Republicans have been so busy attacking each other lately that little attention is being paid to the antics of the left. The far left activists, including the Occupy movement and Anonymous, have been quite busy.
The Occupiers are helping fast food workers strike for higher wages and a union. Their targets include Wendy's and Burger King in New York City. If they really wanted to help those workers, they would encourage them to attend college and find higher paying jobs. The founder of the Occupy movement, Adbusters, is organizing Occupiers to protest Goldman Sachs banks around the world. They would be better off targeting the politicians who created the arbitrary laws that banks must operate inside of; running one bank out of business won't change the status quo.
Anonymous, the shadowy, unorganized group of hackers and anarchists, has been threatening vigilante justice in sexual assault cases. One of the main problems with this tactic was seen in the case of Amanda Todd. The teenager committed suicide after relentless cyberbullying. Anonymous outed Kody Maxson as her attacker. It was reported later that he was the wrong man. By then he had received over 50 death threats. This month, Anonymous is demanding that police reopen a closed investigation into four young men who allegedly raped 17-year old Rehtaeh Parsons and bullied her for two years. She committed suicide in early April. Anonymous threatened to release the minors' names if the case wasn't reopened, and coincidentally the police have now reopened the case. Parsons' mother is concerned and says her daughter would not have wanted more harm to come to anyone.
In response to the rash of high-profile school shootings, the left is proposing gun control and mental health legislation. The left was responsible for taking dangerous mentally ill people out of the hospitals and releasing them into our communities beginning in the 1950s. Now we're all paying the price for it. Instead of reversing this, though, the left is proposing touchy-feely measures. The Trinity University Progressives are organizing a Mental Health Awareness Week which features a “Stress-Free Zone,” massages and depression screening. Proposed federal legislation just throws more money at mental illness treatment. As usual, liberals would rather put a band-aid on the problem afterwards when it's too late, instead of getting at the root of it. There wouldn't be so much mental illness if there was better parenting, but liberals are so nonjudgmental they don't dare admit that single parenting, children born out of wedlock, parents with addictions, a failure to emphasize moral values, and other family situations can be less healthy for children.
The Democracy Alliance, a George Soros organization funded by wealthy progressives, has been steering money to dark-money groups that reveal very little about their funding sources. Its website is a shell, containing barely any information. Many of its donors contributed $4.8 million to Obama's Organizing For Action this past quarter. Organizing for Action used to be called Organizing for America, but like most of the shadowy funding organizations Obama works with, changed its name and organizational structure in order to avoid scrutiny and to funnel money a different way. Stanley Kurtz's book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, thoroughly exposed the shiftiness of these slick organizations Obama has been involved with. Organizing for America is currently focusing on promoting Obama's budget, gun control and immigration reform.
The powerful Democracy Alliance recently underwent a purging of its progressive partners. It eliminated less mainstream groups in favor of organizations with close ties to the Democrat Party. Media Matters and the Center for American Progress were retained, while groups related to minority issues were dropped. Apparently they realize minorities are going to support the left no matter what – evidence Republicans are far behind when it comes to minority voters.
There is almost as much internal feuding within the left as there is on the right. The Occupiers are complaining that Obamacare doesn't go far enough. Their Strike Debt project web page whines about the lack of health insurance and high costs, “Unfortunately, the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare) will not address most of these problems. It will certainly raise access—to expensive 'under-insurance' plans with high deductibles and lots of out-of-pocket costs. Strike Debt believes that health care that covers all a person’s needs is not a 'Cadillac' plan but a human right.”
Democracy Now, the progressive organization led by Howard Dean's brother Jim, and MoveOn.org, are stirring up anger against Obama over proposed changes to Social Security. President Obama has proposed tying Social Security cost-of-living increases to the Consumer Price Index (“chaining the CPI”), which would mean those receiving Social Security would see slightly lower annual increases in income. Both of the groups organized liberals into delivering two million petitions to the White House in protest last week. Progressives are threatening primary challenges to Democrats in Congress who vote for Obama's budget since it includes this provision.
Democracy Now is launching the Purple to Blue Project to target state legislatures. Noting that Republicans hold 58 percent of all state legislative chambers in the U.S., the left is realizing they've neglected this arena. Progressive.org is still going after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with a special section devoted to it on their website.
If Republicans were better organized and as aggressive as the left, they would draw more attention to the activities of the left's shadowy organizations, and its internal feuds. The left is brilliant at focusing attention on divisions within the right, which ties up Republicans from getting much accomplished, and putting them on the defensive. Instead of letting the left decide that the debate is going to be about gay marriage, which the left is winning - especially if they have nothing else to distract them - Republicans should put the focus on the issues the left is divided on. If mass numbers of people on the right, particularly in leadership or media positions, started repeatedly bringing up the left's divided issues during interviews, TV appearances, and in written articles, the left would no longer control the dialogue.
Those of us on the right must start regularly monitoring the left. This means regularly checking in with the Twitter feeds #p2 and #ows for breaking news from the left. Sign up for email updates from their shadowy organizations. And start squawking loudly.