This Women’s March thing is the Left’s tea party movement moment. If they start going after sitting Democrats in the primaries, it’s going to take hold. By defining how they expect Democrats to govern, they will offer a clear difference between them and the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party has been struggling with this since Barack Obama became the 44th President. Obama ran as a progressive outsider and, for the first 24 months, he certainly governed like one. But Obama got shellacked by a thing called the tea party movement in 2010. His response was to govern like a Clinton. He fired rhetorical shots at Republicans but he was re-elected because he was viewed by the real world as a center-left Democrat. (The ‘real’ world doesn’t really read political blogs.)
Barack Obama became what the progressives at San Diego Free Press call a “corporate Democrat”. He started following 1990’s era, Clintonian Third Way Liberalism. That was enough to defeat a “Chamber of Commerce Republican” in 2012, but Obama lost the House, Senate and 32 states during his tenure.
I’m a proud tea party conservative so I disagree with almost everything for which the Women’s March supporters advocate but I get it. They’re mad with the Democratic Party and they should be. Think of what happened to them last year. They nominated an experienced public servant with off-the-wall name recognition. She was deeply flawed but had eight years experience as a Senator and four as the Secretary of State. She was no longer Good Time Bill’s wife. Yet, Hillary Clinton lost to a reality television star.
Now think back to 2008. Republicans nominated a war hero, a maverick, a long-time Senator whom the media adored. He had gravitas. He was mostly aligned with the Republican platform. He was, in a word …”electable.” Yet, John McCain was trounced by a back bencher in the U.S. Senate who was a back bencher in a State Legislature six years before that. McCain lost to an amateur.
Do you remember how stunned we were were in 2008? Conservatives were more angry with the “Republican Establishment” than we were with President Obama. When Obama and the Democratic majority overreached with the stimulus package, a movement started. Our movement was simple. We believed in: Less government. Less spending. Less taxes. More freedom. Ours was a resistance movement, which today is a full-blown counter-revolution against the assault on constitutional government. We won…sort of.
They HATE our messenger. They absolutely hate him. They are as stunned as we were in 2008 and they actually see him as a THREAT against the sort of America in which they believe. Here is the big difference — mainstream, suburban women marched on different cities today. REPUBLICAN women…in yoga pants and Nike running shoes rather than peasant skirts and Birkenstocks. We stand to lose a core constituency if we rest on our laurels.
Here’s my message to the Women’s Marchers:
I think our ideas are better than yours, but if you want to have a passionate yet civil debate about this, I’m all for it…just clean up after yourselves (like tea party activists did and OWS protesters didn’t). Good luck liberals. I am happy to engage you in a battle of ideas.
Here is my message to conservatives or Republicans:
If you choose to ignore what is happening today, you are a political novice. If you choose to bolster their position by ridiculing them, you are an absolute idiot.