Davis Doesn’t Fly
By Mark R Levin

I’m intrigued by the bizarre attention so many conservative websites and bloggers are paying to Lanny Davis’s silly op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal. See here.

Here’s an excerpt from the Davis piece:

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing—in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against “communists and their fellow travelers.” The word “McCarthyism” became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right’s fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a “communist” or “socialist” who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn’t possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years—with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage—I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony.

Davis smears conservatives generally as intolerant and hateful, using his false characterization as a basis to compare loathsome attacks by liberal bloggers against his friend, Joe Lieberman. He slimes Rush and Ann (Savage, of course, is loathsome) with bloggers who write such things as this:

“Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby” (by “rim,” posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

As an aside, no one has been more steadfast and thoughtful in his support of Israel than Rush (indeed, no one has been more intelligent in their exposition of conservatism than Rush). Moreover, George Bush — the Republican president Lanny Davis and his liberal ilk undermine on a daily basis — has been spectacular in his defense of Israel, unlike so many Davis’s fellow Democrats. And while Davis correctly condemns the poison flowing from his own side, this is a serious problem for the Left, not the Right. Our nuts are on the fringes; his nuts run the DNC, their PACs, and their think-tanks.

Davis was a mouthpiece for one of the most corrupt president’s in history. More to the point, Bill Clinton and his wife were specialists at using slurs and personal attacks against their opponents (including numerous women). Davis defended all of it.

We are nothing like the Left.