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The mainstream media is mislabeling certain actions being perpetrated by members of the extreme right since the passage of the health-care bill.

Currently on the politics front pages of MSNBC & CNN stories about 'vandalism' of Democratic members of congress since the vote this Sunday evening appear (nothing of Fox news, although I did do a search on their site and found a small paragraph by Greta Van Sustern that acts as if there is actually a question about whether the vote and the acts are related).

This mislabel is this; these are acts of domestic terrorism...plain and simple.

Terrorism is defined as:

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

(from dictionary.com)

Tell me how smashing windows, throwing bricks with anti-obama rhetoric, and even leaving VM's threatening to kill the children of representatives who voted yes is not terrorism?

http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/Health-Care-Reform-Leads-to-Threats/TAZWZcNqz0aapIAGYDut-A.cspx

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/22/1830379/democratic-offices-vandalized.html

Like the title of my blog states, I’ve got a confession to make: I (as an extremely progressive democrat) am not entirely happy with our sudden surge in national politics.

Crazy right?

Well here’s why…I think one of the strengths of our government comes from the fact that it is a multi-party (for most of our history two party) system. Even when one party had control their power was checked by the fact they still had to deal with other views. This has been the standard for most of our modern history. Reagan had to deal with a Democrat congress…Clinton with Republicans. George W had Republicans in both houses most of his two terms, but not veto-proof majorities (plus he had to deal with the fact that a majority of the population disagreed with his views for the great majority of his second term).

Now we have Obama, someone who I supported before most of you even knew his name. Coupled with his electoral landslide victory unlike any we’ve seen since Reagan years, his party has a good margin in the House, and a couple votes short of filibuster proof Senate. Things couldn’t be better for us crazy left wingers right?

Dead wrong.

Through no fault of his own, Obama (and the democratically controlled Congress) has had to do very little compromising in their first few months of his administration. This, in large part, is due to a failed Republican strategy that is making moderates flee their party like a ship on fire. The right leaning blogs have been on fire with a recent Pew Research Poll showing Obama has the largest ‘partisan’ gap at this point for any new president:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1178/polarized-partisan-gap-in-obama-approval-historic

What pundits that trumpet this information fail to point out, however, is that for this poll Pew found “Republicans” only made up 24 percent of voters...the lowest total EVER recorded by Pew.

TWENTY FOUR PERCENT?!?…sounds an awful lot like the 25 percent or so that still approved of George W Bush’s presidency don’t matter what eh?

Here, in my humble opinion is the problem with the die hard Republicans right now…they don’t learn from their own mistakes.

We have an extremely popular president on our hands right now that, for the first few months, tried a bi-partisan approach to legislation…reaching out to Republicans at every turn. What was their response? “NO…NO…sticks fingers in ears…I CAN’T HEAR YOU…LA LA LAAA” Republican leadership sent the basic message, if you don’t do it exactly like we want, we won’t come to the table.

So how did the Dems react…they went on without them.

Faced with this failure, Republicans are still using the same tired campaign tactics that lead to their landslide defeats this past November: “Obumbler lied about this or that” “Obama INSULTED America by saying its attitude in the past decade towards Europe were ‘arrogant’” “Obama eats (or kills) babies” “We WANT Obama to fail” etc.

For the sake of an effective national government that actually has to work with and incorporate dissenting views, I hope the Republican party comes to its senses and comes up with a reasonable alternative to democrats (and soon).

If you ever need evidence of the dangers of one party rule (such as I fear from democrats) just look at the first 6 years W’s administration.