While I rarely ever agree with Bill Clinton on anything, the man is smart, and knows a thing or two about the political game. Of the things he’s said that I agree with, there is one truth his friends in the “reality based community” just can’t seem to wrap their heads around.
Back ’94, after almost six decades in the political wilderness, the Republicans retook control of both houses of Congress by a landslide. Though it probably pained him to say it, President Clinton acknowledged that it was in part the ridiculous, newly inked “assault weapons” ban which cost them the election. Despite all their attempts to scare people into accepting it, it seemed that most Americans realized things like bayonet mounts have little to do with crime.
In 2000, after running on a platform which included even more Unconstitutional gun control, Al Gore lost the election by a razor thin margin which the courts ended up deciding. He even lost his own State, of all places. While lots of people were surprised by this– and even more blamed voter fraud –President Clinton again acknowledged that gun control lost them even more votes than fraud could have possibly eaten.
Did anybody listen this time? Apparently not.
In 2004, after staging a photo op with some hunters to try and gain some Second Amendment street cred, John Kerry flew back to DC a day or two later and voted to ban virtually all centerfire rifle ammo used by hunters. And people wonder why he lost to a rather unpopular incumbent…
Fast-forward to 2006, and one might be forgiven to think the Democrats had learned their lesson on guns. In July of last year, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of prohibiting gun confiscations in emergency situations when said people need them most (as happened in New Orleans). Just before the elections, Democrats far and wide told us the party was no longer interested in banning guns. In fact, a number of the Congressional seats they picked up– as well as a handful of Governors such as Ohio’s Ted Strickland –were won by pro-gun “blue dogs.” So, yea, all that means they learned their lesson, right? RIGHT?
Nope.
As of Thursday, there are 59 cosponsors signed up on Carolyn “Shoulder Thing That Goes Up” McCarthy’s draconian new “assault weapons” ban. Or, in other words, 25.3% of Democrats in the House of Representatives are seeking to ban virtually every firearm designed in the last hundred years. The last Representative to sign on was Dennis Kucinich, who is running for President. On the Senate side, Joseph Biden, who is also running for President, introduced a bill Thursday to ban all the “assault weapons” and close the so-called “gun show loophole.” I imagine that sponsorships from Obama, Dodd, and Clinton can’t be far behind.
Which would leave us with half the Democratic Presidential candidates who haven’t heeded Bill Clinton’s warning.
The real irony here is, some of the candidates like, say, Kucinich, are running on a platform that Bush is an evil dictator out to destroy the Constitution. Yet they want destroy parts of the Constitution themselves. And if you’ve every spent any time rubbernecking at sites like Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, you’re bound to have seen countless tinfoil-hat-induced threads about how Bush and Cheney plan to cancel the elections, set up a totalitarian government, then send Blackwater around in black helicopters to put all the Democrats into concentration camps or something. Yet they continue to support candidates who would give Bush a total monopoly of force, enabling him to do just that.
Go figure.