Has MoveOn Betrayed the Democratic Party?
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Has MoveOn Betrayed the Democratic Party?
With its full-page “General Betray Us?” ad in the New York Times, MoveOn.org has once again put itself at the forefront of the antiwar movement. And if past patterns are any guide, a number of Democrats are embarrassed, and even angered, by MoveOn’s actions but are afraid to reveal the true extent of their feelings. MoveOn simply has too much fundraising clout — and a fear-inducing inclination to attack Democrats who stray from the MoveOn line — for many in the party to take it on.
Democratic leaders might be further embarrassed by a new email, headlined “Your dog can help end the war,” sent out by the leadership of MoveOn’s political team. The email asks members to attend a protest on Capitol Hill this morning preceding the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus. “Congress was fooled before by the White House’s ‘dog and pony show,” the appeal says. “We need to make sure they’re not fooled again. That’s why we’re hosting our own ‘Dog and Pony Show’ outside the Capitol Building right before Petraeus takes the stage for his testimony. We want to show Congress and the cameras that the American people aren’t buying the White House spin.”
“We’re bringing real ponies, signs and a big banner that reads, ‘CONGRESS: Don’t be fooled, AGAIN!’ Can you make it — and bring your dog if you have one?”
It seems unlikely that many top Democrats will be bringing pets. But the thing that should trouble party leaders is not that MoveOn is capable of silly stunts. It’s not even that MoveOn is capable of making slanderous comments about U.S. military officials. And it’s not that MoveOn is against the war in Iraq, which polls show many Americans believe was a mistake. Rather, MoveOn’s latest campaign is a continuation of a drive to oppose not just the action in Iraq, but the war on terror in general, and, in a larger sense, America’s use of military power in its own defense.
MoveOn was founded in 1998 by a husband-and-wife team of Berkeley, California software developers named Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. Its original mission was to oppose the Clinton impeachment. In 1999, after the impeachment trial ended with Clinton’s acquittal, MoveOn moved on to defeating Republicans who had favored impeachment. It mostly failed in that effort, and soon after the 2000 elections found itself without a clear political goal. All that changed on September 11, 2001.
At a time when polls showed a huge majority of Americans favoring military action against the terrorists who attacked New York and Washington, MoveOn put its energy into opposing the war in Afghanistan. Shortly after the terrorist attacks, Boyd and Blades circulated a petition that read, “Our leaders are under tremendous pressure to act in the aftermath of the terrible events of Sept. 11th. We the undersigned support justice, not escalating violence, which would only play into the terrorists’ hands.”
At the same time, an activist named Eli Pariser, recently graduated from college, circulated a petition of his own, calling on George W. Bush to use “moderation and restraint” in responding to 9/11 and “to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction.” Boyd and Blades were so impressed by Pariser’s work that they hired him; he now is a top MoveOn official.
In recent years, MoveOn has sought to portray itself as the voice of what Pariser often calls the true American majority. For example, in the summer of 2004 MoveOn teamed with filmmaker Michael Moore to promote Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The week before the film premiered, Pariser asked members to sign a pledge to see it during its first weekend; the point, he explained, was not simply to show support for Moore’s picture but to create the impression in the press that Fahrenheit 9/11 was the leading edge of a wave of anti-Bush anger sweeping the country. “We launched this campaign around Fahrenheit 9/11 because to the media, the pundits, and the politicians in power, the movie’s success will be seen as a cultural referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq war,” Pariser told MoveOn members. “Together, we have an opportunity to knock this ball out of the park.”
Several leading Democrats, including then-Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle, showed up at the movie’s Washington premiere. But the connection with MoveOn worried other Democrats. “You’ve got to reject Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd,” Al From, of the Democratic Leadership Council, remarked, calling MoveOn’s members “elites, people who sit in their basements all the time and play on their computers.” Other critics noticed that MoveOn attracted a membership that was mostly white, well-to-do, far-to-the-left, and not entirely representative of the Democratic party as a whole.
Now, with the “General Betray Us” campaign, those Democrats again face the question: Do they dare to cross MoveOn? Not long after the 2004 elections, Pariser famously said of Democrats, “Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” The next few days could be crucial in determining whether he was right or not.
