Stretching for a Connection

Since State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has publicly admitted to “deliberately effing” with Democrats, I read a post of his over on Red County/OC Blog about his efforts to build more nuclear power plants in California.  As laudable as solving our energy dependence needs are, Chuck engages in broad sweeping and inaccurate comments that he attributes to Democrats that have no basis in actual reality.  But when Chuck says something, no matter how outrageous, as long as he believes it, it’s the truth.
Chuck made a comment that “population reduction” was a policy of Democrats, citing some long standing positions from the Sierra Club dated from 1974 and 1995.  While this might be a position of the Sierra Club, which supports Democrats and Green Party candidates more often than Republicans, it is not stated policy of the Democratic Party.  But Chuck says it is. 

My trip to the Sierra Club web site showed significantly more references to family planning and slowing population growth, but precious little on population reduction.
 
Chuck is employing a common right wing tactic of conflating fringe left wing individuals or organizations and lumping them into official positions of the entire Democratic Party or “liberals” in general.  This while attributing his own fringe views as matching those of the majority of Californians or Americans even though right wing conservatives represent about 30-35 percent of the state’s and nation’s political thinking (see the recent Pew Research poll on where average Americans lean politically; hint, it’s Democratic). 

And it appears the only time left wingers have value to Chuck is when my might agree with his position; those endorsements are always front and center, but easily dismissed when disagreed with.  I’m glad Chuck sees value in union support for nuclear power; it would be nice if Chuck supported unions in general too.

Here’s a quote from Chuck’s post:
 
According to Democrats, we can make up the loss of coal with solar, wind, further conservation, and “population reduction.”  Solar is expensive while wind is cost effective – when it is windy…. (Interesting fact: according to UC Berkeley professor Per Peterson, a nuclear expert who testified on my bill, wind power takes 10 times the amount of steel and cement to generate the equivalent amount of electricity as nuclear power.)  Meanwhile, California is the most energy-efficient state in America; further energy conservation will likely not be enough.  And, “population reduction” is a term that has very unsettling public policy implications
I asked Chuck about attribution of his population reduction comment and got this response:
I was asked about this issue in an interview on my nuclear power bill a few days ago. I was rather taken aback, given the unsettling issues surrounding the whole Malthusian intent of “population reduction.”
As it is, “population reduction” is quite a common strain of thought in the environmental left. I direct your attention to the Sierra Club website where you will see the following from their policy declaration Adopted by the Board of Directors, May 4-5, 1974; and amended July 8, 1995.
I was unable to find reference to “population reduction” on the ABC link provided by Chuck; it wasn’t found in text or in video.  I’m not saying Chuck made it up, I’m saying its not there.

The Sierra Club does not have an official role with positions of the Democratic Party of liberals in general, but since Chuck has established the rules of the game, I am happy to play along. 
Below, courtesy of Media Matters.org, are 11 of the most outrageous statements made by conservatives in 2006 (thought I am certain Ann Coulter’s reference to John Edwards as a “faggot” will make the 2007 list).  I would submit that these statements represent the positions of Republicans and Conservatives today. 

Is this a fair representation of the views of the Republican Party or Chuck?  Of course not, but when you paint the left with a broad brush please be prepared to have some splatter come back your way on the backwards stroke.

William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: “Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn’t care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face.” [2/9/06]

Fox News host John Gibson: “Do your duty. Make more babies. That’s a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days. First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call ‘gabachos’ — white people — are having fewer.” [5/11/06]

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on The New York Times‘ decision to report on the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic wiretapping program and a Treasury Department financial transaction tracking program: The Times had done “something that could have gotten them executed, certainly did get [Julius and Ethel] Rosenberg[] executed.” [7/12/06]

Coulter responding to Hardball host Chris Matthews’ question, “How do you know that [former President] Bill Clinton’s gay?”: “I don’t know if he’s gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore — total fag.” [7/27/06]

Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage: “That’s why the department store dummy named Wolf Blitzer, a Jew who was born in Israel, will do the astonishing act of being the type that would stick Jewish children into a gas chamber to stay alive another day. He’s probably the most despicable man in the media next to Larry King, who takes a close runner-up by the hair of a nose. The two of them together look like the type that would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis.” [8/7/06]

Coulter on Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), an African-American: “Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against [Sen. Joseph I.] Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn’t involve wearing a paper hat. Waters also considers Joe ‘soft’ on the issue of the CIA inventing crack cocaine and AIDS to kill all the black people in America.” [8/9/06]

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, blaming America’s “obesity crisis” on “the left,” “liberal government,” and “food stamps”: “Because we are sympathetic, we are compassionate people, we have responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity. At least here in America, didn’t teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn’t teach them how to butcher a — slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter. The real bloat here, as we know, is in — is in government.” [8/29/06]

Coulter on Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI): “They Shot the Wrong Lincoln.” [8/30/06]

Conservative pundit and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: “Look, [Rep. Jim] Kolbe [R-AZ] is gay. He is an out-of-the-closet gay. [Rep. Mark] Foley [R-FL] was gay. The House clerk who was in charge of the pages [Jeff Trandahl] was gay. Foley’s administrative assistant, Mr. [Kirk] Fordham, The New York Times tell us, was gay. You hear about a lot of others. What’s going on here, Joe [Scarborough, MSNBC host], is basically these, this little mafia in there looked upon the pages, I guess, as their — sort of their personal preserve. And it stinks to high heaven what was done. And it stinks to high heaven that it was not exposed and these types of people, thrown out by the Republican Party.” [10/9/06]

CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck to Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN): “OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. … With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, ‘Let’s cut and run.’ And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ ” [11/14/06]

Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian … is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?” [12/18/06]