Right Wing Outrage

I was sitting in a typical Bay Area evening commute quagmire today and optimistically thinking, "The Kerry Administration HAS to be different from the Clinton Administration." We can't allow the Right Wing to grind them down the way they did the Clintons.

Democratic administrations have to face three main challenges these days: Right Wing ideologues, Corporate Media and insurrection and from within the party.

The first and the worst are the Right Wing idealogues. They are relentless and they are unprincipled. We got the picture during the Clinton years and we know they will stop at nothing to grind the opposition to dust. We know they will tell any lie and distort whatever distortions they need to advance their agenda and empower their base.

Their weapon is chutzpah. And do they have chutzpah!

George W. Bush, elected by the thinnest of margins in our most discredited election struts on stage and immediately appoints cabinet members from the Far Right Fringe with complete and total impunity.

And when criticized for being too Right Wing, the Bush Administration either didn't bother to listen or responded with outrage, Outrage! that anyone would be so rude as to say such a thing.

And yet the liberal side always seems too mellow and fuzzy by about three quarters. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, we heard a few muffled groans, and there was some "spirited" questioning at the confirmation hearings. But the very idea that the Democrats might have a problem with Ashcroft brought Orrin Hatch to his feet in outrage! (Orrin Hatch does outrage really well, and often.) And it worked! The Democrats in the Senate meekly allowed Ashcroft to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting citizenry.

There is no doubt that the Left needs to develop a sense of outrage and learn how to aim it. And learn to remain outraged despite calming voices and, well, facts. The Right never lets anything dampen their outrage.

Right Wing outrage scares the bejeezus out of the media. They will do anything to avoid an outraged Right Wingnut. But we'll talk about the media in the next post.