OPINION:
Democrats, listen up: You won the House.
You’ve taken the lead, solidified the majority, stolen the legislative political show, so to speak. You’re moving into committee leadership offices as we speak, booting Republicans left and right and bragging, ever so loudly, about the new progressive agenda that’s about to steamroll into Congress.
So here’s a question: Why the need to keep up the hate-filled rants against conservatives?
The left, even when it’s winning, can’t stop digging in the mud. Democrats, even when they’re leading, can’t hold a sensible, rational, courteous conversation.
For example, Republican Rep. Steve Scalise just bantered a bit on Twitter with newly elected Democrat-slash-socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her televised vision of taxation in this country — the one where she sees the wealthy ceding ever more of their incomes for government redistribution.
Scalise, as the Blaze noted, wrote: “Republicans: Let Americans keep more of their own hard-earned money. Democrats: Take away 70% of your income and give it to leftist fantasy programs.”
And Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response: “You’re the GOP Minority Whip. How do you not know how marginal tax rates work? Oh that’s right, almost forgot: GOP works for the corporate CEOs showering themselves in multi-million bonuses; not the actual working people whose wages + healthcare they’re ripping off for profit.”
But then came the socialist’s social media supporters, bringing the hate, calling to “snipe” Scalise’s butt, or to “kick his cane,” the Blaze reported. For what — political differences? If anything, Ocasio-Cortez is the radical one here; it’s low taxation and limited government, not Robin Hood thefts of individual pockets, that are in line with Founding Father principles.
Still, she won her office fair and square. Her constituents picked her. No need for them to issue physical threats against their political opposition — particularly to Scalise, who was shot in 2017 while playing baseball with fellow Republicans and who has more reason than most to take angry rhetoric seriously.
But this brief Twitter sniping shines a light on what those of the left are all about. To them, wins don’t count unless the opposition is crushed — crushed, annihilated and erased from history.
To them, it’s about “impeach[ing] the motherf—,” as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Michigan’s newest Muslim lawmaker, just crowed. It’s about forming a coalition to take down the political opposition, as Ocasio-Cortez just made clear, when she tweeted to Tlaib, “I got your back — the Bronx and Detroit ride together.”
It’s about resisting for the sake of resisting — as rapper Snoop Dogg just showed, when he put out a profanity-laced Instagram video, calling Trump a “punk motherf—” and sneering to “f— everybody down with Donald Trump,” The Hill reported.
The left is truly insane.
But there are lessons to be gleaned from all the hate — lessons that go like this: For the left, political cooperation and compromise are not real things. They’re talking points. The real goal of the left is to utterly destroy political dissent, compel groupthink in line with Big Government bureaucracy and shred all evidence of the Constitution, conservatism and anything that runs counter to collectivist principles.
How to tell that’s true?
Just look at the Democrats when they win. They’re just as angry and hateful and vicious as when they lose. It’s obvious: They’re after something more than the normal campaign spoils of legislative and policy change.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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