The extremists are taking over the party!

A few days ago, the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org began sending out emails seeking contributions to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who does not fully support “health care reform with a public option.” Now there’s an update: MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben says the group has raised $3,578,117 for the project and is thinking of new ways to punish errant Democratic lawmakers.

Haven’t we heard this somewhere before?  Oh yeah, from Obama lackey Valerie Jarrett:

White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said Scozzafava’s pullout under pressure “tells a lot about where the Republican leadership is right now.” They are “more and more extreme and more and more marginalized,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Hey, Val, you might want to give George Soros a ring and let him know he’s going to be marginalized.

No, really.

About 20 minutes earlier, a man on MoveOn.org’s side of the street crossed over and shouted “Why don’t you like the public option?” Several of the counter-protesters said that they don’t want the government to run everything. The MoveOn.org man got nose to nose with a short, gray-haired counter-protester, and sneered, “You’re an idiot.”

At that point, I’m told the victim either swung at or pushed his assailant’s face away with an open hand, and his finger entered his mouth.

[snip]

The MoveOn.org protester then allegedly bit off the finger up to the first knuckle, and spat it into the street where it was recovered by Bush.

(H/T) @jeffemanuel.

The Moveon.org zombie apparently then left.  At a walk.  And none of his Moveon.org colleagues stopped him.  And then they themselves later walked through the crime scene.

Again: wait, what?

Moe Lane

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I thought if any organization participated in helping get people to townhalls, that it was astroturfing. Or does that only apply to the right? Because I got this in my email box yesterday:

Dear MoveOn member,
I’m a MoveOn member like you, and I’m working with the local MoveOn Council to organize an event tomorrow in Warner Robins to make our voices heard for real health care reform.

The event is on Monday, Aug. 24, 2009, at 5:00 PM in Warner Robins. The location of our event is: Homer J Walker Jr Civic Center.

Here’s the event description:

Jim Marshall, a Blue Dog Democrat, will be having a Town Hall on Healthcare at the Homer Walker Center in Warner Robbins. As you may know, he is waffling on whether or not he will support public option. A group of us MoveOn members have come up with a line of questioning that will punch through his cynicism and get real on this real issue. Bring yourselves, a positive attitude, a “public option means more choices” sign, and your hope for a better America.

Please gather at the Center at 5pm so we can submit our questions early. Look for the women with the 7 Red Ballons out front. We will be with MoveOn. Again, look for the 7 Red Ballons!

I hope you can join me and other local MoveOn members. Click here for more details and to RSVP:

Yes, I’ll be there on Monday at 5 p.m.

Sorry, I can’t make it.

Thanks for all you do.
–Kimberlyn C., MoveOn member

P

Note to historians, the following is a list of strange consequences from Obama’s self-destructive health care reform obsession:

i) Spooked the conservative Democrats who are disrupting the Committee on Energy and Commerce markup and pending floor vote because of their policy concerns about the government option;
ii) telegraphed to the moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats that President Obama agrees with Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Chris Dodd and Chairman Waxman, in general, about the role of government in health care, making the plan an easy target for opponents;

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This morning a bomb went off outside a Starbucks in New York City.

This afternoon, I received this email from Justin Ruben at MoveOn.org:

You’ve probably heard about the illegal, anti-union tactics of retail giants like Walmart. But did you know that Starbucks has been found guilty of those same tactics?

Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ billionaire owner, has made it a priority to keep unions out of Starbucks. But our friends at Brave New Films are fighting back. They’ve put together a video documenting the harassment and intimidation that Starbucks workers have faced.

Check out the surprising video below and sign the memo telling Schultz that Starbucks must let workers exercise their rights and unionize.

Talk about bad timing. Way to go, MoveOn — first you defend terrorists during the war, then you attack a company that just had one of its stores bombed.

George Soros, MoveOn.org, the SEIU, the unions, and Barack Obama’s other supporters are pouring millions into the effort to put pressure on swing Democrats to support the Obama budget. Apparently their money is being wasted:

Aides to moderate Senate and House Democrats being targeted by ads and e-mail campaigns said their offices have fielded a relatively light volume of telephone calls, especially in comparison to the crushing response to debate on the economic stimulus package earlier this year.

The office of one Democratic senator targeted by several pro-budget media campaigns reported about 2,600 calls last week about the budget, a mere fraction of the amount of feedback generated by the stimulus debate…

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Remember when Clinton was in the White House? For the first time that I remember, the media had to start breaking out the polling between job and personality — that is, they had to separate out that the public really approved of the job Clinton was doing, but they thought he was a sleazy individual they personally did not much care for.

With Obama, we have the opposite. People love the guy, but they really don’t like his policies. As a result, the tactics Obama is deploying are different from what we are used to. Obama, himself, comes out at times trying to look stern while pensive, then he sends out the apparatchiks and goons.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Karl Rove goes into detail about those tactics.

Senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and her chief of staff, Michael Strautmanis, are in regular contact with MoveOn.Org, Americans United for Change and other liberal interest groups. Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina has collaborated with Americans United for Change on strategy and even ad copy. Ms. Jarrett invited leaders of the liberal interest groups to a White House social event with the president and first lady to kick off the lobbying campaign.

Were this a Republican administration, Henry Waxman would be demanding an investigation into the White House conspiring with outside elements in the “People’s House.” Can you imagine the reaction if Karl Rove met with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the White House? The left would be out on every television network with every media “analyst” speculating that the activity was illegal.

To sell an unpopular agenda, the White House has resorted to third party organizations to fight for Obama. And why? That’s the really important question.

It all goes back to the polling. Obama says he wants moderate policies. What he actually pushes are far left policies. He wants to keep his popularity rating high, so he cannot get out himself and sell his policies. He has to resort to left wing organizations to do the selling, lest he get tainted by his own agenda.

Relying on those organizations, Obama’s administration is directly collaborating on ad copy, messaging, and — most importantly — targets for the left to go after.

Look at the players: Americans United for Change and MoveOn.org. If you notice the pattern, after Obama publicly went after Rush Limbaugh, both organizations went on the attack against Rush. After Obama attacked Eric Cantor, both organizations attacked. After moderate Democratic Senators questioned the President’s budget proposals, both organizations went on the attack.

These organizations have become appendages of Barack Obama’s White House. We must make him own them and make him own his policies.

MoveOn once asked (link via Save the GOP) who would pay for the President’s deficit spending. Let’s ask again:

Try this if the embed fails.

I was in a debate a little while ago with a representative of MoveOn.org who got rather angry when I told him that his organization was going to wind up applying a lot more pressure on moderate Democrats than on Republicans over the next two years. He assured me that despite the defeat of dozens of swing-seat Republicans in the last two cycles, there were plenty of Republicans who would feel the heat and risk their political futures if they opposed the Obama agenda.

How quickly things change! It’s just a few weeks later, and MoveOn has apparently decided that the only elected officials with anything to fear from opposing Obama are Democrats in marginal seats. Here’s the message MoveOn is sending to my Senator (note that it’s a radio ad; I added the picture):

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