Lanny Davis, Organized Labor and Another Moment of Leftist Dishonor
I try to be objective, honestly I do. So, much as I recoil viscerally from the tenets of contemporary Leftism, I have to acknowledge a few of its more adroit proponents can impressively make its case.
Regrettable? Certainly; but a few of them actually manage it.
There’s Julian Epstein, for instance, who turns up weekly on Fox News‘ Saturday morning economic shows, and without even breathing heavily argues inane, historically repudiated, high-tax, big-government nonsense. Argues it forcefully, that is.
Lanny Davis, former special counsel to one President William Jefferson Clinton, is another prominent Lib who does his wrong-headed cause proud. Oddly, if one overlooks his till-the-sun-burns-out, shame-free flackery for Bill and Hill and generally unqualified devotion to Progressivism’s abhorrent creeds, Davis comes across as a comparatively decent fellow. Occasionally, he’ll even allow this or that aspect of his Democratic party is not altogether swell — but only very occasionally.
So, when I heard the otherwise affable, silkily confident Davis — when confronted with labor union violence against “right-to-work” opposition — exploiting a familiar and reprehensible Lefty canard? I knew the Left was plumbing new depths of infamy..
Most have heard about the knife-wielding mobs of “big-labor” troglodytes’ tearing down an “Americans For Prosperity” tent last week at a Lansing, Michigan protest. Video abounds of pro-union thugs jack-hammeringly shrieking obscenities and threats of physical injury. One frenzied demonstrator, opting to go beyond the merely rhetorical, charged and repeatedly punched conservative journalist/documentarian Steve Crowder.
CNN has Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa Jr. on record drolly observing that, with passage of the Wolverine State’s Right-to-Work legislation, “This is just the first round of a battle that’s going to divide this state. We’re going to have a civil war.” (Recall: this is the same goon who, speaking about the “Tea Party” not too long ago, commissioned a crowd of organized-labor partisans, “Let’s take these son-of-a-b**ches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”)
I’d be remiss not to highlight Democratic law-maker Douglas Geiss who fulminated from the floor of Michigan’s House of Representatives, ““[T]here will be blood, there will be repercussions. We will relive the Battle of the Overpass.”; referring to a bloody 1937 clash between union workers and Ford Motor Company security guards.
For a while now, the labor-union movement’s anarcho-mobster roots and, beyond that, the political/cultural Left’s bullying instincts, have been emerging ever more graphically, ever more inescapably. Fifteen months ago it was the defecatory lawlessness of the “Occupy Wall Street” surge, played out in cities around our Republic and the world. A full year hasn’t passed since American news-watchers were subjected to the carnival cum out-house chaos of the unionized, anti-Scott Walker hordes thronging Madison, Wisconsin. Most recently, it’s Liberal barbarism in Lansing.
The union-leashed Obama White House’s response? Although the president turned up early in the week declaring solidarity with his pro-labor supporters and plying them with patronizing clichés and button-deep bromides, after the fury, fists and f-bombs started flying? His spokespersons could barely muster a pro-forma denunciation.
Again, even the aforementioned Lanny Davis, appearing on Sean Hannity’s television program that Tuesday night, retreated to a play on the tedious, y’know-bad-things-happen-on all-sides-of-the-political-spectrum distraction. To his credit, the former-Clintonite Fox News contributor did plainly repudiate “the violent attacks on anybody who dissents” — but moments later he just couldn’t resist the knee-jerk Left-wing impulse to level a finger at alleged Right-wing atrocities, as well. We see it ad infinitum from the Progressives, particularly since Barack Obama ascended to POTUS: the racist Tea Partiers! The dangerously angry Republicans! The menacing conservatives!
“I’ve seen violence on the right,” Davis muttered passionlessly to Hannity.
When Sean dogged him, a number of times, to provide identifiable examples of Labor-like brutishness from the precincts of conservatism, Davis succumbed to a glaringly uncharacteristic loss of words. Stumbling around polemically for a moment — “Extremists at those Tea Party sessions about Obamacare were somewhat over the top” was the best he could sheepishly provide — he then, literally, invited fellow guest Pat Buchanan to chime in: “Go ahead, Pat.”. Which Mr. Buchanan mercifully did — maybe because he felt flatly embarrassed for the typically articulate, but suddenly clearly befuddled, Lanny Davis.
And embarrassment would be one appropriate reaction, to be sure. I genuinely don’t enjoy watching anyone — including popular, go-to Liberal apologists — suffer open humiliation.
That’s not the only emotion I feel, though: exasperation at modern Progressives would be another. For their unbudging, ideologically-fueled refusal to denounce — without qualification, without diversion — dishonorable behavior among their ranks .
Remarking during the Hannity broadcast on the foam-flecked punks bellowing junior-high-worthy profanities in front of Michigan’s State Capitol, Ann Coulter incredulously wondered aloud, “Don’t these men have daughters or wives at home?”
A concise and devastating rebuke.
Coming from politically Liberal Lanny Davis — or Barack Obama — it would have packed an even more stinging, more commendable wallop.
Lower Image: Lanny Davis; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
