Changing Public Opinion

by digby

John Amato has the video up of Brit Hume having a hyperventilating hissy fit this morning on Fox news at Bill Kristol’s assertion that Feingold’s motion is good for Democrats. Wow.

Brit seemed unusually concerned that Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams all indicated that Feingold’s move was either principled or good politics (or both) didn’t he? And then he went completely ballistic when Juan Williams challenged his misleading assertion that the public is “surprisingly” “astonishingly” “overwhelmingly” in favor when asked “should we listen in on al Qaeda communications in the U.S.” — by pointing out that it’s the illegality of the program that concerns people.

Hmmm. Brit’s a bit emotional on this issue. In fact, he sounded downright defensive about it, which is very puzzling. The last I heard, this was great for Republicans, Democrats look silly, they’re rallying the GOP base and alienating the middle. Just yesterday it seems I’d heard that Feingold is going to cost the Democrats the election. Why get so upset when everyone who’s anyone agrees that this is NSA wiretapping is such a winner for the Republicans?

Now, you don’t suppose that the Republicans have been bluffing about this issue, do you? It’s a coincidence, I’m sure that they cracked the whip on Lincoln Chafee who’s running in an extremely anti-Bush state. They can’t worried that those numbers that show 25% percent of Republicans favor censure mean that this thing could actually motivate Democrats more than Republicans in the fall, can they?

Nah. He just had a little too much coffee this morning.

I think it’s worthwhile to note what Bill Kristol said after Brit’s little tirade:

This is smart for the Democratic Party. It is going straight at a strength of president Bush. You don’t get into politics only to play at issues where you already have public opinion on your side. He’s trying to change public opinion. I disagree with it, and I hope he doesn’t succeed, but he’s making the case that it’s illegal, he’s going to have editorial pages backing him up, and the Republicans are just whining that “oooh he’s just trying to censure the president.” They aren’t making a substantive defense of the program.

It’s a tough defense to make, once you start getting into the legality of it, as Hume’s sputtering anger showed.

When one party is as unpopular as the president the the Republicans are now, the public is open to hearing things they haven’t been willing to hear in a long time. Our polarized electorate suddenly isn’t so polarized anymore, even though the gasbags refuse to admit it. For the first time in a long time, some people are willing to give our side a listen. It is vitally important that the Democrats use this opportunity to draw the country back from the hysteria that overtook it after 9/11, an emotional conflagration stoked by an opportunistic administration and a slavering media. That hysteria permitted them to normalize preventive war, torture and kidnapping — and assert a radical, unconstitutional view of the role of the president in our government, none of which the country signed on to because it was all done in secret. This simply has to stop, and people need to start seeing Democrats stand up and declare “enough is enough.”

There has never been a greater time or a greater hunger for our political leadershihp to offer a straightforward, principled way back from the feeling that the country is hurtling out of control. The censure motion puts out a marker that the end of this wild ride is almost over.

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