statehouse, and staff the numerous special pleader organizations and groups that form the backbone of the party. Barack Obama was all of 10 years old at the time. His running mate, Joe Biden, was part of that revolution, running his first campaign for the Senate on a McGovern platform and winning that fall � one of the few Democratic bright spots in an otherwise dismal political year.
The 1972 convention was an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats as every special interest group with a cause or a grudge got to debate their pet issue in full view of a national TV audience that dwindled as the convention droned on. The long windedness of the speakers, the confusion, the disorganization, the whole spectacle of long haired freaks wanting to legalize marijuana, lesbians wanting recognition, women�s rights advocates pressing for an equal rights amendment, and speaker after speaker trashing the United States for its involvement in Indochina went on long past midnight, even unto dawn on a few days.
He then quotes from McGovern's speech and draws a few conclusions:
But it is on the left where this impulse is the strongest. Today they seek the same top down solutions to problems � or see a government solution to something that either isn�t a problem or would curtail our freedom of choice � advocated by George McGovern in 1972. The difference is that those 1972 Democrats were outriders, amateurs trying to play a professionals game. The result was a slaughter at the polls.
But today, those kids have grown up and become professionals. They know how to run national campaigns. They have learned not to be so forthcoming in how they intend to give us �hope and change.� The more nebulous their rhetoric the better. In this, they have found the perfect vessel � Barack Obama; a man who says absolutely nothing and says it with great feeling and emotion better than anyone in American history.
If they win, we will enter an era where the majority will attempt to remake America into something more like a European social democracy. In fact, they brag about where many of their ideas come from � the failed economic models in France and Germany. Regulation of business and industry will be reintroduced. Social programs like national health insurance, top down mandated education reform, and the alphabet soup of programs for the poor will be expanded to include �the middle class� thus making more Americans more dependent on government than ever before.
I don�t mind losing if the Democrats proudly run on that kind of platform with full disclosure of how they intend to turn America into a semi-socialist state. But they don�t have the guts to do it because they know they would lose. Hence, they will continue to hide behind Obama�s soaring rhetoric that promises such a bright future but is a little hazy on the details.
It's a long post and I have only excerpted a little bit of it -- well worth going there and reading the entire thing.
Posted by DaveH at August 27, 2008 9:06 PM