Political Polarization, Liberal products and Liberal lies

   By Donna Cole


 Moving into this fall's election cycle, one of the key campaign arguments that President Obama, Congressional Democrats and their proxies in the liberal media are making is that all the hyperpartisanship in government, and the nation, is a product of the political right. The Democrats are presenting themselves as the reasonable ones and that the Republicans have become too conservative. It is these unreasonable Republicans who are stopping the President from moving forward with his policies and creating a polarized hyperpartisan environment, not only in Washington D.C., but in the nation as a whole.


 Following the Democrats increasing drumbeat of this right wing partisanship, more and more stories, editorials, and op-eds have been appearing in the media on this subject. A good example of this was recently in the Washington Post. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein had a long op-ed titled "Let's just say it: Republicans are the problem."


 This piece is adapted from a book Mann and Ornstein have written on the same subject. As the title implies, all the problems in government today, the gridlock, the partisanship can be laid at the feet of Republicans. Also, the rise of things like the Tea Party and the Republican Party becoming more conservative as a response to this constituency have created the political polarization in the nation.


 One of the oldest tricks in politics is to accuse your enemy of doing the very thing you in fact are doing. In this piece, I am going to show you why this is a liberal lie, and that in fact all the hyperpartisanship and the political polarization is a product of the left. First, you need to understand some history of the modern Democrat Party and how this party has become more liberal than ever before.


 After Reagan crushed Mondale in the 1984 election, many Democrats thought the reason they lost so badly was because their party had moved too far to the left. In 1985, Democrat political strategist Al From founded the Democratic Leadership Council, or DLC. The idea being to move Democrats back to the political center.


 The DLC's greatest success was Bill Clinton's election as president. Clinton was a big supporter of the DLC and adhered to it's ideas. Ideas such as strong national defense and an America first strategy. Clinton involving America in the Bosnian War is an example of this. DLC Democrats came to dominate the party's leadership and congressional delegation in the 1990's. Some of these moderate congressional Democrats were known as Blue Dogs, especially ones who represented traditionally Republican districts.


 Then, with the election of Bush in 2000 and many DLC Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, support for the Iraq War, the extreme left wing of the Democrat Party had enough of this moderation. This began an internal fight in the party for control. The first manifestation of this fight was Gov. Howard Dean's 2004 bid for the Democrat Party's presidential nomination. Dean ran as the most liberal candidate and as an outsider to the Democrat Party leadership.


 While Dean's campaign fizzled with a yell, he had demonstrated the liberals in the party still had clout. This empowered them. Dean used the remnants of his campaign organization to found a group called Democracy for America, or DFA, to support liberal candidates. Also, in response to the Iraq War and DLC Democrats original support of it, the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research group was founded in 2003. With it's blog, Think Progress (the most widely read leftist political blog), these groups quickly became highly influential in Democrat Party politics.


 In an effort to appease these liberals, and also because the left made an argument that loosing the 2004 election to President Bush was proof DLC politics didn't offer a clear enough contrast to Republicans, Howard Dean was made the Democrat National Committee Chairman in 2005. Then, Dean turned over the job of running the DFA to his brother Jim.


 Under Gov. Dean's leadership, the Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives in 2006 and installed liberal Nancy Pelosi over DLC'er Steny Hoyer as it's speaker. Pelosi set about removing DLC Democrats from positions of leadership. The most famous of these was Pelosi not allowing Rep. Jane Harmon (D-Cal.), ranking Democrat on the powerful House Intelligence Committee, to become the committee's chairwoman. The media has always floated the idea that this was just because these two women simply didn't get along, so it was just a petty cat fight. That was a cover story, it was all about Harmon's support for the Iraq War and a strong national defense.


 The liberal wing of the Democrat Party was now in control of both the party leadership and the House leadership. While DLC Democrats still dominated the Senate, they had no choice but to play ball. This is the time that the partisanship between the left and right really began. Because these liberals now felt empowered, they began moving the party further to the left with both it's rhetoric and the policy ideas they espoused. As the party moved to the left, this pulled traditional Democrat voter's opinions and views further to the left as well. Later, I will demonstrate through polling when this occurred and how the public's political polarization began. But first, there is one more piece to this liberal takeover of the Democrat Party, the final showdown between the moderate DLC Democrats and the liberal DFA Democrats.


