MoveOn.org: Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'...

Rolling Stone has an article about how MoveOn.org has become a force to be reckoned with - for the Democrat Party, that is. Despite having been largely impotent in effecting the outcome of elections, they keep coming back for more.

They signed up 500,000 supporters with an Internet petition -- but Bill Clinton still got impeached. They organized 6,000 candlelight vigils worldwide -- but the U.S. still invaded Iraq. They raised $60 million from 500,000 donors to air countless ads and get out the vote in the battle-ground states -- but George Bush still whupped John Kerry. A gambler with a string of bets this bad might call it a night. But MoveOn.org just keeps doubling down.

It reminds me of the story of the guy who keeps hitting himself in the face with a cast-iron frying pan. His buddy asks "Why do you keep doing that?", to which he responds: "Cuz if feels so good when I stop."

And now they're seeking to use their grass-roots foundation to infiltrate and take over effective control of the Democrats.

"It's our Party," MoveOn's twenty-four-year-old executive director, Eli Pariser, declared in an e-mail. "We bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back." The group's new goal is sweeping in its ambition: To make 2006 a watershed year for liberal Democrats in Congress, in the same way that Newt Gingrich led a Republican revolution in 1994.

Good Luck dude. The sweep to GOP control of Congress was a backlash against Liberalism, its policies and an ever-encroaching Federal bureaucracy. Republicans have INCREASED their gains in Washington since 1994. It goes to show how little Pariser and his renegade band of Bush-haters understand about the American electorate.

But not all Democrats are blind to the ill-effects of the kook insurgency.

"It's electoral suicide," says Dan Gerstein, a former strategist for Joe
Lieberman's presidential campaign. MoveOn committed a series of costly blunders last fall: It failed to remove two entries that compared Bush to Hitler from its online ad contest, and its expensive television spots barely registered in the campaign. One conservative commentator, alluding to MoveOn's breathless promotion of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, branded the group the "MooreOn" wing of the party. All of which leaves political veterans wondering: As MoveOn becomes a vital part of the Democratic establishment, will its take-no-prisoners attitude marginalize the party and strengthen the Republican stranglehold on power?

Here's the short answer that even some Democrats will quietly concede: "Uh, yep."

Posted by: Gary at 02:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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