Under Seige, Republican DLC Calls for Unilateral Disarmament

Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us. Luke 9:49.


We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left... We can't have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values.

Al From,CEO, Democratic Leadership Council

You know, let's let Hollywood and the Cannes Film Festival fawn all over Michael Moore. We ought to make it pretty clear that he sure doesn't speak for us when it comes to standing up for our country.

Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the DLC


"You've got to reject Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd," DLC CEO Al From said in an interview about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after 2004. From argued that the anti-war Moore and MoveOn have hurt the party on national security, the issue which he says the party needs to make "central to our cause." Rank-and-file Democrats "are more like us than MoveOn," which From called a group of "elites, people who sit in their basements all the time and play on their computers."

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If only we could hear such moral clarity from our own party's left! Instead, we heard from Daily Kos, the ur-liberal ur-blogger, whose blog included a cheer for, among others, outcast Labourite George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Blair's Iraq policy -- and was roundly denounced by virtually all British politicians. "See, Democrats? That's how it's done," lectured the blogger ignorantly. Likewise, Matt Yglesias, an articulate liberal voice at The American Prospect, who belittled Marshall Wittmann's call for moral clarity as a phrase never used "unironically" anymore. No wonder Democrats are perceived to have a values problem.

My liberal friends are quick to point out that the left's chief grievance is with the war in Iraq, not the war on terror. But what does it do for the image of the Democratic Party -- not to mention the thinking of rank and file Democrats -- when some of our most skilled commentators use a moment of unambiguous terror to first find fault with an American policy (unseating Saddam Hussein) rather than first condemning the terrorists? It's both morally wrong and politically dumb. These musings in the left-wing blogosphere may be read regularly by only a few thousand people, but they seep into the intellectual bloodstream of the Democratic Party. They once again place Democrats on the wrong side of the ultimate issue of our time: winning the war on terror.

Peter Ross Range, DLC's Blueprint Magazine


"Now, I know the DLC has taken some shots from some within our party, and that it has returned fire too," she told the gathering in Columbus. "Well, I think it's high time for a cease-fire — time for all Democrats to work together based on the fundamental values we all share."

Hillary Clinton, new head of DLC's "American Dream Initiative", speaking at DLC gathering in Columbia, OH, July 25, 2005


Dear DLC: Michael Moore and Moveon.org are on OUR side. The Democrats side. They raise money for Democratic candidates. They promote and defend Democratic as well as democratic causes. They help the opposing party to oppose. When you criticize Democrats and Democratic organizations and leaders, you aren't helping. When you figure that out, let us know.