FROM OUR FEB, 2021 PRINTED EDITION
by Atty. Robert Snider
Boston Broadside Columnist
Former Suffolk County
Assistant District Attorney
Pat Caddell (1950-2019), Democrat pollster, student of American history and of our two-party system, said that there are two parties in the United States: the evil party and the stupid party. The history of the Trump administration proved his opinion to be right.
The federal government has changed radically from what we learned in school.
Caddell taught that the government is really not split between Democrats and Republicans, but that the nation has been ruled by a political class, which serves its own interests.
When we make important decisions in our lives, we do so within a pre-existing framework of beliefs. If the preexisting belief is wrong because circumstances have changed, decisions based on those assumptions may be calamitous. For instance, the difference between the Jews in the 1930s, who made great efforts to escape Germany, and those who stayed and were murdered, depended on whether they viewed Germany as essentially being the Germany of the Kaisers and would return to that state, and those who saw that Germany had irrevocably changed.
The Democratic Party is not the party of JFK. It is an entirely different party run by people, credentialed by leftist professors, continuously re-elected from gerrymanded districts and insulated from the risk their job will be shipped to Mexico. It is more powerful than even the FDR Democrats because they have strong alliances with Big Tech, Big Business, the swamp, academia and the mainstream media. Its leaders attack liberty and freedom of speech.
They serve different special interests. The unions that support the Democrats are not the blue-collared unions that represented steel workers, but the unions of government employees generally and, in particular, of the teachers.
They believed that Trump voters were deplorable before Trump was elected and, after his election, their contempt grew into hatred. They reason differently. In answer to the cliché that we are all entitled to our own opinion, but we are not entitled to our own facts, the Democrats reply that they are entitled to their own facts. They plan revenge against half of America for having the audacity of electing Trump.
I could go on, but the fact is that the Democrats support ideas now that our fifth-grade teachers would have labeled moronic.
When the Republicans controlled Congress with Trump in office after years of loudly proclaiming their opposition to Obamacare, they were not prepared to pass a unified, well-thought-out alternative. At times of stress, they failed to keep a unanimous caucus, ceding power and credibility to weak members. They lost the House.
The Republican Party was changed by Trump and his clearly-stated mandate of America First, protecting American jobs, demanding that allies pay their fair share for security, and generally reinvigorating the idea of American exceptionalism. The Americans who knew they had been sold out by Democrats who had once been the party of workers, rewarded Trump with their loyalty. Establishment Republicans rode Trump to a majority, and they worked well on common interests like the judiciary, but their interests do not completely coincide. Trump was too immature, naïve and ego driven to navigate the ruthless, cynical politics of the time and forgot the first rule of politics: First, get elected.
Whether Republicans can find a new leader and keep Trump’s policies without Trump remains to be seen.
The gap between the way that Democrats think, and the way conservatives think now and how Democrats thought a few years ago, is so profound that we must recognize that the old framework is gone. Even though they have a thin majority and no express mandate expressed by Joe’s* basement masked campaign, Democrats plan a radical change to American values and procedures.
Their elitist, Marxist, revolutionary plans will run head-long into Trump’s revolutionary populism, protective of our constitutional rights. When two powerful forces collide, the exact result is difficult to predict. We must prepare for the fallout. ♦
The Democratic Party went from a party of the working class that even had pockets of conservatives, to the party of division and elitism. In this state the Democratic Party was dominated by moderate Catholic ethnics. Then the carpetbaggers and high rent progressives took over the party. The Catholic ethnics who built the party in this state were cast aside. even though they still are a large segment of this states voter base. Lack of leadership, selfish elected officials, apathy and low voter turnout accelerated the lessening of moderate Catholic ethnic influence in Massachusetts politics. The Democratic Party that was once one of the foundations of Catholic ethnic culture in this state became dominated by selfish and greedy leaders. Thus, interest in the Democratic Party declined. Carpetbagger elitists saw this and seized control of the Democratic Party in the Bay State in the 1990’s. Kennedyism also ushered in the era of politics being for the elite.
Thank you for expressing so well what a lot of us have intuited. I agree that we don’t know what the outcome will be. The enemies of America helped set up a zero sum scenario. If Americans are too afarid to organize and fight back against the communists passing one America busting bill and EO after another, totalitarianism wins. If we rebel and there is a civil war, America is weakened and self-absorbed leaving China and Russia free to invade and conquer the world as they please. It’s a diabolical plot. Short but intense action will be required to turn it around.