The Party of Contradiction

By Vasko Kohlmayer
FrontPageMagazine.com | 12/31/2007

Following one of the Democratic presidential debates, Dennis Prager did something that Democrats normally condemn as a personal attack. He took the candidates at their word and quoted some of their statements.

The result was both startling and revealing. Many of the pronouncements made no logical sense. Others were completely detached from reality. The contenders often contradicted what they had said previously, and some even contradicted themselves from one sentence to the next.


When the subject of Pakistan came up, for example, Hillary Clinton opined about the connection between America’s security and democracy in the Islamic world: "There's absolutely a connection between a democratic regime and heightened security for the United States."


This very idea, incidentally, has been the cornerstone of President Bush’s foreign policy ever since 9/11. But Democrats – Hillary Clinton included – have criticized it as misguided, naïve or worse. That night at the debate, however, she unblinkingly endorsed the very policy that she and her colleagues for years have denounced so venomously.


Clinton was not the only one caught in contradiction. Asked whether he would give driver’s licenses to illegals, Barrack Obama was both for it and against it:


When I was a state senator in Illinois, I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention... I am not proposing that that's what we do. What I'm saying is that we can't -- [interrupted by laughter]. No, no, no, no, look, I have already said I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety and that driver's licenses at the state level can make that happen. But what I also know, Wolf, is that if we keep on getting distracted by this problem, then we are not solving it.


What to make of this? Obama was for giving driver’s licenses to illegals in the past, but he does not want to do it now. At the same time, he does want to do it now, because he thinks it will enhance public safety. But he also does not want to get distracted by this problem, because it would prevent him from solving it.

Such nonsensical statements were not isolated gaffes, but were representative of that evening’s discourse. In fact, Clinton and Obama were among the more coherent in the group.


Which brings us to the question that has puzzled many during this election season: Why is it that Democrats have fielded such a poor roster of contenders? Is their current crop the best they can come up with or have these babblers risen to the top because better candidates were unwilling to enter the fray?


The former is the case, for Democrats could not do much better even if they could enlist the sharpest minds for their cause. The reason for this is not hard to see once we realize what their agenda really amounts to a combination of high taxes, big government, retreat from the battlefield in Iraq, and a suicidal multiculturalism that tears at the fabric of American society while extending generous protection to captured terrorists.

To make this agenda palatable, Democrats would somehow have to convince the public that failure is success, perversion is decent and evil is good. Such an effort can never really succeed, because the gap between the claims and reality is too wide to be glossed over even by the most artful and articulate debaters. The result is the nonsensical, self-contradictory gibberish that was in evidence during the debates.


Some people think to this day of Bill Clinton as an effective liberal candidate. But this is not so, because Bill Clinton never ran as such. "Government is too big and taxes are too high" was his favorite theme during his first presidential run. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of contradiction to which the former president’s wife, or any of the other leading Democrats, can lay claim.

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