Ted Rall Wants To Fiddle While Rome Burns And Blame The Republicans For It

by John Hawkins | November 7, 2003 10:06 pm

Here are the two money paragraphs from New York Times cartoonist & popular left-wing columnist Ted Rall’s[1] latest screed that I think illustrates the childlike approach to the issues that many people on the left take today…

“It’s high time that victorious Democrats stop being suckered by reckless Republicans into cleaning up their messes. Walking behind the elephant with a pail and a smelly broom might be the right thing to do, but it doesn’t earn you any respect after the parade. All Democrats worthy of the name ought to sign a pledge to ignore problems caused by Republican administrations and leave them to their Republican successors. Let the GOP deficit ride, and pass socialized medicine while you’re at it. Keep the bloated HomeSec bureaucracy on the payroll, and change its mission to something useful, like making a serious attempt to guard our borders. Run up the deficit like there’s no tomorrow. Withdraw our troops; when the Iraqi civil war spreads throughout the region, some smart future Republican president will figure it out.

I can hear you grumbling: but that’s irresponsible! Yes. It. Is. But playing the sap to Republican fait accomplis is like paying off your drunken kid’s gambling debts. It makes you an enabler of destructive behavior–and that’s even worse than throwing your hands up in the air and walking away. Let’s give the GOP some tough love.”

Of course, I could easily make the case that for about the last 35 years or so it has largely been Republican Presidents cleaning up messes left to them by their Democratic predecessors. For example, the Intifada, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s war on America, the Iraqi problem, North Korea’s nuclear program, the recession, the corporate accounting scandals, and the 9/11 plot were all in the works the day that Bush took office. Given that, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Bill Clinton isn’t getting a “thanks for the good work” fruit basket from W. anytime soon. But that isn’t the point. I’d like to think that the candidates running for the Presidency are not so venal & petty that they would want to deliberately ignore America’s problems just so they can attempt to poke a thumb in the GOP’s eye.

Yet, the same attitude Ted Rall displays in this editorial is common on the left when it comes to foreign policy. Many Democrats, including front runners like Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, & Joe Kerry (this doesn’t fit Joe Lieberman & because I’m feeling generous I’ll leave out Dick Gephardt for now) talk as if being popular with the French and Germans is considerably more important than stopping future 9/11s from happening. In fact, their philosophy might as well be, “Defending America is a problem for the Republicans to deal with”. That was basically how Bill Clinton approached foreign policy, but since 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, he at least had some sort of excuse for his timidity about guarding America from foreign threats. The General, the duck, “Mr. Vietnam,” & Ted Rall can be given no similar pardon for their apathy about protecting Americans from the fanatical terrorists who have openly said they want to kill us.

Hat Tip to A Small Victory[2] for pointing out this editorial.

Endnotes:
  1. Ted Rall’s: http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/
  2. A Small Victory: http://asmallvictory.net/archives/005143.html#005143

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