No Fault On The Left Says Marxist FiredOgswamp

Soros-cide is the word I employ to describe the kamikaze tactics the ultra-left MoveOn self-exploding agitpreppies use in their intemperate rants whipping the regular Dems into the Party Line---the line peddled by a long line of leftist going back to Saul Alinsky, Hillary's hero at Wellesley, and crazies like Mark Rudd, whom I once hosted in my student apartment during a brief fling with SDS. Rudd was smoking my ganga and sharing some of his insights that got him on the cover of Time magazine the year before.

Rudd said that the first principle of radical Democratic strategy is never admit error. Like the Kremlin Politburo, Communist organizations never make mistakes. And James Taranto describes in today's Wall Street Journal the newest avatar of NFOTL:

Surprisingly enough, one of the few Democrats to criticize the McCarthyite tactics of MoveOn.org has been Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the lovely and talented John Edwards. As the Des Moines Register reports:

MoveOn.org should not have labeled Gen. David Petraeus "General Betray Us" in a controversial newspaper ad, Elizabeth Edwards said in Des Moines Friday.

"Someone who's spent their life in the military doesn't deserve 'General Betray Us,' " said [Mrs.] Edwards. . . .

Elizabeth Edwards said the group could have made its point by simply using Petraeus' own previous words about purported good news in Iraq without insulting him personally.

This rather tepid rebuke drew criticism from Jane Hamsher of the Angry Left blog FiredOglake.com (last seen posting racist photos at the Puffington Host):

So here's the rule. You never repeat right wing talking points to attack your own, ever. You never enter that echo chamber as a participant. Ever. You never give them a hammer to beat the left with. Just. Don't. Do. It.....
When offered the opportunity to cudgel your own side, you pivot and attack. How about, "glad you mentioned that. . .I think an ad is about as relevant to George Bush's growing collection of toe tags as a haircut is to the problems facing this country." Or, "thanks for the opportunity to discuss this, Chris. I personally would not choose the word "betrayal" to characterize General Petraeus's lack of judgment or skewing of the facts to perpetuate the war, but I do think we should be looking at the fact that this was the bloodiest summer ever in Iraq and asking ourselves if the assessment we're being given about the situation is realistic. . ."
There are any number of ways you can answer that question well and none of them involve attacking MoveOn. They're out there on the left so you can look "moderate." They're saying what needs to be said, opening the conversation up so John Edwards isn't considered the left-wing fringe loon that nobody should listen to.

Now wait a minute, has Hamsher just characterized MoveOn.org as a bunch of left-wing fringe loons that nobody should listen to? And didn't she earlier describe said loons as being on the Edwardses' "own side"? Mrs. Edwards's criticism of MoveOn.org is perfectly consistent with the dynamic Hamsher describes, portraying herself (and by implication her husband) as moderate by contrast. She's just doing the Hamsher dance.

Elizabeth Edwards' father was an Army colonel and she was raised in Japan, Germany, and various posts stateside, so she respects the military and has a personal interest in how it is employed and how it is portrayed.

Hamsher is a drugged up screenwriter holed up somewhere doing a story on methamphetamines and from the tone of her blogs, using while writing. Her movies are violent and her little coterie has as much humanism as any cell in any dedicated outside-the-box political hit-squad.

But as Taranto notes, the whole flaming rad schtick could be a student-body left move that opens ground for less loony political psychobabble of the Edwards variety. He and his wife already have been playing a sort of dynamic duet when his excesses are pointed out, including a spectacular Fight-Poverty crusade that ended with the revelation that John Po-boy had made $500K as a "consultant" to a subprime mortgage gouge-and-grab hedge fund scam that evicted Katrina victims, and then subsequently revealed that he had sunk $18 million chump change into the Fortress Fund described above. Can you imagine what a Republican would face in investigative journalists on his doorstep like a cheap suit if that had happened to a conservative.

But even venal conservative are nowhere near the charlatan and mountebank that John Edwards is being exposed as. The layers of his onion are peeled away and yet the pious MSM question him as though he were a viable candidate.

Which brings me back to Mark Rudd, who after bogarting my joints and basically toking away half a bag, told me: "Dave, the basic thing is, dare to cheat, dare to win."

Looks like John Edwards dug into the left side of the Dem gene pool and pulled that same vibe out of the ether.