Victim ad Infinitum
Question: At what point do you become responsible and stop being a victim?
Answer: When you’re a Democrat, apparently never.
It hasn’t taken long for the political party in control of both houses of congress and the White House to find some new way to claim they are the victim.
They tried to claim they were the victim of partisanship, bad luck and a lack of understanding by the press and public during the confirmation process for new Obama cabinet nominees. But you can only repeat the poorly premised excuses regarding cavil objections to the nominee’s deceptive and inaccurate income tax filings for so long before you stop sounding like a compurgator and begin sounding like a defense attorney making a plea bargain. After Tim 1040 Geithner was confirmed as Treasury Secretary the Dems tried to pass off a few more nominee mea culpas before abandoning the whole “They didn’t know the gun was loaded” defense and forced the high powered tax cheats to fall on their swords and quietly fade away.
Then they tried to claim that they were the victim of partisan politics when Republicans en mass refused to support the $1.2 trillion in new earmark riddled spending. But rather than keeping the particulars of those packages in view long enough to let the public consciousness seize the euphoria of hope and change, allowing John Q. Citizen to actually begin reading the line items of this fallacious financial free-for-all, they decided to abandon that publicity stunt as well. “We need to put an end to the partisanship in Washington” swiftly faded into “We just need to move on”.
Now comes the new president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel with the latest edition of victim lamentation. And it’s not even a politician or official member of the opposing party that is causing such lachrymose. The newest target in the Democrat’s cross hairs is the conservative intransigent Rush Limbaugh.
Not that Limbaugh hasn’t been the target of Democrat disparagement before; I’m guessing his picture has been one of the most requested images in the Democrat character assassination firing range for a number of years. But that was when they were the underdog fighting against the oppression of those that would keep the sun from shining. It appears that Democrats now find themselves in the unfamiliar position of complete control of both the legislative and executive branches of government but still in need of retaining their status of victim.
Rahm Emanuel, the bare knuckles political pugilist of Chicago and Illinois Democrat politics, has taken the lead in attacking Limbaugh for openly admitting that he wants the new president’s socialistic agenda to fail. At a recent Conservative Political Action Committee, Limbaugh repeated his position saying “What is so strange about being honest and saying, I want Barack Obama to fail, if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?”
A conservative desiring failure of this most liberal president’s policies? Stop the presses!
For his part, Emanuel did the Sunday morning talk show circuit claiming “Our goal….is to continue to reach out, and it’s our desire that Republicans would work with us and try to be constructive rather than adopt a philosophy of somebody like Rush Limbaugh who is praying for failure” (cue ominous musical crescendo here).
After much haranguing about the Democrat’s desire to end partisanship and the president’s commitment to put an end to earmarks, when asked about the blatant partisanship displayed in the recent $412 billion dollar spending package added to the $1.2 trillion total in new earmarked spending Emanuel kept to the script and claimed that was yesterdays news and we need to just move on. That’s “last year’s business” he said. He was also remarkably quiet regarding the 16 earmark projects he is personally responsible for in this spending package. Among the projects bearing Emanuel’s name include a million dollars for the Chicago Adler Planetarium, another million for street rehabilitation in a strongly union Chicago suburb and money for a Children’s Museum. So much for an end to ramrod partisanship and earmarks.
The obvious intent of Democrats pinning the mantle of Republican spokesman on Limbaugh is clear. They have lost their convenient whipping boy in George Bush and now desperately need to remain victims in the eyes of the society of victims they have created as their loyal base. “We understand your struggle against oppression. We are oppressed too.” is the message they are trying to send. Pay no attention to the fact that Democrats have been in control of congress and therefore had ultimate control of the budget for the last two years prior to the current economic collapse.
It’s tough holding the reins of power where you are judged by your accomplishments or failures rather than your rhetoric. It’s hard being responsible.
Unless you can also be a victim.
