Ahhh, that new tone of civility has been on full display throughout the heat of the debt ceiling debate. Rush shared a pleasant little media montage with us last Friday of Democrats talking about the Tea Party. Feel the love?
STENY HOYER: (rotunda noise) The Republicans are holding hostage the credit of the United States of America.
DEBBIE "BLABBERMOUTH" SCHULTZ: ...our Republican colleagues to hold our economy hostage.
DINGY HARRY: The Republican Party is holding our economy hostage.
CHUCK-U SCHUMER: (rotunda noise) It didn't say, "Hold America hostage."
LOUISE SLAUGHTER: ...hold the debt ceiling hostage.
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: One party is holding the country hostage.
JOHN OLVER: The debt limit has never before been held hostage.
BARBARA LEE: Republicans are holding our economy hostage.
EARL BLUMENAUER: ...willing to take hostage the debt ceiling.
JASON ALTMIRE: Stop holding America's credit rating hostage.
ROSA DeLAURO: The Republican majority continues to hold the American economy hostage.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Let's not hold the entire American economy hostage.
JOHN LARSON: ...ideological hostage situation...
LLOYD DOGGETT: The only belt they're really tightening is right around the neck of those hostages.
JAMES CLYBURN: Holding the American economy hostage.
JESSE JACKSON, JR.: This president is being treated differently!
SPEAKER PRO-TEM: (gavel banging)
JACKSON: No other president has been stuck up, shook down, or held hostage!
And here’s more from Friday and into this week…
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on 7/29/11 @ 07:20 min.
“I think in the last 24 hours, we’ve confirmed what many people suspected, which is that the tea party Republicans may be a noisy and effective protest movement, but they’re unfit to govern.”
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on 7/29/11
From Real Clear Politics:
"You know the Chinese are looking at us right now and they are just gleeful and incredulous at the way in which one of the great competitors is imploding on itself, because a group of absolutists and extremists don't understand the implication of what they are doing, and prepared to hold the entire economy hostage and it is unprecedented of anything I have seen in all of the time I have been in public life, and I think it is damaging and dangerous and reckless and irresponsible," Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told MSNBC.
Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Vice President Joe Biden on 8/1/11
From Politico:
Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.
“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”
I might be reading too much into this, but I’d swear they have a problem with the tea party movement (a.k.a. the growing number of Americans who are fed up with the tax-and-spend Washington mentality).
The truth of the matter is that the new tone is the old tone. Demagogue to shut down Republican dissent, regardless of the merit, while Democrats play it up for the cameras, throw tizzies and end up getting things on their terms, their way. And as long as Republicans have ineffective leadership, the tone will remain as such. It is for all these reasons, and more, why we fight.
ADDENDUM: No, we haven't forgotten about the dregs at the liberal New York Slimes who'd call us a 'Hezbollah faction' or refer to us in terms of terrorists, jihadists and suicide bombers...but this post had more to do with the elected officials that effect our daily lives, as opposed to the liberal carnival barkers.
