DLC's Wittman says wiretapper Bush was attempting to "protect America"

[BurtWorm]

Nothing like "moderation" is there? :grr:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/why-the-dlc-is-so-dangero_b_13640.html

David Sirota
Bio

01.11.2006
Why the DLC Is So Dangerous to Democrats (1 comments )


If you want to know why many people believe the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) severely hobbles the Democratic Party and gives cover to the worst right-wing stereotypes, just take a look at a guy they employ named Marshall Wittman. Now, I tend to think giving any publicity to people who are hacks gives them undue attention - but in this case, Wittman provides a cautionary tale about Democrats' "big tent" mantra, where everyone gets accepted no matter how idiotic, dishonest, uninformed or dangerous their blather is.

Wittman is a former Republican operative and Christian Coalition official who now purports to speak for Democrats from his post at the DLC - an institution that has over the years been funded by, among others, Enron, Philip Morris, and Chevron. He is now trying to make a name for himself defending President Bush's illegal domestic spying operation - again, while pretending to speak for Democrats. Here's what he says:

"There is absolutely no evidence that <Bush> was attempting to do anything else but protect America...We can have a reasoned debate about this issue without impugning the motives of a Commander in Chief who was attempting to defend the nation."

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about a new form of journalism sweeping the nation: it's called Rectal Journalism, and it features reporters and supposedly objective experts basically pulling things out of their asses and peddling it as fact - when it is anything but. Wittman represents Rectal Punditry - the art of commenting on current events without bothering to actually look at the facts, and instead relying only on what the pundit pulls out of their ass. And Wittman does it in a way that exposes his own ideological motives, which are clearly to undermine the courageous Democrats who have questioned the President's behavior.

[ixion]

1. the Democratic Party would do well to servere ties with the DLC

because they are NOT acting in their best interest, IMO.

[Selatius]

6. You can't boot out Democrats from the party

It's a "big tent" party.

Because of the way our government is set up, you really only have two parties that are viable. If you super-imposed a system more common in Europe on top of ours, you'd see the Democratic Party is really a coalition of Greens, socialists, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, labor, etc. When you force that many groups under one roof, you're going to get conflict. At least in Europe, these groups are able to negotiate with each other on their own terms without fear of "splitting the vote," another unfortunate aspect of our winner-take-all system.

[jsamuel]

9. you can't "boot" them out, but you can elect different ones in the primary

season. Elections are elections and may the best candidate win.

[Selatius]

10. Well, that's true, but DLCers have been elected since the 1990s

There will always be DLCers in the Democratic Party unless there was an active, organized campaign to challenge and remove them through electoral means, of which I have yet to see one. Besides, if they are so unliked, then let their constituents vote them out.

If their constituents still find them fit to serve, then so be it. Just talk to the folks who vote for Joe Lieberman. He keeps getting into office despite his rather hawkish, militant stance on issues of war and peace.

[bvar22]

33. You are assuming a level playing field.

Having the Corporate blessings of the DLC funnels BIG MONEY to CorpoFriendly candidates in the Democratic Primaries.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans,
family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."--- Senator Paul Wellstone




The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.

In EVERY case, "Barriers to Trade" and "Restrictions on Corporations" were created to protect something valuable!

[EvolveOrConvolve]

11. Republicans have the same issue

There are fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, anti-abortionists (a subset of the religious conservative group), the pro-military conservatives, and even the far-right libertarians.

The Democrats should give the DLC the finger - they don't represent the normal Democrat that you'd meet in the corner laundromat. The DLC's goals are inimical to the goals of the Democratic party.

[Selatius]

14. Tell me, why do folks like Lieberman get elected over again?

See, that's one thing nobody here really has explained to me. He's one of the big DLC honchoes, yet he keeps getting elected by his constituents.

I doubt you can really define "normal" when it comes to Democrats. I doubt you could define that either with Republicans. Who defines "normal"?

