RUTHFULLY YOURS

George W. Bush gave Democrats a gift this week—which should be a reminder of the perils of demonizing political opponents. But don’t bank on the left accepting his gracious offering.

Promoting his new book about veterans on NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. Bush was asked to weigh in on the fight between Donald Trump and the media. “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account,” he told Matt Lauer. “Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power.”

The press and liberal groups gushed, and hundreds of headlines approvingly quoted the former president. “Why you should listen when George W. Bush defends the media,” declared a headline at the Washington Post. “George W Bush: a welcome return,” raved the Guardian, which went so far as to call him a “paragon of virtue.” The leftist site ThinkProgress ran a blog post titled “George W. Bush defends the Constitution to rebuke Trump.”
Miss me yet?

Suddenly, they do—though only in the most self-serving way. President Bush would have made the exact same defense of the First Amendment while he was in office (and indeed, he later explicitly said that his words were not meant as a criticism of Mr. Trump).

Mr. Bush is a straight-up guy. While president, he treated the press and his political opponents with general courtesy—attending their events, living with their bias. He ran as a uniter and was far more genuine in his outreach than his grandiose successor. He didn’t lie, or bully, or sic his IRS on his opponents, or spy on reporters. He took responsibility for his actions, notably big decisions like going to war.

Not one bit of that earned him any credit. Go back and read the headlines from the Bush administration. They vary in substance from today’s coverage, but not the least in tone. Bush Derangement Syndrome entailed a vicious, daily assault by a media contemptuous of Mr. Bush’s intelligence, intentions and integrity. He was compared to Hitler and terrorists, accused of racism, homophobia and sexism. He was a plutocrat, out to rip off the nation’s old and poor. He orchestrated conspiracies ranging from 9/11 to the spread of avian flu. He lied, people died. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump addressed a Joint Session of Congress on March 1st. Rather it was a Disjointed Congress, with the Democrats ensconced on one side of the House and the Republicans on the other. The Democrats largely remained literally unmoved by Trump in a peevish demonstration of their small-mindedness and malice.

In fact, why limit the characterization of Democratic behavior to mere malice? Why not call it unbridled hatred and hatred of the good for being the good? For their hatred’s target is not just President Trump, but the American people for having made President Trump possible. One doesn’t have the frequent opportunity to observe so many grown men in effect drop their pants and moon a whole country besides the President. This is what they are doing, for all to see, practically a whole political party behaving like petulant brats who’d rather see the country’s continued destruction by Barack Obama’s policies instead of renewing the country by the grace of Trump’s policies.

President Trump addressed a Joint Session of Congress on March 1st. Rather it was a Disjointed Congress, with the Democrats ensconced on one side of the House and the Republicans on the other. The Democrats largely remained literally unmoved by Trump in a peevish demonstration of their small-mindedness and malice.

Daniel Greenfield on FrontPage published a gallery of telling photos of Democrats reacting to Trump’s Congressional address. I wondered: Who were all the women in a back row in white? At first I thought it was a school choir that had been invited to hear Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress. But no, they were distaff Democrats led by Nancy Paleo-Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, who now resembles a melted Madam Tussuad wax mannequin, her puffy Botox lips acting like a tongue sticking out at Trump and everything he had to say or show. Some of the “white dress privileged” women rose and applauded. Some of the Dems in the immobile side of the House rose and applauded and got dirty looks from their colleagues. I watched the whole address to Congress, and saw the glances and dirty looks

Democrats, led by Paleo-Pelosi, who resembles a

a melted Madam Tussuad wax mannequin, were

advised to not stand or applaud Trump.

.

Daniel Henninger in his Wall Street Journal article revealed that:

There is one other relevant image from the moments after the speech ended: Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin standing—alone—to shake Mr. Trump’s hand.

Last week, progressive activists petitioned [Senate] Minority Leader Schumer to expel Sen. Manchin from the leadership team as retribution for his vote in favor of Scott Pruitt’s nomination to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Apparently, Senator Schumer would rather retain the costly swamps created by the EPA, rather than see them drained.

The Dems also refused to applaud or even look at the victims of immigrant crime as Trump pointed them out; instead boos and hisses emanated from that side of the House. The Free Beacon wrote that during the two-minute tribute and standing ovation given to the widow of Navy Seal Ryan Owens,

The audience stood and gave Carryn Owens a standing ovation and applauded for over two minutes for her strength.

Was former secretary of labor and assistant attorney-general Tom Perez’s victory over Congressman Keith Ellison over the weekend in the race to serve as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee a victory of centrist Democrats over radical leftists in the party? That is how the mainstream media is portraying Perez’s victory.

