Attaque à Outrance

In what can only be characterized as unhinged criticism, Donald Trump's candidate for labor secretary, Andy Puzder, is bring criticized by the self-appointed PC police of the Left as a misogynist. Why? Because Puzder's company, hamburger chain Carl's Jr., uses beautiful bikini-clad women in their TV commercials.

So ... we have white supremacists, war mongers, misogynists, climate "deniers," rich people, corporate executives, women-in-name-only because they are conservative, and every other evil-doer imaginable among Trump's cabinet appointees. My. Oh. My.

As I noted a few posts ago, the Left's attacks on Trump and his appointee is have transitioned from heartfelt to embarrassing. Except for fellow leftists, their frenzied criticism isn't viewed as thoughtful, it's being viewed as unhinged rants made by sore losers who can't come to grips with the fact that they lost, and can't seem to process the reasons for that loss.

Conservative writer Ralph Benko comments:

The left is in a state of frenzy about the election of Donald Trump. The soft left would do well to follow the example of President Obama, himself a man of the soft left, and detach itself from the hysterics of the hard left.

Political defeat is interpreted not as a signal that the Democrats have moved too far left. It is interpreted to mean that they have not moved far enough left. Being a paleoconservative my instinct is to cheer them on. If the left moves much further left it will fall right off the edge of the Earth and on to the shell of the turtle on which the world rests. That said, society needs a healthy, rather than frenzied, left.

The French, naturally, have a phrase for what the left is doing: attaque à outrance. It means “attack to excess.”

I think that's more than accurate. There is an excess in hand wringing, an excess in personal attacks, and an excess in protest, and I'm afraid it won't stop. As a consequence, the hard left is in danger of committing political suicide.

As I have noted many times in this blog, our country needs rational opposition to keep the party in power from excess. The GOP served well in that capacity for the past eight years. But if the opposition itself uses attaque à outrance as the left appears to be doing, it will be viewed not as a rational opponent, but as bitter ideologues. That's not good for the left, and it's certainly not good for the country.

Benko encourages a more rational approach from the left when he writes:

... The soft left uses soft power in pursuit of social justice. Social justice is a very good thing. The hard left uses hard power in pursuit of a romantic utopian, semi-totalitarian state. This never ends well. It is my concern that the hard left not drag the soft left with them over the edge.

Maybe someone should mention this to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

UPDATE-1:
----------------------
Sore loser syndrome is in full flower among the Clintonistas. The Wall Street Journal comments:

Only a few weeks ago Hillary Clinton’s campaign was denouncing Donald Trump as un-American for saying the election might be “rigged.” We criticized Mr. Trump at the time. But now that Mrs. Clinton has lost, her campaign is claiming the election really was rigged, albeit for Mr. Trump by Russian meddling, and it wants the Electoral College to stage what amounts to a coup.

That’s the only way to interpret the extraordinary statement Monday by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta endorsing a special intelligence briefing for electors a week before they cast their ballots for President on Dec. 19. He released the statement hours after 10 members of the Electoral College sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeking information on foreign interference in the election to judge if Mr. Trump “is fit to serve.” One of those electors is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.

“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security. Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed,” Mr. Podesta said. “We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

What should really distress Americans is that the losers are trying to overturn the election results based on little more than anonymous leaks and innuendo. Whatever Russia’s hacking motives, there is no evidence that the emails it turned up were decisive to the election result. Mr. Podesta is citing a CIA judgment that Americans have never seen and whose findings are vaguely public only because one or more unidentified officials chose to relate them to a few reporters last week.

This is attaque à outrance in full flower. The Dems have officially taken a step over the edge.

Funny how the narrative shifts when idiocy moves left. As the WSJ notes, when Trump suggested (mildly, I might add) that he'd wait until election results were in before accepting the result, the media screams his remarks were deemed "unamerican." When Clinton people do far worse, suggesting that a legitimate democratic vote be overturned, it's their "solemn responsiblity."

Unhinged? You betcha.

UPDATE-2:
---------------------
Sometime it's hard not to laugh. This from the Blake Neff:

Wisconsin’s presidential election recount ended Monday with President-elect Donald Trump expanding his lead over former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The recount was requested by former Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who cited concerns about hacking and voter fraud to justify the recount. Stein raised more than $3.5 million in donations to finance the effort.

But instead of exposing widespread fraud on Trump’s behalf, the recount found no major discrepancies and expanded Trump’s lead. After a week and a half of recounting, the final tally discovered 1,769 more votes than were counted on election night, and Trump’s lead increased by 162 votes.

The increase in Trumps’s lead amounts to one vote for every $21,605 spent by Stein.

Funny that the main stream media didn't carry this story after trumpeting the recount for days and days.