OPINION:
If the November election is solely about the economy, why did the Democrats boot God and Jerusalem from their platform at the Democratic National Convention only to panic and then rig a vote to put them back in?
It’s well worth a couple of minutes to watch hapless Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on YouTube fail three times at the podium to get a two-thirds majority to put God and Jerusalem back in the platform and then declare, Soviet-style, to a cascade of boos that the motion had carried. The mayor’s stunned look after the first couple of failures is priceless.
If the economy is the only issue that matters, why did the Democrats feature a parade of speakers who thundered support for abortion? It was so over the top that The Washington Post’s pro-life Democrat (an endangered species) Melinda Henneberger’s column on Friday was headlined “Democrats and their obsession with abortion.”
If the Republican Party is supposed to be the party obsessed with social issues, why were they barely mentioned by the GOP but everywhere in evidence at the Democratic convention?
Instant celebrity and contraceptive freebie advocate Sandra Fluke warned darkly in her “war on women” speech at the Democratic convention that if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected, Americans will “have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die in preventable deaths in our emergency rooms.” The dastardly GOP pair also will cause cancer deaths, but we’ll leave that to once and future Obama ad campaigns.
In between claims that the economy is humming along nicely and President Obama is still our savior, speakers also rammed home the message that marriage as God created it is so over.
Democratic National Committee Treasurer Andrew Tobias spent more than half of his nearly four-minute speech talking about homosexual rights, including a hurrah for Rep. Barney Frank’s recent “wedding — to a guy!”
If it’s the GOP that is in the grip of religious fanatics, why did the Democrats at first refuse to have Cardinal Timothy Dolan give the closing prayer as he did at the GOP convention or have liberal Roman Catholic nun Sister Simone Campbell give the pitch for more big government? Vashti McKenzie, the first female bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, gave the party’s credentials report while assuring us with a straight face that Mr. Obama had “pulled our country back from the brink” of economic “collapse” and was the “one person with the plan to return this country to prosperity.”
Mr. Tobias noted that “the stock market is up 58 percent since Mr. Obama took office.” Well, yes. Companies have shed millions of employees, closed plants and stockpiled cash while awaiting a less punitive regulatory and tax climate.
Meanwhile, the rest of America is stuck in the Great Waiting Room.
Like virtually every speaker, including Mr. Obama, Mr. Tobias promised that re-electing Mr. Obama would make life better for “the middle class.” If we had a dollar for every time the “middle class” was mentioned, we’d have enough to cover a good portion of what Mr. Obama spent of our tax dollars in his very first few weeks in office.
Much media attention was showered upon first lady Michelle Obama and her husband for having raised two “normal” daughters, which thankfully appears to be the case. When you gazed out at the ’60s-like conglomeration of special pleaders around the convention floor, wouldn’t you have thought those folks would have been offended by the idea that “normal” is a good thing? Isn’t the entire concept of “normal” rooted in judgmentalism?
After all, liberals are working mightily to persuade us that long-held social norms and free-market freedoms are vestiges of classism, evil capitalism, superstition, nongovernment schooling, oppressive religion (except for Islam) and barely suppressed hatred. Plus, George W. Bush.
For a look at what Democrats think is “normal,” we could view the new NBC sitcom about homosexual parenting, “The New Normal.” Or we could go to the convention’s other superstar, Bill Clinton. On Wednesday, Mr. Clinton proved once again that he is a great speaker who can schmooze the socks off you, or at least an intern.
But “normal” isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind. This is a guy with such voluptuous appetites that he’s been known to eat half a baked potato in one bite and had state troopers pimping for him. That’s not normal. Nor does a normal guy seem contented that his wife has been exiled on a world mission to make other countries more closely resemble West Hollywood.
It’s like a real-life version of the female reporter in the 1987 movie “Broadcast News” who is banished to a snowy, subzero post to keep her away from the handsome anchorman.
In July, Hillary Rodham Clinton sailed past Madeleine K. Albright’s record of visiting 98 nations as secretary of state, reaching 100 with a visit to Latvia. On a trip to Geneva, she hectored ambassadors to the United Nations about their countries’ stubborn refusal to adopt the Democratic Party’s “new normal” social values.
“Clinton has visited 108 countries and counting,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. “The number will jump to 111 once she adds Brunei, the Cook Islands, and Timor-Leste from her current trip.”
Timor-Leste is near Indonesia, in case you’re not familiar with it. The important thing is that Mrs. Clinton was halfway around the world while the Democratic convention was going on in North Carolina. You’d think someone who might aspire someday to be the presidential nominee would show up at her party’s most important event.
On the other hand, it will be easier in 2016 to pretend to be a moderate, middle-class-loving, normal American politician if she keeps her distance from a crowd that lionizes Barney Frank and Sandra Fluke, embraces Marxist economics and is divided over whether God and Jerusalem are fit for inclusion in the party platform.
Robert Knight is senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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