Martin Peretz is the publisher of the New Republic, and he has a heavy hawkish/neoconservative outlook that is often reflected in the pages of his magazine. He did a piece for the Wall Street Journal yesterday using the Lamont-Lieberman race as a take-off point for a DINO rant: Lieberman 08/07/06. (DINO = Democrat In Name Only)
It strikes me as a waste of time to try to make detailed description of all the DINO/Republican assumptions in Peretz' op-ed. So I'll look at a few parts and do "short versions" afterwards. Starting with:
It's really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, still sends a chill of "having arrived" up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him. Superficially, one may think of those who thought they were already middle class just by being enthusiasts of Franklin Roosevelt, who descended from the Hudson River Dutch aristocracy.
Short version: Lamont is a class traitor. And probably a Communist. Just like Franklin Roosevelt.
So what we have in this candidacy is someone, with no public record to speak of but with perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars to his name, who wants to be a senator. Mr. Lamont has almost no experience in public life. He was a cable television entrepreneur, a run-of-the-mill contemporary commercant with unusually easy access to capital.
Short version: Lamont is a class traitor. Democrats should only vote for impoverished candidates. Unless they're Communists. Which they would be if they were poor and running for office.
There's more:
Peace candidates know only one thing, and that is why people vote for them. I know the type well. I was present at its creation.
Short version: This is the Wall Street Journal, so I can use "peace candidate" as a cuss word.
Later peace candidates did better. Some were even elected. Vietnam was their card. One was even nominated for president in 1972. George McGovern, a morally imperious isolationist with fellow-traveling habits, never could shake the altogether accurate analogies with Henry Wallace. (Wallace was the slightly dopey vice president, dropped from the ticket by FDR in 1944, who ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket, a creation of Stalin's agents in the U.S.)
Short version: George McGovern was a Commie. So were all his supporters. Franklin Roosevelt had a Commie Vice President. Because Roosevelt was a class traitor and a Communist.
He has qualms about affirmative action. But who, in his hearts of hearts, does not? He is appalled by the abysmal standards of our popular culture and our public discourse. Who really loves our popular culture--or, at least, which parent?
Short version: Why do us nice white people have to put up with all these Negroes?
The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont's will be if Mr. Lamont wins, have made Iraq the litmus test for incumbents.
Short version: Democratic bloggers support The Terrorists.
There are many reasonable, and even correct, reproofs that one may have for the conduct of the war. They are, to be sure, all retrospective. But one fault cannot be attributed to the U.S., and that is that we are on the wrong side. We are at war in a just cause, to protect the vulnerable masses of the country from the helter-skelter ideological and religious mass-murderers in their midst. Our enemies are not progressive peasants as was imagined three and four decades ago.
Short(er) version: To heck with that war resolution that said the war goals were to get rid of Saddam's WMDs and retaliate for his collaboration with Al Qaida in the 9/11 attacks. Since neither was true to begin with, what kind of dummy would have believed those were the reasons for the war? Suckers!!! Also, Democrats are Commies who love mass murderers and support The Terrorists.
If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength.
Short version: Grassroots Democrats are Commies.
He [Lieberman] does not play for safety, which is why he is now unsafe.
Short version: What is [Cheney] is he talking about?
Now Mr. Lamont's views are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. ... Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they [the Iranians]do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing. It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in, but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is precisely what has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamont continues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keeping the military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong with that? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that we had disposed of the military option in favor of more country club behavior?
Short version: Lamont is a pussy. Besides being a class traitor. And a Communist who loves anti-Semitic Persians.
Finally, the contest in Connecticut tomorrow is about two views of the world. Mr. Lamont's view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let's call this process by its correct name: appeasement.
Short version: Democrats are wimps. Or Communists. Or both.
The Lamont ascendancy, if that is what it is, means nothing other than that the left is trying, and in places succeeding, to take back the Democratic Party.
Short version: Democrats are Commies.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters have stumped for Mr. Lamont.
Short version: Why do us nice white people have to put up with all these Negroes?
