Can't MoveOn Quite Yet

Greetings from the Left Coast! A couple of posts ago, I talked about how disgusted I was at the way the Democrats have reacted to both General Petraeus' report to Congress and to the MoveOn ad characterizing him as "General Betray Us." I pointed out, in particular, that a week had gone by since the ad had run, and none of the leading Democrat Presidential candidates had denounced it.

Well, last week, the Senate actually brought a motion to the floor to formally condemn the ad. Guess who voted against the motion to condemn the MoveOn ad? Twenty-five Senators voted against the motion to condemn the ad. (By lightning calculation that means that fully one-fourth of the Senate of the United States apparently thought that the ad was just fine.) Would you believe all twenty-five were Democrats? Among the twenty-five were Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, along with the usual suspects: Senators Boxer, Durbin, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, our own Patty Murray, Schumer, etc. Barak Obama, our own Maria Cantwell, and Joe Biden courageously abstained from voting.

I'm sure that if someone ever manages to get them to explain their votes, they'll say that it was a free speech issue, and that whether they approved of it or not, the Senate shouldn't be voting on something like that. Democrats love to advocate free speech, as long as it's speech they agree with. If you pay close attention, though, you'll see that they're not crazy about supporting the other kind. Well, to quote the Honorable Tom Lantos, "With all due respect...I must say, I don't buy it."

In case you don't know, MoveOn.org was organized during the Clinton Presidency, and took its name from the idea that Congress should just censure the President and "move on" rather than go through the impeachment process. Billionaire George Soros is a major financial backer of MoveOn, and they have poured many millions of dollars into trying to get Democrats elected.

They're not shy about throwing a Democrat overboard, either - they were big backers of Ned Lamont, who defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Primary of 2006, because Joe took some positions they didn't like very much, particularly in regard to the War on Terror. A lot of mainstream Democrats didn't bother to vote in the primary election, but MoveOn was able to mobilize the more radical left which came out to vote for Ned. Party officials took the position that the people had spoken, Ned Lamont had won the primary, he was the official Democrat on the ticket, and that was that. Tough luck, Joe.

Yes, we can take some comfort in the fact that mainstream Democrats did come out in the general election and did reject Ned Lamont in favor of Senator Lieberman, who ran, and won, as an independent - but the fact is that if you're a Democrat, criticizing MoveOn can be, shall we say, a career-altering decision. Also, I suppose it might be awkward for Senator Clinton to say anything bad about them seeing as how they were originally formed as a Clinton support group.

So, you be the judge: Did the Group of 25 oppose this measure out of deep-seated convictions that Congress shouldn't be condemning organizations for exercising their free speech rights - no matter how hateful or irresponsible that speech might be - or because they didn't want to take a chance on losing millions of dollars of campaign contributions or, worse yet, see those millions used against them?

Oh, and to Senators Cantwell, Biden, and particularly Senator Obama, at least have the guts to take a position on one side or the other, will you? President Harry Truman (a Democrat) was famous for the "The Buck Stops Here" sign on his desk. He understood that when you sit in the Oval Office, you don't get to abstain from making decisions. People who aspire to occupy that office might want to keep that in mind.

Thanks for listening...