The Emotarian Left Bears Responsibility for The #GOPshutdown

[michigandem58]

Republicans - and Republicans alone - have shut down the government in order to pursue their ideological goal of defunding the Affordable Care Act, an endeavor they have utterly failed at, as Obamacare went into full swing yesterday. But part of the reason we are even here - part of the reason Republicans got to win big in 2010 and gerrymander to make the House much more difficult for Democrats to take back - is not Republicans at all. It's Democrats - specifically, the ideological Left puritans who have made it their mission to hunt Barack Obama as passionately as the Tea Party.

In order to establish this, however, it is first essential to disabuse everyone - especially our national media - of the notion that there was some kind of a voter tidal wave for Republicans in 2010. There was not. Republican turnout in 2010 dropped by 25% from 2008. That isn't the reason Republican took over damn nearly everything that year. The real reason for that is the precipitous drop in Democratic turnout, which fell by 44%...

And please, stuff it if you are going to come at me with "Oh, but turnout always falls in off-year elections." That is not in dispute. The problem in this case isn't that turnout merely fell, although the idea that a 42% turnout in a national election is considered normal is a sad statement for our democracy. The problem in this case is not that turnout fell - it is that it fell far more drastically among Democratic voters than among Republican voters.

If your reply to that is, "well, that's normal too", you are exactly the kind of emotarian bobblehead I'm talking to. Instead of spending Obama's first two years in office trying to tear him down, this crowd could have chosen instead to keep Democratic voters engaged, educated, and turning out in 2010. But they chose to be a thorn on President Obama's side, instead of his ally. Blaming 2010 on the conventional wisdom, after the country tore apart conventional wisdom by electing the nation's first black president in 2008 is either fool's errand or the last refuge of the scoundrel...


http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/10/the-puritan-left-bears-responsibility.html