“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” Sen. Barack Obama reminded his fellow Democrats at their 2004 convention in Boston, Massachusetts. “Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”
Flash-forward seven years, and President Obama’s administration and its supporters no longer seem to be abiding by its leader’s rhetoric:
“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry [Rep. Mike] Doyle (D-PA) said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in the room.
Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals…
“They have no compunction about blowing up the economy to get what they want,” Doyle told POLITICO after the meeting.
To be fair, you never do want to let a crisis go to waste.
On the other hand, I thought from the Black Panthers having tea and finger sandwiches on Park Ave. to the rehabilitation of Bill Ayers, to Sen. Patty Murray’s embrace of Osama bin Laden in 2003 to Michael Moore’s declaration the following year that anti-American terrorists in Iraq were the new Minutemen, the left was all about exploring the root causes of terrorism, and seeking a common understanding to make peace and progress forward together.
“Understanding never runs out for Islamist killers, but there are limits to how much tolerance they can gin up for American Taliban,” Ace writes of today’s Democratic party. Though as Jonah Goldberg adds via Twitter, “Obama’s Arizona ‘civility speech’ is meaningless if his VP can call opponents terrorists.”
Update: And thus, Biden’s walkback begins. Although Allahpundit notes, “Remember, Politico cited ‘several sources’ — Democratic sources — for the quote.”
And it’s not like such rhetoric hasn’t been in the air recently.
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