Remember when conservatives were supposedly the ones on a hair trigger, ready to go off accusing lefties of disloyalty to America? Liberals would puff up with indignation and demand, “Are you questioning my patriotism?” Well, times have changed, and wave elections have a way of turning things on their heads.
Take for example a recent Huffington Post op-ed [1] by Bob Burnett, former Silicon Valley executive and former editor of lefty moonbat magazine In These Times. Seeking to explain the midterm results, Burnett got his Joe McCarthy on, thundering, “Let’s begin the 2016 campaign season by calling Republican politicians by their true name: traitors. Enemies of the United States of America.”
Yup, the GOP won by “treason.” As evidence, Burnett offered a quote from Mitch McConnell before the 2010 midterm: “We need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government ... The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” A member of one party hoping to defeat a president from another? Shocking!
(Perhaps McConnell should have tried to enlist the help of an actual American enemy, as Ted Kennedy did in 1984? [2])
Burnett also quoted disinterested observer Barack Obama: “What [Republicans] realized is, if we don’t get anything done, then people are going to get cynical about government and its possibilities of doing good for everybody ... And the more cynical people get, the less they vote.” Thus would the GOP “scuttle our democracy,” Burnett warned ominously.
Actually, Burnett seems to believe the real evidence of Republican treachery is that they don’t agree with him. “Republicans became ‘the Party of No’ and blocked every Democratic proposal to boost the economy, lower the unemployment rate, protect the longtime unemployed, and reduce inequality … Indeed,” Burnett wrote, “since the passage of the 2009 Economic Stimulus Act, there’s hasn’t been one thing that Republicans have done that improves the lot of working families.”
What’s more, this foul treachery goes deep, and runs back to … the Gipper. “The Republican descent into treason began with Ronald Reagan and his deplorable ‘Reaganomics.’” With Reagan, “the Republican Party embraced plutocracy and ushered in a thirty-year period where America’s working families were abandoned in favor of the rich.” Hard to believe not a single GOP plutocrat ever went to the guillotine, isn’t it?
Fast forward to today and poor, decent Democrats are still struggling in the face of this monstrous perfidy. “Playing nice has cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.” Yes, that darned Harry Reid is just too nice.
Still, all is not lost. “Liberals can fight back,” Burnett wrote. “We can call Republicans on their immoral plan to ruin democracy. Liberals must call Republicans by their true names: traitors.”
Hey, is he questioning our patriotism?