 This final showdown was the 2008 Democrat Party presidential nomination fight between DLC'er Hillary Clinton, the heir apparent, and the almost unknown DFA'er Barack Obama. I do not need to give you the history of that fight, we know how it ended. The moderate Democrats were done as far as having any influence in their party. In 2009, the DLC basically ceased to exist and after 25 years, it officially disbanded in early 2010. All the documents and policy research from the DLC are now property of and stored in the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. The DFA brand of hardcore liberalism now ran the show in the Democrat Party unopposed internally.


 It was this aggressive push to the left by the Democrat Party that created the polarization, the partisanship from the right was merely a rejection of this liberalism. Here, I will use some poll numbers to show that the Democrats have moved much more to the left, when the partisanship really began and who started it.


 I am a strong believer in that public opinion of party loyalists tracks closely to their political party's rhetoric. The Democrat Party's ideas have moved to the left, so their supporter's opinions will as well. This Pew poll chart shows the percentage point difference, or partisan divide, between Republicans and Democrats.

 Note that from '02 to '07, during the bulk of the Bush administration, the poll flat lines with no changes. Then, in '07 after the Democrats took over the House the divide begins to grow. This was due to both Democrats moving further to the left and Republicans rejecting this liberalism.


 Both sides were moving further apart, but it was the Democrats move to the left which caused the divide, the partisanship, to grow. If the partisanship was a product of the Tea Party in '09 and the Republicans retaking the House in '10, the poll would not begin to move upwards until then. It clearly began with the Democrats taking control of the House in '06 and with Obama's election in '08. Now, a poll showing that the public was beginning to understand just how liberal the Democrat party had become.

 This Gallup poll chart shows that in two years, from '08 to '10, public opinion of how liberal the Democrat Party is dramatically shifted a full 10 points with nearly half (49%) of all Americans saying the party is too liberal. The public's perception is the reality of the Democrat Party. It was in '10 when this same public gave the Congress back to the Republicans, thus rejecting how far left the Democrats had moved. In other words, it was a reaction to the Democrats moving to the left which was first and this created the partisanship we see today. This next poll shows another important part of this.

The above Gallup tracking poll chart shows the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as liberal, moderate, or conservative. Two things to note. First, only roughly 20% of Americans consider themselves liberal, so they have much more political power than they should. This also shows you the power of liberal media to shape public opinion through their propaganda.


 Second, it is in 2008 and '09 that we see the number of people who consider themselves to be conservative to spike up. This is a reaction to Obama being elected president and the Democrats beginning to ram their liberal polices through Congress. It was those unpopular policies that caused this spike and created more partisanship. (Note: Gallup's 2011 poll on this question shows the same trends. I would also argue the slight up tick then down tick in the liberal numbers between '06 and '10 are more Democrats saying they are liberal during those years, then rejecting their party's ideas once they saw them in practice.) This last poll is the most revealing one.

 This Pew poll chart probably illustrates my point more clearly than any of the others. It tracks the whether you agree or disagree with the statement, "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful." This is very important because it goes to what one believes about the size and scope of
government. The more liberal a person is, the more likely they are to believe in big government and to think that government is not wasteful or inefficient.


 Notice in 2007 how abruptly the Democrats move in this more liberal view of government, they literally fall off the chart. It is the Republicans moving in a more conservative direction as a reaction to this liberal shift by the Democrats. If you look at this chart as showing how conservative or liberal the two party's bases are, you see the Republicans, while at a high point, are no more conservative than they were in mid '90s. However, the Democrat base, in 25 years of this poll, have never been this far to the left. Not even close. It is this liberal shift that began the partisanship.


 I have now explained the how and why the Democrat Party became more liberal. I have clearly shown this leftward shift with polling data. I have shown when the partisan divide began to grow. The political polarization we see today is not a product of the rise of conservatism in the Republican Party, the Tea Party, the bitter clingers with their guns and God, white folks who supposedly hate the President because of his race, it is a product of liberalism and the Democrat Party's embrace of it. The Republican's growing partisanship is merely a natural reaction to this.


 It is the Democrat Party that wholly owns the creation of the polarized environment we see today, and it is the Democrat Party that needs to moderate it's views to end it. So, when the Democrats and their media proxies claim all the partisanship comes from the right, it is a lie. I have proven it is a lie.