Liberals are Masters of Dishing it Out, but Can't Take It

I once compared liberals to that annoying kid in grade school who sits behind you in class and does things to provoke you, like slapping the back of your neck with a ruler or poking you in the ribs with a pencil. At first, you ignore him, hoping he'll get bored and stop, but after a while he really starts to piss you off, so you turn around and pop him one, whereupon the kid immediately yells "Teacher! Teacher, he hit me!"

But recently, I think that's being generous. Now, I think the following comparison is more apt:

Liberals are like the bully who beat the shit out of you all through junior high. Then, once you get into high school together, and he is no longer the large fish in the pond but one of the smallest, he starts acting like he now wants to be your friend and can't understand why you might not want that. He may even react like you're the jerk if you tell him off.

What's funny about this comparison is that the Liberals won. Twice. Quite recently. Their guy got to be president, and now they control both houses of Congress. So, what gives? Why are they still on the defensive? Why is it one cannot read the news without more charges of racism and "lies" being shot at the Right by the angry Left? They got what they were bitching about for eight years under Bush. So shouldn't they be happy?

The reason they're not happy is plainly easy to see, and it has nothing to do with racism, no matter what they'd have you believe. The reason is simply: They thought all they had to do was win, and everything would be okay after that.

Shortly after Obama's inauguration, I can't count how often I heard the phrase "Conservativism is dead" or words to that effect. One youtube poster that I had the displeasure of reading claimed on several channel message boards that Conservatives were "out of touch" with the mainstream of American thought, which was going to lead them to major defeats in 2010 and 2012. It's pretty clear from the punkish, boorish behavior of the current administration that they never expected to meet with any opposition, and are totally clueless as to how to proceed when they do encounter it.

In some "man on the street" interviews I've seen with Liberals, who don't realize that they are talking to average Americans and not members of their own elite, they have claimed that they speak for the majority, but a quick look at polls for (pick one; Obama's approval rating, public opinions on Obamacare, you name it) shows that Americans by and large do not want what Obama is trying to force feed them. The Left clearly wasn't expecting that. They thought that now that they were in power, the rest of the country would simply fall in line.

It's easy to understand how they might feel that way. After all, Bush's approval ratings fell steadily throughout his terms. Television programs that showed a Leftist skew were drawing wide audiences. The GOP seemed weak and leaderless (and still do) in the face of the impending conclusion of Bush's term in the White House. The best ticket they could come up with for the 2008 race was an elderly man who wasn't even liked by most of his party, and a dumb hick from a podunk state who barely qualified as American (at least, that's how the Left viewed her). Congress had recently been taken over by the Democrats. As far as they were concerned, the country had revealed its true heart, and it was blue.

But that just wasn't the case. Oh, it's true that the GOP is weak and leaderless, mostly because those willing and able to stand up and lead are being told to sit down and follow, but also because the current "leaders" of the GOP seem to think that the key to success is to try and make liberals like us. But that's not because America is rejecting the Right. It's because the Republicans, who have always stood for the Right, don't know what to do with themselves anymore, or who they want to be. It seems that at every turn, the Republicans want to do the thing that will most guarantee its destruction. The liberals don't like Rush Limbaugh? Let's tell them he doesn't speak for us. The liberals are trying to destroy Sarah Palin? Let's help them. The liberals are trying to force through a bill in Congress that we haven't read and don't want to support? Let's just sign it anyway, it shows that we want to get along. The liberals are calling Joe Wilson out for his "you lie" comment? Let's make sure they understand we don't like what he did.

But I digress. While the GOP may have painted themselves into a corner with their own bureaucracy, Americans have stood up for themselves and told the Left, we won't pick up what you're lying down. In the face of this, liberals don't know what to think. They won, so shouldn't all of America be throwing palm leaves under Obama's feet wherever he goes? After all, the only people who didn't vote for Obama in the last election were racists, and...hey, wait! That's it! That's brilliant! We'll just call all dissenters racists!

Problem with that is, if all dissenters are racist, that now includes more than half the country. And that, of course, is the big problem with the Left's one and only tactic to counteract dissent of the Obama administration; throw the race card in the ring. That might work if you're attacking a person, or even a political party. In cases like that, people might even be tempted to try and fight the allegation, which is foolish because once a public figure has been called a racist in a public forum, any attempt to fight back is of course just more proof that they are indeed a racist. But now that they have started throwing that at average citizens, it's backfiring big time. After all, those tens of thousands who stormed Washington this past weekend can't all be racist, and what's more, I don't think for a minute that anybody believes they are. It's just easier for the Left to call them all racists than to actually address the fact that Americans actually might not agree with their agenda.

For those Liberals who still don't know, let me break it down for you exactly why Obama won.

First, let's not forget that he won with only 53% of the vote. That by itself is, or should be, a large indication that a large chunk of Americans did not want the Obama presidency. So right there, we are whittling down the country to less than 53% of its population, because we have to count votes that went to third parties, or citizens of voting age who did not vote at all.

