The Bully Party

Matthew Continetti on the Democrats, the bully party:

The Democratic response to dissent is a lot like their governing style: partisan, arrogant, and self-righteous. In recent weeks, various Democratic factotums have lectured the public about “extreme” rhetoric, insinuating that the Tea Party takes its cues from The Turner Diaries. Some liberals suffer from a pathological inability to refer to the Tea Party by its name, preferring a crude and infantile sexual epithet. The folks waving signs and holding peaceful rallies have been insulted as fakes, wackos, ignoramuses, racists, nihilists, and hicks suffering from status anxiety. But when a poll revealed the Tea Party movement is better educated and wealthier than the electorate at large, a prominent Washington Post columnist summarily dismissed the movement as the “populism of the privileged.” The lines of attack change, but the message is always the same: Go home. Shut up. Let us do what we want.

It's a good read.

I will say this, however. On this particular topic, I actually blame the media more than the Democrats. The Democrats are playing on the field as it exists. They are, in the words of Bill Belichick, "doing business the way business is being done." It's the media that actually makes the Democrats the bully party, by supporting this nonsense whenever they do it, and siding with them in every discussion. If the principal is always standing up for the bully, well, it's not really the bully's fault anymore that he behaves the way that he does. If we actually had an unbiased media in this country, the Democrats would cease to behave this way because they'd get called on it when they did, and it would hurt them more than it helped. And if the media were reversed, there's no particular reason to suppose that Republicans would prove resistant to this particular temptation.