The Democrats and the Loony Left
BARNES, FRED
The Democrats and the Loony Left Working together to defeat George W. Bush. BY FRED BARNES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is curtailing democracy in America. President Bush himself, in case you hadn't...
...Democrats initially said the act was allowing federal agents to raid libraries legally, but it turned out no raids had taken place...
...in a speech at Georgetown university in June, Gore said this: "The [Bush] administration works closely with a network of rapid respon-ders, a group of digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors and publishers and advertisers, and are quick to accuse them of undermining support for our troops...
...Dean later said he rejected the theory...
...Normally such ideas are ridiculed or ignored by those in the political mainstream...
...By the way, he knew about 9/11 beforehand...
...He approved the departures after the FBI had interviewed the Saudis to make sure no terrorism suspects were on board...
...He said Bush won't pull out of Iraq because "they don't want to give up Halliburton and the $6 billion of no-bid contracts they've got on oil fields over there...
...Circuit Court of Appeals...
...In 2002, then-Rep...
...Republicans made it against President Franklin Roosevelt...
...Now Democrats cite the use of the Patriot Act and the supposedly threatened voting rights of blacks...
...The king of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had not won an election, and make him prime minister...
...Moore was also a judge in a contest by MoveOn.org, a group closely allied with the Democratic party, to choose the best anti-Bush TV ad...
...That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in...
...So their complaint now is largely about what Bush might do under the act...
...The unocal deal, which the Clinton administration backed, collapsed in 1998, three years before the invasion of Afghanistan...
...The Patriot Act is as un-American as Mein Kampf," he wrote in his book Dude, Where's My Country...
...But these days the fantasies of the Loony Left are increasingly embraced and nearly always tolerated by the Democratic party and its auxiliary groups...
...And while we're on the subject of the war, Vice President Cheney intervened to assure contracts in postwar iraq for Halliburton, the company he once headed...
...Another conspiracy—that Bush knew the 9/11 attacks were coming—was broached briefly, then dropped...
...True, this charge isn't unprecedented...
...He told a lawyers' group in June that Bush came to power through "illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution," the u.s...
...I don't know that it was definitely planned on this weekend," McDermott said, "but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was...
...asked Representative Ted Strickland of Ohio in April...
...That would mean blacks who filled out their ballots improperly were disenfranchised, a dubious claim...
...It involved unocal's bid to build a natural gas pipeline in Afghanistan, which Moore suggests was the reason behind the American attack on that country...
...Gore is not alone...
...supreme Court...
...And there was Judge Gui-do Calabresi of the second u.s...
...Other Democrats failed to echo McDermott, but they didn't criticize him either...
...On voting, Kerry told the NAACP on July 15 that one million blacks were "disenfranchised" in 2000...
...His Florida colleague, Senator Bill Nelson, gave the film a thumbs-up as he left the theater...
...Later on CNN, he said, "The Patriot Act is the first step...
...Democrats in Washington turned out in droves for a special screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 in June...
...The congressman later backtracked...
...President Bush himself, in case you hadn't noticed, is like Hitler...
...Why would that have happened...
...You won't find many of the wild ideas in the party platform, nor are they routinely voiced by party leaders...
...The work product of the Loonies is only beginning to become mainstream among Democrats...
...There's too much happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing," he told Seattle radio interviewer Dave Ross...
...Two entries, posted for a time on the MoveOn website, likened Bush to Hitler...
...These flights of paranoia, far-out analogies, conspiracy theories, and wild charges devoid of evidence are the stock in trade of the Loony Left...
...But McAuliffe has made the most far-reaching charge...
...It is almost beyond belief...
...There's no evidence for it, but a number of Democrats have indicated Cheney may have steered a lucrative contract in postwar Iraq to Halliburton...
...Michael Moore, whose anti-Bush movie Fahrenheit 9/11 has made him a favorite of Democrats, has explicitly argued Bush is moving the nation toward a Hitler-like dictatorship...
