MoveOn Should Simmer Down

MoveOn.org has moved on from protest of the Iraq War and is now throwing its considerable fund-raising weight behind the reelection campaign of Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), as reported by the AP here:

In less than three days last week, the group's political action committee raised from its members nearly $833,000 for Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who next year could face his first competitive race in decades.

But support from MoveOn comes with strings attached, namely MoveOn’s reputation as an out-of-the-mainstream, far-left group.

[The] GOP Senate campaign committee said MoveOn was "out of touch" with West Virginia because of its financial support from [George] Soros, its opposition to the Iraq war and resistance to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

It’s a well known fact that billionaire wing-nut Soros has contributed in excess of $15.5 million to MoveOn. With those kinds of funds, it’s no mystery how MoveOn has become a major player in the Democratic Party. But not all Dems are happy to have them. CBS reports:

[A number] of Democrats -- all of whom declined to be quoted by name because they wanted to be more candid about the problems they see -- say that the belief by some of those activists [like those in MoveOn] that Democrats can solve their problems by playing more directly to their core constituents ignores several realities, particularly the question of whether voters see Democrats as strong enough to win the war on terrorism.

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But recently MoveOn has moved away from foreign policy and stopped calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq—a move that drew the ire of true-blue lefty nutjobs like Norm Solomon.

So is MoveOn moderating? Doubtful. It’s just that the Iraq War is hard to protest when there is no conceivable way, under current conditions, we’re leaving Iraq. Instead, MoveOn has turned its attention to such matters as helping Byrd win reelection, fighting Republican attempts to change filibuster rules for judicial nominees and attacking Bush’s Social Security plan.

Predictably, all these efforts have used the same screeching, sky-is-falling, Republicans-are-evil rhetoric that MoveOn employed in its feckless attempts to defeat Bush in 2004. MoveOn’s positions (which are usually run-of-the-mill, old-school Democratic stances) have never been as big of a problem as their hyperbolic, poorly targeted rhetoric. They aren’t a far-left group. They’re a middle-left group possessed with far-left anger.

People don’t hear what you say, they hear how you say it. As long as MoveOn insists on hyperventilating over every issue, the entire Democratic Party will be tainted with their divisive and counter-productive speech.