It seems as if the Right just cannot get enough of claiming that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut signals the complete “capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing,” to quote wise-old sage, Cal Thomas.
Just about every right-wing pundit is echoing these White House talking points, claiming that Lieberman’s loss means that Democrats are “firmly opposed to a strong national security policy” and spinning the election result as irrefutable evidence that the Democratic Party has been taken over by its “hate-America Stalinist … left wing,” as Michael Reagan ever-so-subtly puts it.
The irony here is that while the Right is busy lamenting the fact that the Democratic Party has allegedly fallen prey to Taliban-loving acolytes of Stalin, they are citing moderate Republican Representative Joe Schwarz’s primary loss in Michigan at the hands of zealous right-wingers who hate “big government” and immigrants as a triumph for democracy.
Schwarz was taken down by a carefully orchestrated campaign fueled and funded by the virulently anti-immigrant Minutemen, the anti-tax fanatics at the Club for Growth, and other key members of the Religious Right. Schwarz, an incumbent who had been endorsed by Republican heavyweights such as the NRA, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Sen. John McCain and even President Bush, was defeated by the likes of James Dobson and a group of anti-tax and anti-immigration fanatics – and the Right couldn’t be more proud
“Schwarz is a poster child for what has gone wrong with the Republican majorities in Congress. By nominating Tim Walberg, the voters in Michigan’s Seventh District sent a loud message to the GOP Congressional leadership about the importance of turning away from their big government ways of recent years [said John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union].
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Chris Simcox, honorary chairman of Minuteman PAC, said Michigan has sent Washington a “piercing message that voters are fed up with coddling illegal aliens.”
Simcox said Schwarz can blame his “overwhelming defeat” on his support for Spanish-language ballots, government benefits for illegal aliens, President Bush’s “amnesty proposal,” and allowing towns to become sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
Nothing sums up this double standard better than this “Washington Update” from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in which he states that Lieberman’s loss is proof that “the left has always been better at promoting bigotry and hatred” whereas Schwarz lost simply because “he turned his back on issues of life and marriage” leading to a defeat that ought to serve as “a wake-up call to the GOP.”
