The Left's Great Snarl

Hugh Hewitt has a great perspective piece at Townhall.com about the state of the Democrat party. Some selected excerpts:

I gave a talk last night on the presidential race to an audience of approximately 100 very successful business people and their spouses, and in the Q&A that followed, a soft spoken woman asked a question in very soft and almost grieved tones: What has happened to the Democrats and the media that they are so filled with hate? The backdrop was the attack on Rush, particularly Tom Harkin's churlish suggestion that Rush was using drugs. She explained further that she doesn't understand what could motivate the sort of behavior we are seeing on the left.

Everybody with a brain knows that Rush didn't slander anti-war soldiers, and that the whole phoney phoney story was an attempt by the left and especially Senate Democrats to change the subject from the MoveOn.org ad which has branded them as anti-military in a way far more significant than Dick Durbin's memorable comparison of American troops at Gitmo to Nazis, the Soviets or Pol Pot followers or John Kerry's slam on the intelligence or capabilities of the troops that led to the famous photo from Iraq.

Thus everybody knows that Senate Democrats and now such would-be grandees as Wes Clark are pushing a lie as a means of attacking Rush, and doing so in plain view. New media guarantees that no such story can succeed, and it hasn't for the simple reason that it is not true, and print journalists, bloggers talk radio and some cable outlets have completely undercut the charge.

In the process though, Americans have again seen a close-up of The Great Snarl that the MoveOn.org Democrats have become. It is a disturbing thing, this collection of hard-left activists, vulgar and profane bloggers, captive Senators and know-nothing MSMers, and the more it is on display the more it becomes one big blob of seething hate, from the Code Pinkers to Tom Harkin, Media Matters and the HuffPo express. On to the center-right this blob projects its disfiguring anger, but it doesn't work because most Americans hear and watch for themselves.

The center-right supports the military and the mission. The left doesn't.

Pushing a smear in the new media environment is a profoundly self-destructive bit of bad political theater that insults the audience's intelligence while revealing the attackers' character.

Of course that the troops know the real score. Their families know. It is impossible to be awake in this country and not know.

The MoveOn.org Democrats have completely misread the 2006 elections and the polls. The map they drew from their flawed analysis of the data has led them far from the mainstream, or at least encourgaed them to embrace their inner radical. But the Great Snarl on display continues to hammer home that the Democrats are way off from the mainstream of American politics.

The Great Snarl is not a winning strategy, but the left took the Democrats' eyes off winning a long time ago.

There are more details in the article, so I encourage you to go read it. Hewitt captures the essence of the Left in this article, so if you want to understand them, here's your answer. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the conservative right is only waiting for a candidate to come claim the mantle of leadership, and they will flock to his/her side. It hasn't happened yet, but there's a lot of time left.

There's my two cents.