Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [16]
NPR’s Nina Totenberg famously said of Republican senator Jesse Helms, “If there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”66
We had important Democratic elected officials, Democratic contributors, and Vanity Fair writers calling Bush a Nazi; Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists calling him a devil; network anchors slandering him with dummied documents, and award-winning movies gleefully portraying his assassination. But liberals see a sign at a conservative rally depicting Obama as a monkey and act as if they’re staring into the eyes of Lee Harvey Oswald (who happened to be a communist, by the way).
There are other hard comparisons to be made. Conservatives don’t threaten to leave the country if a Democrat becomes president. Liberals do every four years. In 1992, Barbra Streisand said she’d leave if the first George Bush were reelected and then, in 2000, with stunning originality, a whole slew of liberals made the same threat if Bush’s son were elected—director Robert Altman, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Alec Baldwin (as quoted by his then-wife), and Kennedy press secretary/ABC News correspondent Pierre Salinger.67 In 2008, Susan Sarandon said she’d leave if McCain won. The only one to ever leave was Salinger, who was merely moving back to France, though some believe he left out of embarrassment after falling for the Internet hoax that TWA flight 800 had been downed by the U.S. Navy.68
True, these are mostly just actors—except Barbra Streisand, who was a key Gore policy adviser. (In 2000, Streisand told TV Guide that Gore had “called me from Air Force One” for advice, but “I couldn’t take the call. I was in the middle of something.”69 Just as soon as she learns how to spell “Iraq,” she’ll be getting calls from Obama.)70 But the Democrats certainly don’t dismiss them as mere actors. Hollywood celebrities tour with Democratic candidates, headline their fundraisers, record robo-calls, and donate millions of campaign dollars to their campaigns.
The Left’s “blind submission” to their leaders and “inability to discuss” their beliefs—consistent with Le Bon’s characterization of mobs—leads to one of their most peculiar debate gambits: the appeal to authority. They will cite a prominent conservative’s liberal position on the odd issue and brandish it as if that ends the argument. Reagan granted amnesty to illegal aliens! William F. Buckley supported legalizing pot! Goldwater supported abortion! Case closed, QED, let’s all go home.
Conservatives are always left dumbfounded at the triumphalism of such nonarguments. We like Republicans, we liked many things about Buckley, Reagan, and Goldwater. They’re not God. Not even Reagan.
Only liberals use the sarcastic line “last time I checked” so-and-so is “not a socialist”—as if it matters.
Obama pitched his government takeover of health care by saying Bob Dole and Bill Frist supported it and—“last time I checked they’re not socialist.”71 Democratic congressman Gerald Connolly thought he made a devastating point at a hearing on Obama’s failed economic policies by saying, “By the way, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve bank chairman here in the United States, announced to us last week at a luncheon that he believes the stimulus here is working—and not a wild-eyed liberal, last time I checked.”72 And Democratic strategist Alicia Menendez thought she had cornered O’Reilly when she responded to his question about government spending to the point of nearly bankrupting states like California by saying, “The last time I checked, California had a Republican governor.”73
There are, of course, great men who change the course of history and seem to have the spirit of the divine working through them. Most of our founding fathers are among them. Reagan is among them. We honor them. We view their service with reverence. We don’t have sex dreams about them. We’re not a mob.
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