...He insisted the capture of Saddam Hussein was timed to help Bush...
...A toehold, but not a foothold...
...Maybe they'd read the claim in the New Republic that the Bush administration is "the least democratic in the modern history of the presidency...
...The war in Iraq...
...so it's not surprising that placards with Bush's face made to look like Hitler's are now commonplace at left-wing demonstrations...
...No young American in uniform should ever be held hostage to America's dependence on oil in the Middle East," he has repeatedly declared...
...But who would have thought former vice president Al Gore would link, none-too-subtly, the president to Hitler...
...On top of that, he let Osama bin Laden's relatives sneak out of America shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon...
...More popular among Democrats was the now-debunked theory that the Bush administration gave special treatment to Saudi citizens, including members of bin Laden's family, to fly home from the United States after 9/11 without being investigated and while private planes were grounded...
...And a group of congressional Democrats has called for United Nations observers on Election Day...
...Nonetheless, he had publicly analogized Bush's situation to Hitler's...
...Kerry himself has a clever way of insinuating Iraqi oil might have been a factor in the war decision...
...Really...
...Then there's the Halliburton conspiracy, supposedly engineered by Cheney, the company's former boss...
...The classic tactic of the Loony Left is to liken a target to Hitler...
...It's a war for oil...
...Calabresi said he wasn't "suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler," and he later apologized for his remarks altogether...
...Former senator Max Cleland, who's set to introduce Kerry for his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention this week, was quoted in January to this effect...
...Finally, the most serious charge of all: Bush is rolling back democracy as we know it...
...The film pushes numerous conspiracy theories about the president and his administration, and Democratic national chairman Terry McAuliffe latched onto one of them after viewing the movie...
...The answer came this year from Richard Clarke, the former terrorism adviser at the Clinton and Bush White Houses...
...The brownshirts, as most people know, were Nazis working for Hitler...
...It was just a matter of time before they found him...
...ultimately, however, identifying with the far-fetched and the eccentric is bound to harm Democrats...
...Still another alleged conspiracy was cited by Democratic representative Jim McDermott of Washington last December...
...Asked by Byron York of National Review if he bought that theory, McAuliffe said he did...
...However, MoveOn founder Wes Boyd said his organization doesn't share that sentiment...
...Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, while still frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination last December, mentioned on the radio what he called "the most interesting theory .. . that [Bush] was warned ahead of time by the Saudis...
...If people don't speak up against this, you end up with something like they had in Germany...
...Kerry, he said, "is the one guy who can call his hand on the hypocrisy of a bunch of people that never went to war, creating a war of choice, not even against the enemy who attacked us, but for oil...
...Cynthia McKinney of Georgia embraced it in an interview: "Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered...
...Certainly they haven't been tarred in the way Republicans were in the 1990s when a few of them flirted with lunatic Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...A related conspiracy theory holds that Bush went to war to seize Iraq's oil...
...The Loony Left now has a toehold on the Democratic party...
...notions about President Clinton...
...so far at least, this phenomenon has cost Democrats nothing politically...
...So have most Democrats...
...Anyway, Democrats imply Republicans would like to see that happen again...
...McKinney was defeated for reelection in 2002, but won the Democratic nomination to regain her seat last week...
...There might be half of the Democratic senate here," said Florida senator Bob Graham...
...Senator John Edwards, now the vice presidential running mate of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, condemned "sweetheart deals for Halliburton" last winter...
...But they have been treated with tolerance, rather than active disapproval, by most Democrats...
...Billionaire George soros, a lavish Democratic donor who was recently introduced at a political event by Senator Hillary Clinton, said late last year, "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans...
...If any Democrats chastised Gore for this slur, I missed it...
...And foolishly believed it...
...The result...
...That is but one of the Bush conspiracies cited by Democrats...
...He wasn't referring to the Germans today...
Vol. 9 • August 2004 • No. 44
