Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. Previously, he served as Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/13/wingnuts.waxman.shay2.getty.facebook.cnn.art.jpg caption="Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (L) chairman of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay (R)."]
Here’s one mistake wingnuts always make: they view political opponents as their enemies, not well-intentioned fellow Americans. They demonize disagreement.
It’s part of the hyper-partisan political cycle – backlashes begin when one party gets arrogant and over-reaches. We saw it with Tom Delay’s Republican Congress post-2004, and we might be seeing the beginning with House Democrats today.
The stimulus spending spree is beginning to attract some Main Street skepticism, just as liberal leaders try to move climate change cap and trade and a trillion dollar health care reform through Congress this summer. There is a sense that momentum must be kept at all costs and that opposition is outright un-American. At least according to influential California Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who adopted the kind of rhetoric usually associated with wingnuts on the right while in an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm, as reported by Politico.
"It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success — which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country as well," Waxman said.
“Rooting against the country” – that’s quite a charge. But it’s one he’s repeated in recent days (at one point saying the GOP is “rooting against the world”), while he promotes a new book and his cap and trade bill, which Waxman admits to not have read in detail despite sponsorship: “I certainly don’t claim to know everything that’s in this bill,” he’s said.
But if he doesn’t know what’s in the 1,200 page Waxman-Markey bill, who does? Republicans like John McCain have supported cap and trade in the past – and 8 courageous Republicans in the House voted for the bill while 44 Democrats voted against it. There is a need to build bipartisan support for ambitious bills. Demonizing the opposition – or questioning their commitment to their country – is not the way to achieve it.
Waxman’s comments underscore a problem for Democrats that began creeping into polling numbers this week: The election of 2008 was not a blank check liberal ideological mandate. President Obama is broadly popular, but the Democrat-controlled Congress is not. One of the reasons for this gap is the president’s post-partisan approach to problem-solving. In contrast, hyper-partisans end up being their own side’s worst enemy because they alienate the moderate majority of Americans.
But speaking of calling your opponents anti-American, few can outdo the leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay. “I think that you are ignorant if you believe this man is anything but anti-American,” she wrote about President Obama on her Facebook page.
The 38-year-old Louisiana mom, event planner and Army veteran raised eyebrows this week when this and other threads from her Facebook page became public.
On July 1st, a Shay supporter named Eric S. Piker wrote “It’s the government making us commies… can’t even smoke in my damn car… whats next they going to issue toilet paper once a month…” Two minutes later, Piker posted again saying “Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals.”
Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker’s comments: “You tell em Eric! lol.”
When other folks on the page complained about Piker’s comments and the evident lack of outrage from the candidate, Shay “de-friended” them – but kept Piker on. When the site HipHopRepublican.com picked up on the exchange, Shay issued a belated apology, explaining that she was responding to the first comment and not the second – an explanation that seems strained to some because of the 8 minute interval. On the heels of the two other GOP racist email snafus that have occurred in the past month and covered in a previous week’s Wingnuts, it seems like a disturbing trend is underway. It must be confronted by conservatives. We’ll have to see how the Young Republicans vote this weekend.
The bottom line is that it is un-American to call people who disagree with you "un-American." Our political opponents are not our enemies, and if folks are not persuaded by legislation (especially involving unprecedented taxpayer spending) it does not mean they are rooting against America. That kind of demonization of disagreement has got to stop. But it’s proliferating in hyper-partisan echo-chambers, where no attack is too extreme against political opponents and the only unforgivable sin is to stand up to someone on your own side. By giving into this Washington "team-ism", wingnuts confuse partisan conformity with personal courage.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.