DC Protest Suggests War Opposition Weak

While the MSM may try to spin today's DC war protest as a major event, apparently relatively few people showed up to hear actor Tim Robbins call for the impeachment of President Bush. He also suggested Bush would end his presidency in a bunker, as did Adolf Hitler. Yes, he said that, I listened via C-Span.

There's legitimate reason to claim anti-war support isn't what some might like to make it out to be.

Organizers expected hundreds of thousands of protesters. Early reports are indicating tens of thousands may have showed up. But the real problem for the anti-war movement is this from Talk Left almost four years ago to the day.

The Denver Post is calling it " the largest war protest since Vietnam"--in huge letters, on the front page. Good for them.

Intervention Magazine has this first hand account by senior editor Regis T. Sabol, which begins:

From the grounds in front of the US Capitol, on the Mall, a sea of a quarter million Americans -- regardless of the number that the networks are reporting -- braved biting cold under a beaming sun to oppose the Bush regime's plan to invade Iraq "any day now."

Given that they can't use the weather as an excuse, it would seem the peaceniks (Charles has pics up) lost a couple hundred thousand folks somewhere along the way.

It would appear there will be a surge in Iraq and the surge in peaceniks, as usual, is going the wrong way. But I wouldn't wait for the MSM to tell you that.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

Time for another Pentagon-sponsored Freedom March, then?

Wait, I forget, are we allowed to discuss that? I know we weren't supposed to photograph it...

[Patrick]

You know that if there was anything close to 100,000 people, it would portrayed as an event in the "hundreds of thousands." I'm guessing it didn't breach 50,000, and is likely far less than that. For a strong protest, you take pictures from the stage; for weak ones, from the crowd. And guess where all the panorama shots are originating?

[sglover]

Maybe the rally drew a lot of people, maybe it didn't. A lot of people on the left have doubts about the effectiveness of street protests. Instead, more and more of them are turning to this thing called the "ballot box." This is why so many lickspittles (Santorum, George Allen, Curt "Nutcase" Weldon, the list goes on) are now looking for alternative employment. (Or in many cases, spending a lot of quality time with criminal lawyers.)

I don't know how things look in the lickspittle dimension, but in this reality, Republicans got stomped last November, and they're aligning themselves just beautifully for an even bigger disaster in '08. Your pipsqueak fuhrer, Bush the Lesser, may be the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party since Herbert Hoover.

Hard times for the hive mind.

[Libby Spencer]

Whatever the numbers were, the pro-war counter-demonstration only drew at best 50 people. In all honesty, wouldn't you say that says something about which side is in the majority?

[Legalize]

Yes, protests, rather than trouncing the other side in an election, are clearly accurate reflections of war sentiment.

/Surriehl

[Scrapiron]

According to honest people on the scene your math would have to be horrable to come up with 5,000 and 25% of that was Media types and media whores.

[silemen]

Sglover, what's with this quaint Civil War era "lickspittle" slur? Are you over 80? Us young-uns find it kinda distracting when you're talking about today's war and you reach into the root cellar for an insult from the century before last. Do you just like to spit when you hiss it? Then lick your lips?

[Phoenix]

Wow. Well said, Silemen.

[sglover]

"Sglover, what's with this quaint Civil War era "lickspittle" slur? Are you over 80? Us young-uns find it kinda distracting when you're talking about today's war and you reach into the root cellar for an insult from the century before last. Do you just like to spit when you hiss it? Then lick your lips?"

Actually, my inspiration for the term "lickspittle" comes from the wonderful epic flick, "Dr. Zhivago". If you recall, after they realize how bad Bolshevik Moscow is going to be, Zhivago and his family take a train to their estate in the provinces. Among the passengers in their car are some political prisoners, and one of them is an anarchist (the real kind, not some 20 year old dressed in black and play-acting). The anarchist makes a point of addressing Reds who are guarding him as "lickspittle".

The word fits Riehl and his ilk perfectly. To them, yesterday's hero is today's traitor, if he expresses doubts about Our Dear Leader. Yesterday's certainty is simply forgotten, never mentioned, if it conflicts with Our Dear Leader's infallibility. These people don't have a political philosophy -- they have an emotional disorder. It is an abject slave mentality that lets them degrade themselves with zest, whenever the Leader figure requires. Stalin and Mao knew the type well. Each relied on it during his ascent.

Besides, "lickspittle" is a very vivid term -- as even you, some dullard who thinks he's putting me down, unwittingly confirm.

[Bill Adkins]

US civil war then - Iraq civil war now - seems the use of the term 'lickspittle' is traditional. Reminds me, some idiot tried to compare Bush to Lincoln in another thread. More civil war similarity. Of course, Bush compared to Lincoln is like Bush compared to Churchill - an insult to both Lincoln and Churchill.

[Bill Adkins]

US civil war then - Iraq civil war now - seems the use of the term 'lickspittle' is traditional. Reminds me, some idiot tried to compare Bush to Lincoln in another thread. More civil war similarity. Of course, Bush compared to Lincoln is like Bush compared to Churchill - an insult to both Lincoln and Churchill.

