Rusted Sky

David Limbaugh's put up a rather interesting column with an excerpt from his new book. In it, he points out a few things that I found rather interesting.

The party's decline took firm root in the late 1960s and 1970s, but has accelerated dramatically over the last decade. Today's Democratic Party -- the party of Al Gore, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Joseph Biden, Edward Kennedy, and Hillary Rodham Clinton -- is the party that sacrificed all moral principle to defend Bill Clinton in the 1990s no matter what the scandal. It is the party that adopted the Clinton mode of conducting politics as an art of personal assassination -- while accusing the other side of doing it.

It is the party that tried to steal the presidential election in 2000, then convinced itself that Republicans did steal it -- and has been paralyzed with bitterness and conducting revenge politics ever since. It is the party that demands bipartisanship and reconciliation, but whips President Bush with the olive branch he extended at their behest.

It is the party whose ex-presidents routinely violate the long-standing tradition against criticizing their successors -- and even do so on foreign soil. (And that's ticked me off no end - J.)

It is the party that falsely claims President Bush is trampling on the Constitution -- while making no secret of its own willingness to subordinate the Constitution to its own political ends, most notably through using the judicial branch to "legislate" policy it cannot achieve through democratic means.

It is the party that isn't honest about its core convictions, knowing that honesty will render it even less electable in a center-right America. It denies its liberalism in favor of the euphemistic "progressivism." But while "progressive" implies "forward-looking," Democrats are mired in the past, reactionary on issues from Social Security (don't change a bankrupt system) to Iraq (don't defeat a hostile dictatorship and try to make it a democracy).

It is the party of elites who look down their noses at red-state America. It is the party that snubs Christians and "values" voters yet claims to be their authentic representatives. It is the party that can't decide whether its electoral difficulties stem from its failure to effectively articulate its message or from the wholesale stupidity of an electorate that's too Christian, too much in favor of traditional family values, and too patriotic.

To be fair, there's plenty of apologists for the Democratic Party. Social Security needs to be changed, it's just that they can't decide on what those changes should be, aside from soaking the 'rich' for them. Same thing with the WoT - it needs to be fought, but they'll be damned if there's going to be anything articulated beyond "Bush isn't doing it right, and we would!" Kerry's 'secret plan' be damned, you need to give me some details before I'll consider voting Dem.

You might not agree with his thoughts. I'm not sure I agree with them all. I might even buy the book to see what I disagree with. But one thing for sure - the Dems aren't 'progressive' any more, they're static. They aren't going anywhere, preferring a status quo that no longer exists to realistically evaluating what's going on in the world and adjusting path accordingly.

And that's not good.

J.