Along these lines, Prof. Allen Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who promised to quit the party if Ellison was elected due to his documented history of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel, hailed Perez’s election. Speaking to Fox News, Dershowitz said that Perez’s election over Ellison “is a victory in the war against bigotry, antisemitism, the anti-Israel push of the hard Left within the Democratic Party.”There are two problems with Dershowitz’s view. First, Perez barely won. Ellison received nearly half the votes in two rounds of voting.

Tipping his hat to Ellison’s massive popularity among the party’s leadership and grassroots, Perez appointed the former Nation of Islam spokesman to serve as deputy DNC chairman as soon as his own victory was announced.

There is a good reason that Perez is so willing to cooperate with Ellison in running the DNC. And this points to the second problem with the claim that Perez’s election signals a move toward the center by Democratic leaders.

Perez is ready to cooperate with Ellison because the two men have the same ideological worldview and the same vision for the Democratic Party. As Mother Jones explained, “There’s truly not much ideological distance between the two.”

Far from being a victory for the centrist forces in the party, Perez’s win marks the solidification of the far Left’s control over the party of Harry Truman. Only hard leftists participated in a meaningful way in the race for leadership of the second largest party in America – a party that less than a decade ago controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.

The recent uproar by the media, goading President Donald Trump into condemning anti-Semitism in the wake of various threats against Jewish institutions across the United States, has little to do with actual concern for anti-Semitism and everything to do with spreading a toxic false narrative to discredit the president.

Since the Left has learned nothing from the 2016 election — believing we are still operating in a world in which identity politics trumps all other considerations — it has been doing its damnedest to smear the Trump administration as a white nationalist if not outright Nazi regime practically since the day the Trump campaign commenced.

Such baseless accusations are justified at best by a wholly disingenuous conflation of the belief in the primacy of the rule of law, national sovereignty and a jihad-focused national security and foreign policy with racism and bigotry. Such an argument is of a piece with leftist illogic which says that “states rights” is code for “racism” — a code that only progressives have cracked.

Perhaps the cries of “Hitler” based on the president’s policies give the Left too much credit, however. For let us not forget that President George W. Bush championed a fundamentally different agenda from President Trump, and was cast as a Führer reincarnate by progressives as well.

The Left’s supposed newfound concern with anti-Semitism — like its supposed newfound concern with Russia — rings particularly hollow, and not just because of the president’s Jewish family members, friends and senior political appointees and advisors, his pro-Israel and counterjihadist agenda or the glowing words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirming the president’s philosemitism.

What is remarkable about the Left’s anti-anti-Semitism is that it ignores the entire context of the progressive-Islamist nexus that bolstered the aims of Jew haters worldwide during President Obama’s tenure and beyond.

If the media and the Left more broadly were truly concerned with anti-Semitism, and not merely engaging in the politics of personal destruction, then how to explain their broad support for the Iran Deal which aids, abets and enables the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad dedicated to a Second Holocaust through the annihilation of the Jewish state of Israel?

ATLANTA—Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, giving the party an establishment leader at a moment when its grass-roots wing is insurgent.

Mr. Perez defeated Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and four other candidates in a race that had few ideological divisions yet illuminated the same rifts in the party that drove the acrimonious 2016 presidential primary between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Perez’s victory capped a drama-filled afternoon. The former Labor secretary fell one vote short of a majority on the first vote for chairman, with Mr. Ellison 13 votes behind. The four second-tier candidates then dropped out of the race. On the second ballot, Mr. Perez won 235 of 435 votes cast.
As Donna Brazile, the outgoing party chairwoman, announced the final results, a group of green-clad Ellison supporters in the meeting hall drowned her out with chants of “not big money, party for the people.”

Mr. Perez played down divisions within the party, proclaiming his “love for the robust discussions that occur in the Democratic Party.” He added: “We need every house call, we need to listen to people, we need to get back to basics and we need to move forward.”

To help heal the division, Mr. Perez in declaring victory immediately appointed Mr. Ellison as the party’s vice chairman. Mr. Ellison practically begged his supporters to remain in the party and back Mr. Perez.

“If you came here supporting me, wearing a green T-shirt,” he said, “I’m asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez.”

President Donald Trump took a shot at Mr. Perez in a tweet about the Democratic vote. “Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC. I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!”

Mr. Perez tweeted in return: “Call me Tom. And don’t get too happy. @keithellison and I, and Democrats united across the country, will be your worst nightmare.”