'There’s A Word For This Sort Of Overbearing, Priggish Intimidation: Bullying'

At the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti has some thoughts on “The Bully Party:”

Not long ago, of course, sophisticated opinion was offended by a president who divided the world into good and evil. But no one seems to care anymore. Nor does anyone seem particularly bothered by the president’s redefinition of political compromise. Under the old definition, an accommodation took place when both parties negotiated over the fine points of the matter at hand. They brokered deals such as the Gang of 14 agreement on President Bush’s appellate court nominees in 2005. But the problem with the old way is that it hinders Obama’s ability to score political points and rack up dubious legislative “accomplishments” before the midterm elections. So it’s been replaced by a version of compromise that is indistinguishable from ideological surrender.

On financial reform, good-faith discussions between Dodd and ranking Republican Richard Shelby were slowing the president’s post-health care momentum. Hence last week’s bizarre spectacle in which Senator Harry Reid held three cloture votes to end debate and bring the Dodd bill to the floor. Obama and Reid know the Dodd bill will pass with bipartisan support. But they held the votes so they can run 30-second spots in October that say the Republicans serve Wall Street. Never mind that the big banks support the Dodd bill. Never mind that the employees and PAC of our Public Enemy Number One, Goldman Sachs, have made the bank the largest corporate contributor to the Democratic party since 1989. As was the case with the stimulus and health care, facts are less important than hectoring the GOP.

The Democratic response to dissent is a lot like their governing style: partisan, arrogant, and self-righteous. In recent weeks, various Democratic factotums have lectured the public about “extreme” rhetoric, insinuating that the Tea Party takes its cues from The Turner Diaries. Some liberals suffer from a pathological inability to refer to the Tea Party by its name, preferring a crude and infantile sexual epithet. The folks waving signs and holding peaceful rallies have been insulted as fakes, wackos, ignoramuses, racists, nihilists, and hicks suffering from status anxiety. But when a poll revealed the Tea Party movement is better educated and wealthier than the electorate at large, a prominent Washington Post columnist summarily dismissed the movement as the “populism of the privileged.” The lines of attack change, but the message is always the same: Go home. Shut up. Let us do what we want.

There’s a word for this sort of overbearing, priggish intimidation: bullying. And like a lot of bullying, the Democrats’ behavior seems to stem from deep-seated insecurities. Maybe the Democrats are not as confident in government as they appear. Maybe they worry about the massive deficits and the hemorrhaging public debt. Maybe they read the same polls we do, the ones showing the public shifting right, Republicans leading the generic ballot, Republican-leaning independents returning to the GOP, congressional approval and support for incumbents at record lows, and the conservative base in a state of wild enthusiasm. Maybe the bully party, in other words, is simply acting out.

All of which is part and parcel with Ace’s observation about “The Toxic Self-Delusions of the Liberal Psychology.”

In contrast, for voters, it’s all part of “The Big Alienation,” as Peggy Noonan recently wrote:

It is not that no one’s in control. Washington is full of people who insist they’re in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It’s that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: “We control everything” and “You’re on your own.”

All this contributes to a deep and growing alienation between the people of America and the government of America in Washington.

This is not the old, conservative and long-lampooned “I don’t trust gummint” attitude of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. It’s something new, or rather something so much more broadly and fully evolved that it constitutes something new. The right never trusted the government, but now the middle doesn’t. I asked a campaigner for Hillary Clinton recently where her sturdy, pantsuited supporters had gone. They didn’t seem part of the Obama brigades. “Some of them are at the tea party,” she said.

None of this happened overnight. It is, most recently, the result of two wars that were supposed to be cakewalks, Katrina, the crash, and the phenomenon of a federal government that seemed less and less competent attempting to do more and more by passing bigger and bigger laws.

Add to this states on the verge of bankruptcy, the looming debt crisis of the federal government, and the likelihood of ever-rising taxes. Shake it all together, and you have the makings of the big alienation. Alienation is often followed by full-blown antagonism, and antagonism by breakage.

But hey, look on the bright side: Californians felt exactly the same sense of alienation with their aloof, thuggish, spendthrift politicians ten years ago, and look at how Arnold Schwarzenegger turned it all around!