The Rest Of The World Is Not The Democratic Party

The most dangerous result of the years long ascension of the radical wing of the Republican Party is that they have been so successful at turning the Democratic Party into poster children for Battered Liberal Syndrome. (Witness the stomach churning spectacle of Zell Miller rhetorically sharing a big slurpy soul kiss with President Smirk today.) And in doing this they have become so filled with satisfaction and assurance of the rightness of their strategy that they are now convinced that they can dominate the world by using the same tactics of aggression and intimidation.

The problem is that the rest of the world is not the Democratic Party, so cowed by the endless rhetorical violence against them that they will do anything to avoid angering the unpredictable GOP beast. The rest of the world fights back when they are threatened by a bunch of flaccid bullies because they have dealt intimately with some fearsome monsters that would make schoolyard imitators like Junior and the Retreads reach for a Maxi-Depends.

One of the few Democrats who has been mercilessly treated as a punching bag yet remained intellectually honest and fiercely combative against these nasty tactics is Rep. Barney Frank. In this interview he tells it like it is:


Rep. Frank said he does not believe the administration any longer believes Saddam Hussein is a threat or that its tax-cut program focused on eliminating dividend taxes will stimulate the American economy.

"They have broader ideological goals," he said.

"Those goals are to democratize the Middle East and end the era of social spending on popular government programs," he said.

Saddam Hussein is actually quite limited in his power, as opposed to some place like North Korea, which has at least some nuclear weapons, Rep. Frank said.

"Saddam Hussein is almost kind of like Gulliver. He's tied down. Except he's the Lilliputian and we're the giants," he said. "Yes, he would like to do bad things but he's in no position to do them."

"The right wing believes that the invasion of Iraq is an opportunity to democratize the Arab world, he said. It believes imperialism is good if the imperialist is good," he said.

Junior "gits to decide" who's been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.