[leftstreet]

18. Well, in Leiberman's case, name recognition has much to do with it

I'd be curious to know if he could get elected today as a newcomer.

[Selatius]

23. That's the million-dollar question

With his hawkish stance on issues of war and peace, I doubt it. There was a letter sent to Bush urging war on Iraq next after Afghanistan. Ten lawmakers signed it. One of the signatures was Lieberman's.

[leftstreet]

24. Yep, I don't think he'd get too far with those views.

[ikojo]

19. Incumbents have the edge over their challengers

all the time. He has name recognition and the money connections a challenger may not have. Look at Gephardt, also a DLCer. He was loathed here in MO but he had union support and they were able to get out the vote for him. He also had a good sized war chest. Many rank and file working class Dems saw Gephardt as wishy washy and out only for himeself.

As long as the DLC continues to approve of what Bush does then the whole party will have an even more difficult time explaining to the American voter (those who do vote and those who WOULD vote) how the Dems are any different from the Republicans. Truthfully I think most people are concerned about whether they will have a job tomorrow (both Dems and pugs support unfettered free trade), whether they will have health insurance (the Dems pay lip service to national health care but many do not support a national health care system), how to pay the bills, how to provide an education for their kids, and what will they do should they have hard times (too many Dems voted with the Republicans for the draconian bankruptcy bill last year.)

I am female and am tired of CHOICE CHOICE CHOICE being the only thing Supreme Court nominees are grilled about. What about Alito's attitudes about the 40 hour work week? overtime? workplace protections (the few that exist in the US) and other workplace issues? Grilling Alito on something other than choice would go a long way to showing people the Dems are not a one hit wonder.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

26. It's simple: he's able to raise large amounts of money

The corporatists have taken over our political system, and the DLC'ers are little more than Republican corporate whores in Democratic clothing. If the DLC controls large amounts of money, it can maintain some measure of control over OUR party.

Howard Dean being elected to lead the DNC was a huge step in the right direction. The money being raised by the good Doc is coming from the little guy - you, me, and other so called "normal" Democrats. He's given the finger to the large corporations for the most part, and I applaud his efforts.

[John Q. Citizen]

29. Money is of course the answer to your question. The candidate

with the most campaign money wins over 85% of the time.

DLC candidates are corporate sponcered so money is rarely an issue for them, especially in the primaries.

[ixion]

12. that's interesting, because I don't think the DLC sees it as such

they see it as a tool of manipulation, nothing more, IMO.

Oh, and there are more than two parties in the US, it's just that both Dems and Repubs have stacked the playing field against other parties, which doesn't really make it a precedent. :-)

[Selatius]

13. I said "two viable parties," not simply two parties

I fully recognize there are more than two parties in the US. However, only two parties hold any significant amount of power today, and the rule has held since the beginning of this Republic, and I doubt they would let any third party gain a slice of the cake without a partisan fight.

Whenever you have a system of representation built on single-seat districts, you will only really have two viable parties according to Duverger's Law.

[durablend]

2. DLC motto: "Lips go on *'s RIGHT ass cheek first, then the left"

[annabanana]

3. Sirota speaks for me... . . .n/t

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Fuck. Marshall. Wittman.

I wish I had a dick so I could tell him to bite it. :mad:

[Ksec]

7. With Dems like wittman, who needs repubs? nt

[kliljedahl]

25. The DLC is Republican Lite

We need to wrest the party back from them before it's too late, if it isn't already.



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. LOL ! You go girl!

very funny!

These guys at the DLC are making too much money from the system to give a rat's ass about changing it. The flaw in their thinking is that they believe the situation will remain the same. If BushCo. is successful in thwarting the rule of law, they could very well end up on the menu. Dumbasses!