[Phoenix]

The word itself is great. It is vivid, for sure. It is the relentless usage - as if sglover has an ear-worm and diminished vocabulary ability that makes him come off as slightly demented and therefore, brushasidable as one lacking imaginative thought.

[BornRed]

"To them, yesterday's hero is today's traitor..."

sglover - Tell it to Joe Lieberman.

[sglover]

But Phoenix, at least I can tell the difference between a noun and an adjective -- and I don't even claim to be an "editor", let alone one who relies on "current" grammar references.

[sglover]

"sglover - Tell it to Joe Lieberman."

I don't see the connection. Lieberman's pariah status among lefties and Dems has been brewing for years. He never got beyond single digits in his hilarious '04 primary attempt. So it's not like he was yesterday's lion, and today's traitor. Contrast with, say, Generals Shinseki or Zinni or Odom or (soon, I suspect) Casey. Or Colin Powell. Hive-minders would have swooned over each of them like little girls, simply because they wore a uniform. But once they publicly deviated from orthodoxy, the slime machine cranked up.

[Charles Warren]

Yes, Sglover, I agree wholeheartedly with the term 'lickspittle'. I don't know if there is another term for that kind of lackey who is a fawning apologist of power. Someone who thinks that he becomes a 'boss' by identifying with the 'boss'. Closest I can come up with is 'house n*gger' which I don't think is quite appropriate here.

Why should there be a street protest ? Street protests only focus on the ANSWER and Ramsey Clark and anarchist types and flag burning types who opponents of this war do NOT want to focus on. The Left has learned its lesson from the 60's about how the SDS crazies actually helped Nixon. Sure, the left had the streets but the right won the country.

[Tom W]

"I don't know how things look in the lickspittle dimension, but in this reality, Republicans got stomped last November, and they're aligning themselves just beautifully for an even bigger disaster in '08. Your pipsqueak fuhrer, Bush the Lesser, may be the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party since Herbert Hoover."

Some stomping, with major races being decided by 3000 votes or less. In the leftist reality, that's a huge victory, a tsunami. In the reality-reality, it just shows that the country is pretty much evenly divided. But being a leftist means never having to have facts on your side.

"Fuhrer"? I suppose you meant "Führer," alluding to Adolf Hitler? So you're comparing Bush to Hitler. Wow. What a stunningly original thought. I have never heard that before.

I wish I were you. You sound really cool and smart. My dullard hive mind is just reeling.

[sglover]

"Someone who thinks that he becomes a 'boss' by identifying with the 'boss'."

I wish I'd said that. That's a perfect description of the mentality.

Now on to an actual lickspittle!

"Some stomping, with major races being decided by 3000 votes or less. In the leftist reality, that's a huge victory, a tsunami. In the reality-reality, it just shows that the country is pretty much evenly divided. But being a leftist means never having to have facts on your side."

Hell, Bush the Lesser didn't even GET a popular majority in 2000, and barely squeaked out a win in '04. You're not in much of a position to talk about vote margins. And let's not forget that it wasn't that long ago that boy genius Rove was bragging about his "permanent Republican majority". Oops!

The fact is that by any measure, the GOP got one of the larger stompings in American political history. It's not just in the U.S. House and Senate. Dems made big gains in legislatures across the country -- not a happy sign for Republicans who think in the long term, and worry about where future talent is coming from. And this is only a symptom of what's what's really got Dems rubbing their hands with glee. Republicans seem determined to alienate themselves from all the fastest-growing or most influential voting blocs.

You've lost the West Coast, the Mid-Atlantic and New England. You've lost the urban vote. Educated professionals? Going fast (many of them kinda like science, damn them). You're well on your way to pissing away what could be GOP bastions in the West and Midwest. And in maybe your most brilliant move to date, your Know-Nothing contingent has made it very clear that their Republican Party must be a whites-only party.

The GOP is rapidly becoming the party of the welfare king regions, those parts of the country that feed more greedily from the federal trough than any other -- the South, and the farm belt. Regions that have traditionally been the most backward and dependent, and whose future is often very bleak. (The Great Plains states have been depopulating for years, and there's no sign of that stopping any time soon.)

This is why it's so important that you follow the advice of Hive Sub-Commander Riehl, and sign his hilarious "Pledge". If you keep up the good work, I'm confident that you can get yourselves a party that's laughed at everywhere outside of Wichita and Biloxi.

"'Fuhrer'? I suppose you meant 'Führer', alluding to Adolf Hitler? So you're comparing Bush to Hitler. Wow. What a stunningly original thought. I have never heard that before."

Look, genius -- I've just put up two, count 'em, TWO posts in which I make explicit comparisons between your kind of thinking, and that common to all the best-known totalitarian movements of the last century. I'm not talking about Bush so much, you twit -- I'm talking about YOU!

[Phoenix]

"I'm talking about YOU!"

You silly. It's the reflection of your face you're talking to. All that spit on your monitor has left it hardened and shiney. Dufus.