Racial Whitch-Hunt Con't.
One could respond to Begala in Begala fashion: "The state where left-wing extremist, Muslim terrorists blew up the World Trade Center - that's blue. The county where a race riot following a jury verdict destroyed 2,000 Korean businesses and caused the deaths of 58 people - that's blue. The states where Colin Ferguson and Ronald Taylor killed 8 whites and Asians because leftwing race baiters convinced them they were victims of a racial conspiracy - are blue. The counties, nationwide, where the vast majority of murderers, rapists and child molesters live and operate - those are blue, too."
But far more important is how Begala's outburst reveals the casual way in which a mainstream political strategist on the left can smear an entire political party - routinely identified by his political comrades as a "white party" - as a den of racial killers.
Not since the heyday of Senator Joe McCarthy has there been a demonization of whole categories of Americans or a national witch-hunt on a scale like this.
And this witch-hunt is now the focus of the nomination process for the new president's cabinet. Nor do Democrats betray any embarrassment at the fact that leading their attack from the left is a Senator who killed a woman while driving under the influence, left the scene of the accident, and avoided a manslaughter charge only by massing all his legendary family's political muscle to fix the judicial process in a backwater county of his own state. Democrats had previously politicized and debased the process by which Supreme Court nominees are vetted. Now they are turning what used to be a pro forma confirmation ritual of a new Administration into an orgy of character assassination.
Consider the spectacle. George Bush has nominated the most diverse cabinet in American history. He has appointed African-Americans to the highest positions on record. He has appointed a Chinese-American and an Arab-American to cabinet positions for the first time. He has appointed Hispanic Americans and African Americans and a Japenese American, and of course women. Yet his nominations are the targets of a Democrat campaign to portray his nominees as racists, homophobes and even, in one frenzied historical leap - Torquemadas.
All this has had a predictable effect on a reliably uninformed public. Does a national icon of the popular culture, Ricky Martin, have the temerity to accept an invitation to sing at the new President's Inauguration? In normal times, this would routinely be seen as a high honor - in this case an honor to the entire Puerto Rican community to have one of its sons assume such a nationally visible role. But in the atmosphere the left has poisoned, Ricky Martin must be prepared to have his life and career torn apart. On hearing of his decision, Martin's childhood friend and professional partner, the man who produces and writes his songs, told the nation's press that the singing gig was "a betrayal of everything that every Puerto Rican should stand for." "This is a president," according to Robi Rosa, "who would have people in his Cabinet who would obstruct the exercise of civil rights, human rights, consumer rights, the right to choose, the right to be free of gun violence and the right to a clean environment."
This pathetic extremist screed - far from being unexpected -- sounds very much like the tune the whole Democratic choir is singing. Mario Cuomo may have sung it first at the 1996 Democrat Convention: "Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America." Give me a break.
What are the actual charges the Democrats have brought against Bush's nominee for Attorney General? John Ashcroft is accused of the crime of opposing racial preferences (along with 70% of all Americans). According to the witch-hunters, this makes him a closet racist. He is accused of opposing a failed program -- forced busing as a means of integration -- which has been rejected even in liberal Democrat cities like Los Angeles and Boston, and even among blacks. For this he is accused of "racism." He is accused of sympathies for the Confederacy because he didn't condemn the Confederate flag and thought the Confederate cause may have embraced other issues besides slavery (normally the left argues it was about anything but slavery) - yet it was Democrat Senator Fritz Hollings who raised the Confederate flag over South Carolina's capitol and Bill Clinton who signed official proclamations commemorating the Confederacy while governor of Arkansas -- with no such backlash effects. Ashcroft is accused of opposing one black judicial nomination out of a total 26 such nominations because Ronnie White, the black judge in question, overturned the death penalty of a cold-blooded killer who had murdered the wife of a sheriff in front of her children at a Christmas Party, arousing the passionate interest of Missouri sheriffs. For this - for all this - a man with two decades of unimpeachable public service, a supporter of integration, a proponent of Martin Luther King's vision -- is pilloried as a "racist."
In the atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by left-wing McCarthyites, one news channel even billed a program on the nominee for Attorney General this way: "Bush calls him a man of integrity; critics call him frightening." Begalism uber alles.
The time has come to pose to Democrats and the left the same question the hero of America's most famous witch-hunt finally put to the Senator himself: Have you no decency, sir (and madam)? Have you no shame? |