(BTW, when Bush won in 2004 with 52% of the vote, the media reported it as a near miss. But Obama wins with only a slightly increased margin, and suddenly he has "creamed" McCain. How does that work?)

Now on to the actual campaign:

Most conservatives did not want John McCain as the nominee. It's a mystery how he got it, but most blame open primaries. I'd suggest that's the most likely answer. After McCain's nomination, large numbers of conservatives stated that they simply would not vote this year, or vote for a third party.

The media got behind Obama like they've never gotten behind any presidential candidate before. The message blasted at Americans night and day was that if you didn't vote for Obama, you were a hopeless, stick-in-the-mud, change-opposing loser, and most likely racist to boot. Nobody likes thinking of themselves as racist.

Obama ran on the platform of being a centrist. Well, actually he ran on a platform of the meaningless words "Hope" and "Change", but essentially, he sold himself as a centrist, and urged the public not to worry too much about his voting record, his past associations, and whatnot. And with the media floating along on a lovestruck cloud, they passed that message on. Most Americans do not identify with the Democratic or Republican parties lately. They mainly continue to vote for one or the other because they've been told voting for a third party is throwing your vote away. And for all intents and purposes, it is, because which of the umpteen third parties stands a chance of dominating the votes? So, centrists by and large voted Democrat.

Upon the nomination of Sarah Palin, the Left could not wait to take her down. Now, I still wonder why your average citizen has never asked themselves "Wait a minute. If Sarah Palin is so stupid and so inconsequential, why are the Democrats so determined to shut her up?" But of course, most people are willing to assume that if the media doesn't like someone, there's a good reason, and they clearly hated Sarah Palin. It's true that Sarah Palin brought out the true conservatives to vote, who otherwise might have sat this one out, or voted third party, but the media's repeated message of hate for her swayed away centrists, libertarians, moderates and even some Republicans who honestly believe what they see on CNN to be the unadulterated truth.

Obama seemed like such a nice guy, and he was such a good public speaker. After the last president, a guy who could speak without stumbling over or mispronouncing every third word seemed like enough. He was also young (the third youngest president of all time) and when deciding between him and the potential oldest first-term president ever, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Enough centrists, libertarians and moderates who were tired of the limpness of the GOP changed horses, thinking that there was a chance this one might actually succeed (after all, like I said, they thought Obama was one of them).

Voter intimidation by hate groups like the Black Panthers kept voters who might have voted Republican away from the voting booths.

And, it has to be said, a lot of people voted for Barack Obama based on skin color. Yes, in this world of "radical racism", I'm positive that a good majority of people who voted for Obama did so because they were enthralled with the idea of a black US president. The time had come to break down that last barrier. After all, if either party had run a junior senator with less than a full term in his concurrent position who had a virtually empty voting record and not one accomplishment to his name, and the guy had been white, there's simply no way he would have won.

But liberals don't want to hear that. They don't want to face the fact that as of the last poll, only 35% of the country identify themselves as "liberal". They want to believe that Obama's win means the rise of liberalism, and get so angry at those rubes who come out and protest because can't they see that they've lost!!!!????

And here we come back to my title statement. For eight years, liberals whined, bitched and protested about the Bush administration. Forget the fact that he won two terms, and that from 2002 to 2008 Republicans controlled Congress. All that mattered is they didn't like him, so that must mean America didn't, either. I've never seen so many grown men and women acting more like children than witnessing the behavior of the Democratic party during the Bush administration. They boo'd his speeches, greeted his departure speech with cat-calls and raspberries. In short, they behaved like the schoolyard bully who beats the crap out of you every day. Not to mention that the whole time they were doing this, they hid behind the "dissent is patriotic" mantra and encouraged all protesters who showed up wherever the president went, pelting the presidential motorcade with stones and carrying signs saying things like "Bush: Wanted Dead or Alive" with a cross-out over the word "alive". Mainstream media rags like LA Weekly ran cover stories with Bush painted up like the Joker, or with a Hitler mustache. It's impossible, in fact, to round up every instance of Bush being lambasted with as much hate and ire as it was possible for a person, or group of people to hold. The hatred against Bush wasn't just strong, it was spiteful. He wasn't just attacked, he was attacked with no class.

Now, it's Obama's turn in the spotlight, and like Bush, he's turning a lot of people against him. Some of it's for what he's done, some of it's for what people believe he's going to do, and some of it's for what people are sure he is, no matter how strenuously he denies it. The fact is, dissent is here. It has touched the Golden One. It is not some dunce cap reserved only for Republicans. And what's funny is, the Left can't even see that this behavior, which has yet to reach the level of crassness that the anti-Bush fervor reached, is exactly the kind of behavior that they encouraged during Bush's presidency. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. They gave it to Bush with both barrels for eight years, but now they're in power, and they're the ones receiving the backlash. For eight years they were convinced they spoke for the majority, and are just now getting their wake-up call.

And they can't handle it.