A Little Rebellion It took less than 24 hours after the Democrats kicked off their convention this week in Charlotte to have their “Ron Paul moment.”
After facing criticism from conservatives and Republicans concerning the Democrats’ decision to remove “God” and blind acquiesence to Israel from their party platform, the Democrats held a “vote” on the convention floor. After three calls on whether to amend the platform in which the “nayes” clearly outweighed the affirmitive votes, the DNC approved the changes anyway.
It was a truly chilling moment, and the speaker clearly looked nervous as he ignored the democratic desires of the delegates and their loud boos.
As Zerohedge and PolicyMic‘s John Giokaris reported earlier, this was eerily reminiscent to how the Republicans treated the Ron Paul delegates (and as a matter fact, any grassroots influence in the party) during last week’s convention. This couldn’t be a more accurate description. I’ve written frequently about the GOP and how they treated Ron Paul not just last week but throughout his entire presidential campaign and his entire tenure in Congress, and it appears that liberals are beginning to feel a similar sting.
These latest shenanigans from the Democrats help further prove that it’s not just the Republicans that are openly hostile to any grassroots movement within their party and should be a wake-up call to progressives and liberals to finally abandon a Democrat Party that has time after time failed to represent them.
The DNC, like the RNC, is playing out to be a dissent-free, carefully scripted coronation of the president. And while the speakers try to differentiate their party from the Republicans and create a false caricature of them to scare loyal liberals into voting for the lesser of two evils, the DNC has so far been predictably absent of any substantial discussion of Obama’s record, his policies, and why any honest progressive (or anyone!) should support the president. Attacking the other side, no matter how similar their policies may actually be, is not a fiery rallying cry but the signs of a party desperate to stay in power.
While the media and the rest of the country fawned over Michelle Obama’s speech, and Senator Harry Reid once again attacked Mitt Romney over his tax returns and financial records, Obama has been given a free pass and a blank check to sell out his base … the same base that loudly rejected the platform changes on the convention floor last night.
Just this week, Obama scolded the press for daring to actually report the truth about comments he made last Sunday at a campaign stop in Boulder, Colorado. Obama told the crowd that he would remove all U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2014 despite the fact that he was in Afghanistan earlier this year to sign a deal to keep U.S. troops there until 2024. When this “off-script” comment was reported, the White House press secretary disavowed the comments, claiming Obama “never said” that in Boulder. Obama directly lied to his swooning base in order to woo them and then had Carney pretend like it never happened. And it’s not like the Republicans, who think Obama is some sort of weak peacenick, will call him on it!
Just think about it for a second. For an honest progressive, or even a moderate liberal, who claims to value peace and civil liberties, what do Obama and the Democrats offer other than fearmongering that their Republican “opposition” will be worse? In just under one term, Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan, launched wars — including hundreds of drone strikes — in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan, is intervening in Syria, has repeatedly threatened and sanctioned Iran, has been aggressively prosecuting medical marijuana facilities across the country, claims the right to assassinate and detain U.S. citizens without trial, brags about his personal “kill list,” and has deported more immigrants than President George W. Bush did in two terms. And this is the Democraticticket?
Will there be any mention of these policies at the DNC or by the president himself? Judging by how the Democratic delegates were openly snubbed and ignored by the party elites during the platform vote, I doubt it.
Just like conservatives and libertarians should look beyond the crooked Republicans for the future of their movement, any attempt by progressives to influence the Democrat Party will likely be just as futile. Instead, this would be an opportune time for a radical realignment shift in American politics, a unification of libertarians and the grassroots Right and Left as the party of the Bill of Rights and decentralized government against the Obama-Romney extremist center of war, debt, and an encroaching police state.
Millions of Ron Paul supporters have wisely walked away from the GOP, and here’s hoping that this latest act of disdain for their party’s supposed base is the straw that breaks liberals’ support for a corrupt, and fundamentally unliberal, Democrat Party.