[Moderate Donkey]

5. DLC's Kilgore vigorously disagrees

I must vigorously dissent from the views expressed by my friend (Marshall Whittman)about the president's NSA domestic surveillance adventure. I'm proud that we can have this kind of useful debate within the big-tent confines of the DLC. And I hope this post won't be misused and abused to bash my antlered colleague, whose defense of Bush on this one subject is but a small tree in the forest of his condemnations of W.

The heart of (Marshall Whittman's)argument is that freewheeling executive power is essential to the prosecution of the War on Terror, and that those of us--not just Democrats, but many Republicans--who would fence in that power by requiring observance of the rule of law are either mindless of the threat we face from Jihadism, obsessed with civil liberties absolutism, and/or blinded by Bush-hatred to the need for extraordinary national security measures.

I plead innocent to all three counts of this indictment, and suggest (Marshall Whittman)is missing three characteristics of the War on Terror that make some limits on executive power not only advisable but essential: (1) this is a protracted, Cold War, that cannot be successfully waged in an atmosphere of permanent emergency; (2) congressional and judicial oversight of executive counter-terrorism activities is the only way we can ensure an effective war on terror; and (3) conspicuous respect for the rule of law is the only way we can sustain domestic support for the war on terror, and the only way we can successfully offer our own institutions and values as an alternative to Jihadism in what is preeminently an ideological battleground...

There is one, and only one, exception I would make to these three principles: the possibility of nuclear terrorist acts. As of yet, no one in the administration has claimed the NSA surveillance program was in any way targeted on that possiblity (indeed, it wasn't targeted at much of anything, best we can tell), and moreover, this administration seems determined to do as little as it can to actually deal with the nuclear terrorist threat, if it requires multilateral action or spending money on things like port security.

More generally, the administration has been painfully slow--despite warnings from the 9/11 commission and congressional mandates to get moving--to deal with reforms in how intelligence agencies compare, analyze, and act upon raw intelligence data. U.S. law enforcement agencies had plenty of data on the 9/11 conspirators before they acted; more data swept up by the kind of program Bush later authorized wouldn't have addressed the inability of the system to understand and act on that data.

In addition, any consideration of emergency executive powers has to involve a close look at the alternatives to scofflaw behavior. If FISA was deemed inadequate by the administration, it could have and should have gone to the Congress controlled by its own party in 2003 and asked for amendments, which most Democrats would have supported as well. The habit of demanding unlimited executive power when it's unnecessary is one of the most unsavory aspects of this administration's behavior, as illustrated most recently by the president's statement that he would not feel constrained by the prisoner treatment rules sponsored by Sen. McCain, and duly enacted by Congress.

And that, in the end, is probably the heart of my difference of opinion with my friend (Whittman). The legal case for the president's NSA ukase is shabby at best; the editors of The New Republic, hardly wimps when it comes to the War on Terror, demolished it in an editorial last week. You can be hard-core on the War on Terror and still be hard-edged in criticizing the administration's we'll-do-what-we-see-fit position, and even those who agree with Bush on this particular subject need to begin with the presumption that his critics have a legitimate and patriotic case to make. (After all, even Joe Lieberman joined the Democratic filibuster against the Republican effort to make the Patriot Act permanent with little debate).

(Whittman) concluded his latest post by proudly calling himself a "Hamiltonian mammal" who favors a strong executive. Well, I'm a Jeffersonian mammal by temperament and tradition, and though both strains of the American political dialogue have much merit, Jeffersonians tend to understand that while Lincoln, TR, and FDR, among others, have vindicated faith in a strong executive, we also have to have a system that deals with presidents like Harding, Nixon and George W. Bush. That means no executive blank checks without balances, especially when those balances are entirely consistent with a robust defense of our country.

http://www.newdonkey.com/2006/01/no-executive-blank-checks-without.html

[BurtWorm]

35. What the fuck is a Hamiltonian "mammal" doing in a Jeffersonian party

anyway? The tent is big enough without letting monarchists in as well.

