When Mark Kennedy resigned as chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party and launched his new group, the Alabama Democratic Majority, he indicated that he’d support Republicans and Independents in races where he didn’t think a Democrat could win.
Apparently he’s willing to support socialists too — seriously.
On Thursday of this week, Kennedy’s crew will host “An Evening with Senator Bernie Sanders,” the U.S. Senate’s first and only self-avowed socialist.
Sanders doesn’t shy away from his beliefs — far from it, actually. He’s rather proud of his socialist ideology and wishes the United States would look to our European brethren rather than our Founding Fathers when considering what type of economic system we should have in the future.
“Branding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by members of the American right, from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh,” Sanders wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed a couple of years back. “Whether we live in Burlington, Vt., or Montgomery, Ala., we should be prepared to study and learn from the successes of social-democratic countries.”
Sanders bemoaned the fact that the U.S. government doesn’t force employers to give their employees months of paid vacation each year.
“We should begin to look at other countries in Europe where people get by law five, six weeks paid vacation,” he told his pal Bill Maher.
Of course, Sanders’ socialist rants didn’t stop him from launching the decidedly capitalistic venture of peddling a book titled, “The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class.”
During the filibuster that Sanders turned into a 288-page paperback attack on greedy free-marketeers, he said that “the rich” are “crybabies” who are “making out like bandits.” He lamented that “greed” is like “a sickness” that is similar to a heroin addiction.
As with any socialist, the goal of his rhetoric is to create the most destructive class warfare possible. By dehumanizing people who Sanders arbitrarily designates as “rich,” he can rationalize taking the money they’ve earned. It also helps him and his fellow leftists deflect the fact that our real problem is an addiction to spending, not a lack of government revenue.
Hey Senator, the rest of us think $2.5 Trillion a year is plenty of money to run a country.
Back in Alabama, it’s become nothing short of comical to watch Mark Kennedy pretend that his optimistically-named Alabama Democratic Majority is going to be any more successful than the Alabama Democratic Party he bailed on. The glaring problem for both groups is that their values and beliefs are simply our of touch with the vast majority of Alabamians.
I can’t imagine anything illustrating that more clearly than trying to raise money in Alabama by bringing in a socialist.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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