John Hawkins Interviews Bernard Goldberg

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has an interview with Bernard Goldberg about his new book, Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right.I have liked Goldberg's reporting on HBO Real Sports and his book 100 People Who are Screwing Up America and really the way Goldberg thinks.

The interview is somewhat ranging, which is nice, but here is an important quote that a lot of Democrats and the lefty blogosphere would be well advised to heed:

I think the next election is the Democrats’ to win. I mean with Iraq hanging around the Republicans’ neck, the Democrats should be the favorite. But, if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, if they continue moving further and further to the left, they have a chance of losing this next election, because regular people out there in middle America, they don't like that kind of stuff. They could be against the war, they could dislike George Bush, hey, I have problems with George Bush, but he's not Osama Bin Laden, he's not Hitler. Not only is he not as bad as the really bad guys in this world, he's not 1 millionth as bad as the people who are really bad guys in this world.

Yet, you go to dinner with your liberal friends, and you get the impression that they believe that George Bush is the biggest menace on the planet. There's a name for it. It's Bush Derangement Syndrome. It's where otherwise normal liberals, the kinds of people you go to lunch with, you talk to, you kind of like: when you say the name George Bush in their presence, they go off the rails. They start foaming at the mouth. This kind of Bush Derangement Syndrome leads them to call him to Hitler and compare him to Nazis and Fascists and, as I said, it doesn't engender conversation, it ends conversation.

I think Goldberg is right on point. Look, politics is ultimately a conversation between two or more competing sides and their ideas, but it is hard to have a conversation when one or both sides of the conversation so hate the other that rational discourse is impossible.

Lest you think Goldberg has criticisms just of the left, watch out because Republicans get a slamming too:

Because I think when they took over power in Washington, when they won not only the White House, but both Houses of Congress, I think they started acting like regular politicians and I mean that in the worst sense.

The Republicans told us they were the party of small government, that they were the ones who were fiscally responsible. They were the grown-ups. Then, they started spending our money as if they were Imelda Marcos in a shoe store. They sold out their principles because they thought they could bribe us. They thought they could spend and spend and spend on different pork projects and that they could get away with it. I think they only did that because they took over power and lost their way.

With immigration, I think a reasonable Republican position could be, “We are more than willing to talk about paths to citizenship, guest worker programs, and anything else, after we secure the border. Not after we talk about securing the border, not after we make another promise that we'll secure the border, which never seems to actually happen in real life, but when we secure the border, then we'll talk about these other things.” But, you have the President of the United States and Republicans in Congress wanting to get this bill through, this one that may be dead or may not dead...

snip

Because they don't want to be accused of being anti-Hispanic.

I will give you another example. There's going to be measures to ban Affirmative Action on ballots in at least 5 states next year. There was one on the Michigan ballot last year. The voters in Michigan voted overwhelmingly to ban racial preferences, but the Republican candidates for Governor and for Senator can out against the ban. In other words, they were saying let's continue to have these racial preferences. The voters rejected (Affirmative Action), but the Republicans came out in favor of Affirmative Action and racial preferences. That's not a conservative position. The Republican candidates lost. Next year, when this is on the ballot in at least 5 states, Democrats will come out against the bans because at least they honestly believe that racial preferences and Affirmative Action are good things… Republicans don't believe that these are good things. These are not conservative principles, but they will also come against the bans in many states because they're afraid they'll be called bigots if they don't. What Republicans should say is that, "We are against racial discrimination. We will use the full force of government to try to wipe it out... but, we will not be in favor of any program that makes decisions about who gets into college and who gets jobs largely based on the color of their skin.” But, they won't do that, because they'll be called racists if they do.

So, they've sold out their principles on spending, on immigration, on Affirmative Action, on a whole bunch of things like that. They didn't even defend the renomination of (Peter Pace). They wimp out on one issue after another and let me tell you something, conservatives have noticed. I'll tell you something else; there are a percentage of people who traditionally vote Republican, who are really libertarian more than Republican. They're the small government people. They've been reliably Republican. I don't think they're going to be reliably Republican any more. I think they're going to say, "You've sold out." Now, I don't think they're going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I'll grant you that, but they may sit out the election, they may throw their votes away on some candidate who doesn't stand a chance of winning, and therefore help the Democrats. But, I think the Republicans have offended and alienated many people who have been loyal to them for a very long time.

While I still support the President on many issues, he and the Congressional Republicans are not conservatives and least not enough of the ones in the leadership.