Dems catch hell....

From David Sirota:

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/08/americas_most_conservative_new.html

America's Most Conservative Newspaper Teaches Dems A Lesson

By David Sirota
Working Assets/Denver Post's PoliticsWest, 8/28/07

The Colorado Springs Gazette is one of the two most conservative
papers in America (the other being the Waterbury
Republican-American). This is no secret to anyone who has either read
the paper, or who is in the journalism industry. But the political
continuum is a circle, not a line, meaning that on some issues,
ultraconservatives and progressives can make common cause. Today's
Gazette editorial on the bipartisan support for warrantless domestic
wiretapping and spying is a good example - and a good lesson for
Democratic "strategists" cloistered in Washington with their
weak-kneed and self-defeating pathologies.

Here's an excerpt:
"What do you do when critics call the legality of your secret spying
program into question? If you're the Bush administration, you defend
it, by becoming ever more secretive and by claiming to be above the
law. The legal basis for the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which
was launched soon after 9/11 to capture conversations of potential
terrorists, has always been shaky. The Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978 outlawed warrantless eavesdropping on
Americans, and in 2005 it was revealed that the Terrorist
Surveillance Program did just that. Though supposedly altered so as
to operate within the law, the surveillance program continues to be
defended on alarming and seemingly contradictory grounds - that its
legality depends on operational details too secret to be revealed,
and that legality isn't an issue, anyway, since President Bush's
powers as commander in chief cannot be so bound by law...We see the
justifications of executive privilege as little more than weak
excuses. Earlier this month, this same logic of secrecy, which plays
on people's fears, helped excuse a further weakening of the law as
Congress, in the Protect America Act, effectively gutted FISA
protections against warrantless surveillance...Now that Congress has
promised to revise this temporary measure, Bush and Cheney's
continued excuses are all the more intolerable, obstructing Congress'
ability to examine the genesis of the Terrorist Surveillance Program."

Pundits and Democratic "strategists" in Washington, D.C. clearly have
absolutely no concept that issues of privacy, civil liberties and
government intrusion do not fit conveniently on their preconceived -
and childishly ignorant - notions of "red" and "blue." They dismiss
the vast American heartland as just a Republican Party monolith that
supposedly supports all efforts to strip citizens of their freedom,
and they believe that in order to start winning in this heartland,
they just have to out-Republican the Republicans on these issues.

We know this not just because they capitulated last month by
rubber-stamping Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, but
because they all but run out and tell reporters just how totally out
of touch they really are when it comes to these issues. Remember how
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) claimed that his efforts to preserve the most
odious parts of the Patriot Act were designed to protect "our
Democrats in red states?" Remember how the insulated Washington media
fawned all over him when he said this, billing him as an amazing
political guru? And remember how, at the very same time, Montana's
Jon Tester was campaigning against the Patriot Act as a way to
attract support from libertarian-leaning voters? Yeah - in a race
that was decided by a tiny margin, had Schumer's drumbeat been any
louder, it may have lost Tester the Montana senate seat and Democrats
might not be in the majority today.

I learned the lesson inherent in the Gazette's spot-on editorial when
I watched my friend Bernie Sanders in the House. As Rolling Stone's
terrific profile showed, he worked closely with people like Rep. Ron
Paul (R-TX) and then-Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID) to forge left-right
coalitions that passed legislation reforming the Patriot Act over the
objections of Republican congressional leaders. Paul and Otter, you
may recall, are among the most conservative elected officials in
America. They know - sadly, more than many Democratic "strategists"
in Washington - that there is nothing "weak" or "politically
dangerous" about standing up for privacy and personal freedom and
against government power grabs.

In fact, its the other way around: Democrats are exuding weakness and
are walking into political peril by subscribing to the cartoonish
"red" vs. "blue" outlook of those Washington insiders who claim
expertise in a national political topography they clearly do not or
do not want to understand. The panoply of privacy and civil liberties
issues poses great opportunity for Democrats - but only if they show a
shred of foresight and reject the absurd Washington conventional
wisdom that says helping the most unpopular president in modern
history trample Americans' freedoms is somehow "good politics."

Wrap...