[w13rd0]

15. Wittman...

...is a piece of shit. I wouldn't even scrape him off my shoe. I'd just throw away the shoes.

[ecoalex]

16. The DLC is ahead with $ and $$$ and power, the nod from the corporations

[Cha]

17. Recommended..this should be on

the front page, too.

"Rectal Jounalism" "supposedly objective experts basically pulling things out of their asses and peddling it as fact - when it is anything but. Wittman represents Rectal Punditry - the art of commenting on current events without bothering to actually look at the facts, and instead relying only on what the pundit pulls out of their ass."

Perfect!! I might also suggest that "Rectal Journalism" is significantly descriptive of the geographical placement of journalists',pundits',and in this case an rnc opertive masquerading as a dcl operative,masquerading as a moderate's ..LIPS in the proximity to bush's ass.

[MisterP]

20. Wittman & Co.: Bravely tearing down the barriers between cowardice and

collusion.

[understandinglife]

21. K&R and definitely DU homepage material. The "D" in "DLC" stands ...

... for duplicitous.


Peace.

[MelissaB]

22. Got my vote!

:grr:

[FreedomAngel82]

27. There is evidence!!!

Whistleblowers anyone? AAH!

[LittleClarkie]

28. Can't wait til it's a Democrat's turn to "protect America"

Let's see what the Republicans say when it's one of us in the White House.

[AntiCoup2K4]

30. Wittman once again proves exactly what kind of a cancer the DLC is

And you can't continue to ignore cancer, or live in denial. This motherfucker supports the Bush fascist regime every time he opens his mouth, and he's supposed to represent US??

[LincolnMcGrath]

38. !

:yourock:

[robbedvoter]

31. DLC= "lifetime Democrat" ploy (the C-Span callers on the Dem line

who are freepers and always use "lifetime dem"). Why, I believe even Lindsay Graham had one of those fawning over Scalito.

[eve_was_framed]

32. did someone let Lieberman out of his cage again?

[yourout]

34. Bullshit....this was to spy on their political enemys.

I will not believe anything else.

[annabanana]

36. nom... . . . . n/t

[Old and In the Way]

37. Why isn't there an equivalent Republican Leadership Council?

Oh yeah, it's standard equipment in that syndicate. Seriously, though....why isn't there a liberal/progressive Republican version of the DLC....a bunch of contrarian Republicans who formulate a real alternative to Bush-Republicanism? Talk about a monolythic apparratus...

[BurtWorm]

40. Damn good question!

I've been thinking that the problem with the system as is is that the Democrats inside the beltway come to be members of the class of elites Republicanism caters to. The DLC wing of the party is the side that remains nominally Democratic but that has essentially Republican values about class, for example, and the balance of power. (Wittman, though, is just barely a nominal Democrat.)

[moriverrat]

41. Progressive Republican Caucus?

That's an idea!

Funded by small donations by the people. Such a group would sponsor republican primary candidates that would carry a progressive economic, and socially libertarian message. Significant taxes could be imposed upon wealth which had its origins in government contracts and/or crony legislation. Just a couple of ideas.

I believe we can get more bang for the buck by splitting the republican party instead of fighting their infiltrators in our party.

[Rex]

39. But the motives are so out in the open, so in your face.

People complain a lot about what 'far left' groups say in the Dem party. I say guys like this do the most damage when they apologize for the enemies horrendous actions.

[NuttyFluffers]

42. and evidence that DLC is dem 5th column builds...

am i surprised? no. intrigued that breaking the law, particularly the 4th amendment, is now cavalierly considered okay, just 'cause some fundy or RW owned poll company's polls say it's okay. cowardice, it's always a bad color on ya.

[Festivito]

43. Illegal in part because that "EVIDENCE" is hidden.

People who are not allowed to know,
have not shown evidence they are not allowed to show.

Therefore: EvEryThIng iS jUSt fiNE ... to DLC buffoonery.

[samhsarah]

44. god i hate the dlc. nt