Move on does the world a service, by exposing the Lie of the Iraq war, and all the lies that came before and after it.
This is a criminal regime, and will be exposed as such in the future.
Bush was a liar from the beginning, and will be a liar in the end.
Probably but all of the Democratic candidates are so afraid of them that they will say nothing………
Alas, whatever happened to the moderate and conservative Democrats.
Some days I think they no longer exist.
Damn shame too, there were some fine Democrats back in the day. Nowadays, not so much.
MoveOn.org is NOT the democratic party, it is just MoveOn.org. It can’t betray the democratic party, it only speaks for itself.
Moveon.org has NO connection to the Democratic Party. Prove me wrong.
Considering the fact that MoveOn is Soros’s pet project and most if not all of the dem’s have their hands in his wallet, no. MoveOn is merely saying what they believe.
EDIT:
AC1BD – YOU GOT IT! (I love a challenge, even though this isn’t too hard to do) (proof coming)
EDIT:
According to discoverthenetworks.org:
[moveon.org]Raises money for Democrat candidates through rock concerts and other events; creates political advertisements; sponsors get-out-the-vote drives
Launched on September 22, 1998, MoveOn took its name from a favorite buzz phrase of Clinton supporters at the time. During the continuing fallout of the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Jerry M. Brady and Marty Trillhaase of the Idaho Falls Post Register said, “The government of this nation — and its ability to serve the best interests of the people — has been damaged. It’s time to move on.” The phrase “It’s time to move on” became the mantra of White House spokesmen, who repeated it on talk shows from coast to coast.
-LOL they are named after the Clinton- Lewinsky “incident”!-
MoveOn PAC raised millions of dollars for Democrat candidates in the elections of 1998 and thereafter.
MoveOn uses its fundraising clout to push the Democratic Party to the left. This game plan was enunciated most clearly in an e-mail that MoveOn PAC Director Eli Pariser broadcast to the group’s financial supporters on December 9, 2004. Regarding MoveOn’s role in the Democratic Party, Pariser wrote, “For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base.
Want more LOL?
What we will see is if democrats truly want to get away from being controlled by special interest groups or if they are just their lackeys. I think MoveOn has moved so far into left field, that they just sound like a bunch of raving lunatics now. Most Americans don’t support MoveOn or at least not in their entirety.
Yes.
But Democrats are not smart enough to catch on.
Democrats are soooooo gullible.
They are easy to fool
The Democrat Party fools them and betrays them each Election.
I feel sorry for the MOVEON. They are just trying tooooo much…. Sorry for the dems. hahaha
It has betrayed America.
Unless it can be proved that General Petraeus’s report was in collusion with the White House, Move On has done a great disservice to the Democratic party. I’ve never been a fan of Move On but I’m now of the opinion that they have gone too far.
The Democratic Party has been unfit to lead since the radical left took over in the 1960s. Moveon is just the latest incarnation of the Students for a Democratic Society, Black Panthers, American Indian Movement activists which tore the party (and almost the nation apart) in the 60s and early 70s.
The party of Obama has been radicalized by lefty pseudo-intellectual and lifetime tenure nazis, and has betrayed the traditional working class base of the Dems. The Dems had strong foreign policy leadership under FDR, Truman and Johnson (not JFK), but the radicals lynched LBJ, drove him from office, and the party has never recovered.
moveon is the biggest disinformation junk pseudo-political webpage in the universe. they are pathetic anti-american garbage and fill the media with dispicable tasteless filth propaganda for a socialist far left wing agenda
now visit latenite.picsent.com and please tell me how you feel about moveon cuase if i dont like it i will yell into my moniter so hard the glass breaks and my face will probaly be cut resulting in me sueing you and you will have to move back in with your mom in montana and you will be very bored and your bordem will probaly cuase you to get a job at the fastest paced local resturant which little did you know was too fast paced for the likes of you and so you will fall as you rollerblade someones meal to them, and when you fall you might just die….
you might just……
die….
just playing! you wont die but you could be very badly injured