Eliot Spitzer has become the third rail of politics.
Michelle Malkin [1] notes:
Lonely. He’s Mr. Lonely. He has nobody [2]to call his ooown:
Democratic members of Congress, having watched Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stumble on the question of whether states should give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, are growing increasingly agitated over Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to do so and are calling for him to shelve the idea.
The opposition is especially strong among Democrats bracing for the prospect of tough re-election battles next year in politically moderate and conservative regions of New York; they have begun to speak out on the issue and, in many cases, have disavowed the plan.
“It’s hugely unpopular,” said Representative Michael Arcuri, a first-term Democrat from central New York whom Republicans hope to defeat next year. “I don’t think it would be wise to move forward with it at this point.”
The governor’s aides have been quietly working to mollify lawmakers, and Mr. Spitzer will meet behind closed doors with members of New York’s Congressional delegation next week, according to staff workers on Capitol Hill and in Albany.
The reaction among some Democrats underscores how Mr. Spitzer, who just a year ago was viewed as a rising star nationally, has become isolated within his own party.
I wonder where all these people have been as illegal alien driver’s licenses plans have taken hold across the country.
The bottom line, here, is that until it became a major issue here in New York, on the wings of a comment or two from Rush Limbaugh Neal Boortz as well as local talk show hosts across the country… and until it started showing up here on the ‘sphere, nobody had ever bother questioning the policy before. Nobody in the news media, at least. When the questions finally came about, they were solely and completely the movement of the the new media. This is not triumphalism, but a mere recognition of fact.
The Democrats are pack animals. They will go wherever the lead dog goes, because their vision never seems to get beyond the backside of the dog in front of them. (Lick, lick)
[3] They never quite get to the point where they think about where they’re going; where they’ve been, or the wisdom of it all. So, you have to wonder what’s driving their reaction, now. They are backing off this idea the way a crowd will back off from someone in a bed sheet standing in the middle of a market square who is yelling “Allah is Great”.. But…are they backing off this idea, because they finally see, with the remainder of the American people, that driver’s licenses for illegals is a bad idea ? Or are they simply seeing the political cost to their own careers for supporting what their leaders dragged them into? Are they backing off because like the people in the market, they see their own swift destruction is at hand if they don’t run like hell? I think it more properly the latter of the two. As I say, Pack animals. Independent thought does not seem to be a sought after commodity within the democrat party today.
There is so much that the American people have learned about the democrats in this little exercise, that I wonder about the damage inflicted on them… if it’s going to be recoverable in a year.