RUSH: This is Joel in Calumet, Michigan. You’re on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rushbo.
RUSH: Hey.
CALLER: Great to talk to you. Hey, we had Senator Levin on our local station, WMPL up here in the copper country, and I asked him — I submitted a direct question to him. I said it’s a one-syllable answer, that’s all it takes, so most people can figure it out even if you’re in Rio Linda, no matter where you are, I asked him if we can win in Iraq. You could be for the war, against the war, or anything in between, and you should be able to answer that yes or no. Right?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Wouldn’t you think?
RUSH: Yeah, I do. I agree.
CALLER: So I asked him the question and he went off, ‘Well, if the conditions,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada yada, and I commented to the person who asked him the question on the radio there, I said, ‘You know, that insults all the past veterans, everyone else who said that America you talk many times can’t win a war.’ I don’t know. It’s just maddening.
RUSH: Let me tell you what’s really going on. You call Carl Levin and ask him, ‘It’s a one word answer, Senator, can we win the war in Iraq?’ And you get, ‘Well, depends on the circumstances.’ Here’s what’s really going on. It’s a simple answer. He cannot afford to say yes, because the left wing has this party in its own testicle lockbox over Iraq and winning and losing. He knows the United States can win. There aren’t too many of these stories. This is a piece from the St. Petersburg Times, of all places, and it’s by Wes Allison, who is a Times staff writer. I don’t have time to read the whole story here to you, Joel, but what this is basically is about is a rift in the Democrat Party. It’s a rare truthful story on the divisions that exist in the Democrat Party, and we don’t get these very often.
Now, the headline of this story is: ‘When Left Isn’t Left Enough, They Rally the Troops — Advocacy groups raise cash and demand action.’ Now, the bottom line here, folks, is that there is a lot more pressure for conformity, ideological conformity in the Democrat Party than there is in the Republican Party. You don’t hear in these debates the Democrats arguing over who’s the real liberal, because they all are the real deal. On the Republican side, you do hear Republicans argue over who’s the real conservative. There’s much more diversity and divergent views in the Republican Party than on the Democrat side. This requirement for ideological conformity is rarely addressed by the Drive-Bys. This story points out how MoveOn.org and the progressive Democrat caucus in the House are calling for the defeat of anybody deemed insufficiently anti-war. And you’ve got the Center for American Progress, all these liberal groups are in on this. You’ve got Cindy Sheehan running against Pelosi. Now, I doubt that she’s going to do anything, but that’s a division in the party. The Democrats, after all these months of giving Cindy Sheehan noted credibility, now treat her as a joke. But the fact is she represents a division in the party.
These forces on the left have already triumphed within the party when it comes to issues of abortion and race. Dissent on life, on that issue, dissent on affirmative action, not tolerated. If you aren’t sufficiently pro-choice and for affirmative action, you’re going to get drummed out of this party. You certainly aren’t going to have a platform to go anywhere nationally in this party. Some Democrats in this story are even saying it’s worth it, if they get these wrong kind of Democrats out of the House and lose the House. If you’re not sufficiently anti-war, you deserve to be defeated, you deserve to have a primary opponent, and you deserve to lose, even if it means the Democrats lose the House. That’s how virulent, that’s how rabid the anti-war movement is, and so when people like Pelosi or Harry Reid, Carl Levin appear and are asked any question such as the one you asked, ‘Can we win in Iraq?’ they can’t afford to say yes, because MoveOn.org’s going to target ’em.
Harry Reid had the worst three weeks of any politician this side of Richard Nixon. He got his butt kicked everywhere he went. The chair kicked him when he sat down. He got no respite from it because he goes off and meets with these people on Monday nights under the cover of darkness, and he probably tries to tell them, ‘Look you guys, we got problems here.’ They don’t want to hear it. They want to hear anti-war. They want to hear defeat. Last year, everybody on the Republican side, a lot of people were saying, ‘You know, they deserve to lose. Teach ’em a lesson, see what happens when the party loses and the Democrats run the show. That will show ’em.’ Well, that’s happening on the left, too, but you never hear about it other than in this one story. It’s a long answer, but that’s why your senator could not tell you that he sees victory as a possibility.