Take The Kossies Out To The Woodshed

Surely it wasn’t just so that Senator Kerry could remind us that he was very importantly attending a very important World Economic Forum in Davos? Surely it wasn’t just so that Senator Kennedy could make another stemwinder on the floor of the United States Senate so that he could remind us that he is not exactly the liberal lion of his prime?

Presumably the idea was to throw a bone to the Kossites of the Angry Left, to put on a show for them, to assuage their disappointment. So Senator Kennedy hauled out the old themes, as reported by Josh Gerstein.

"The one organization - the one institution that protects us is the Supreme Court of the United States," Mr. Kennedy said. "Too much blood has been shed in those battles, too much sweat, too many tears to put at risk that march towards progress and that is what we are doing with this nominee."

Well yes. That puts it rather well, Senator. It’s true that the Supreme Court has sat there like a progressive watchdog for the last generation doing the will of the progressive elite. And there is no doubt that with all these nominees from the Federalist Society, that situation is going to change—if not this year, then next year.

Of course, there are those of us that believe that the “march toward progress” has been, in many ways, a miserable retreat. It has taken many of a once proud self-governing people and made them into a fractious dependent class, a pack of dogs-in-the-manger demanding their “rights” and unwilling to slice their benefits according to their contributions. It has damaged the bourgeois family, and it has created vast entitlement promises that aren’t likely to be honored. For too many, it has turned a productive working class into a non-working underclass.

But the big question is, are you Democrats really doing the right thing by truckling to your Angry Left activists? Shouldn’t you experienced pols be taking some of these folks aside and giving them a few tips about how to win elections and how to understand the American people?

Throughout the rise of the conservative movement, we conservatives have always understood that the enthusiasm of the base is one thing and the winning of elections another. We have always understood that to enact our program we first needed to persuade the American people to let us have a turn at power. We have understood that the American people are rightly hesitant to agree to too much change too soon, and we have responded by not asking for too much too soon. It is the ordinary American, after all, who will be left holding the baby after the suits, conservative or liberal, have done the skedaddle.

Your Angry Left chappies just don’t seem to get this. Until they do, they are going to cost you Democrats big time.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.