Including voters out The Democrats are practicing particide Yes, particide
Jr, David R Carlin
OF SEVERAL MINDS DAVID R. CARLIH, JR. INCLUDING VOTERS OUT The Dems do it better than Buchanan Hhe conventional judgment about Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention...
...Believers in the prochoice religion are privileged people: good educations, good jobs, good incomes, good homes, good cars, good dogs, good boutiques in the neighborhood, good everything...
...Ironically, the lifelong Republican Buchanan, probably because of his Irish-Catholic background, understands that Democratic soul far better than privileged Democratic liberals do...
...It isn't, however, a formula for leading them into the GOP, though it may be a formula for creating a new party...
...I don't know what Pat Buchanan's future might be, but the future of the Democratic party looks exceedingly bleak...
...And now look at what has happened...
...and it may well have cost George Bush the election...
...At the time I wrote an article that appeared in Commonweal (August 14, 1992)-and in a shortened version on the op-ed page of the New York Times (August 10,1992)-in which I said that the treatment given to Casey at the convention was a way of saying to all pro-life Democrats, "Get out...
...INCLUDING VOTERS OUT The Dems do it better than Buchanan Hhe conventional judgment about Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention goes something like this: It was angry, negative, divisive, and full of hate-mongering...
...What was odd was that they would misrepresent events we had all seen with our own eyes...
...To throw them out of the party is tantamount to partisan self-destruction, an act of what may be called "particide...
...Look at the masses accepting the invitation to leave...
...Depart, I say, and let us have done with you...
...Prolife people, by contrast, are blue collar and lower-middle class, the great unwashed and semi-washed...
...The social base of the prochoice movement is the upper-middle class...
...We'll make sure that Casey doesn't get a chance to address the convention...
...For Americans below the upper-middle class, the national quality of life has deteriorated badly in the last thirty years...
...But there are some things even the most tolerant will not tolerate...
...Their values have been insulted, their economic interests ignored...
...Buchanan has found the perfect formula for leading them out of the party...
...Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing...
...Alas, it was once a great party, and there were those of us who loved it...
...And where are they going...
...That year's Democratic Convention, by contrast, was a love feast...
...When he speaks about a "culture war" or "religious war" he makes himself attractive to these unhappy Democrats...
...Who can blame the plebeians for seceding from a Democratic party that welcomes such ideologues into its leadership ranks...
...their marriages have failed...
...better still, we'll silence them...
...And what remedies are proposed for America's ills by the moral idiots of privileged-class liberalism...
...They have their reward...
...No wonder the choice-dominated Democratic party said to these people, "Get out...
...And when he denounces Wall Street and the transnational corporations, he makes himself more attractive still, for at the bottom of the old-fashioned Democratic soul is a distrust of the rich...
...Weren't they afraid the masses might notice they were being lied to...
...Three cheers for Bill Clinton and the spirit of upper-middle-class liberalism...
...Their incomes have stagnated or fallen...
...We're tolerant people...
...And if there happen to be any dissenters at the convention (like Bob Casey, that pain-in-the-ass governor of Pennsylvania), we'll simply ignore them...
...Pity those poor Republicans in Houston...
...Casey is one of these things, Buchanan another...
...It was a class division as well...
...If they had silenced Buchanan the way we silenced Casey, Bush might have had a chance...
...Too bad the Democrats don't say this to the progay, pro-abortion, prosuicide, prosecularism element of the party...
...Yet since many liberal Democrats are great believers in the right to suicide (another "choice" issue), I suppose it is fitting that they should try their favorite remedy on their own party...
...Viewed from the point of view of the typical prochoice snob, they are unspeakably vulgar...
...I remember at the time finding it odd that the mainstream press generally agreed that the Democratic Convention- which silenced all dissenters-was a model of tolerance while the Republican Convention-which permitted speeches not only from Buchanan but also from the prochoice governor of Massachusetts-was a model of intolerance...
...We don't want you in the party...
...The odd thing about this was not that the press would collectively misrepresent matters...
...Well, for the time being at least, to Pat Buchanan...
...Anyway, it's probably too late now...
...You do your thing, I'll do mine, we'll tolerate one another, and we'll live happily ever after...
...Unfortunately for the Democrats, these vulgar masses, these "middle Americans," have traditionally supplied the bulk of Democratic votes...
...It abounded in prochoice and progay placards, which drove home the point that the United States is a tolerant and freedom-loving country...
...their children have grown up in a world rife with violence, drugs, premature sex, out-of-wedlock births, and poor public schools...
...For a generation these people have been treated like dirt by the leadership of the party...
...Look at them stream out of the Democratic party...
...And who cares if he's the governor of the fifth largest state, a career politician with impeccable Democratic credentials...
...We don't want you...
...In the name of God, go...
...they do that commonly...
...I added that this was not simply a philosophical division on the merits of abortion...
...Such pertinent solutions as taxpayer-funded abortions, condoms in schools, gay marriage, and euthanasia...
...Their income level and class culture are deplorable enough, but their antichoice position puts them absolutely beyond the pale...
...it gave the GOP a terrible image of intolerance...
...their jobs have become insecure...
Vol. 123 • March 1996 • No. 6
