A news story appearing in the Washington Post on July 7 provides searing insight into the character of the Democrat Party. The story, written by staff reporter Philip Rucker appears under the headline, “Democrats digging harder than ever for dirt on Republicans.” The story goes on to indicate that democrat opposition researchers are moving faster and more aggressively to unearth unflattering details about the lives of their Republican opponents in the upcoming congressional elections. They are looking for issues such as unpaid taxes and connections to financial firms that have benefitted from government bailouts.
(See Mr Rucker’s story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070605271.html)
Leaving aside the obvious hypocrisy of Democrat operatives finding fault with tax cheats and politicians associated with bailed out financial firms (Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner, call your office), this story illustrates the lack of philosophical depth in the Democrat Party. Of course, opposition research is not a new phenomenon and both sides do it. But for a major Washington newspaper to run a story on the extent of the Democrat search for dirt illustrates that they cannot run on the issues.
A major political party seeking to gain the favor of the American electorate should be able to boldly proclaim its fundamental principles and defend them in debate. The articulation and defense of its principles should be the primary effort of a party to seek electoral approbation. And yet the Democrat party, apparently unwilling to proclaim its support for income redistribution and an increasing takeover of the private sector, seems to be focusing on finding dirt on their Republican opponents.
They cannot, at least with straight faces and supported by facts, claim that their economic recovery plan is working. Unemployment continues to hover at or near 10%. Housing demand continues to drop. Construction has come to a halt. The outlook for economic recovery is dim, unless you are employed in a government job and a member of the union. In the area of Homeland Security, Democrats are actively supporting open borders and amnesty to illegal aliens now in the country. After all, it’s unrealistic to try to deport 12 million people, unless they were potential Republican voters.
In foreign affairs, Iran continues to develop the nuclear weapon that will plunge the Middle East into war as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise, with no realistic response from the Democrat President or Congress. Instead, the Iranian leaders laugh at and ridicule the weak American President. Meanwhile, Mr Obama has castigated our Israeli allies for building settlements in their own country while providing aid and comfort to Hamas terrorists. On a more personal level, American voters may not approve of our President bowing and scraping before unfriendly dictators as a viable foreign policy. With a completely ineffective foreign policy failing as surely as their domestic policies, it is little wonder that Democrat opposition researchers are working overtime.
With a paucity of issues on which they can campaign, digging dirt on their opposition is the only effective strategy remaining to a truly bankrupt political party. That bankruptcy was evident in the eulogies for the late Senator Robert Byrd, where democrat luminaries like Bill Clinton attempted to make excuses for Senator Byrd’s long and intimate association with a violent, racist organization like the Ku Klux Klan. What they do not yet recognize is that they have gone too far for dirt on their opponents to suffice. They have lurched too far to the left for the American people to be impressed by the exposure of tax cheats and cozy financial arrangements. Their ideas are as bankrupt as their behavior has always been.
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