Nothing so sweet as the Left eating its own. The fact is that Emanuel is a Chicago machine political thug and hack. It should have been a sobering thought to voters (maybe it would have if the media had done its job) that Barack Obama is a graduate of the same slash and burn Cook County politics. The irony of it all is that the progressives do not hate him for being the thug that he is but because he is not throwing enough red meat their direction – sort of similar to the argument that Howard Dean tried to put out that Scott Brown’s victory was because the public wanted a more progressive form of health care! If we are (and should be) judged by the company we keep, then Obama keeps some pretty awful company.
by Jon Ward
A remarkable thing is happening to Rahm Emanuel: he is losing his aura of invincibility.
A year ago, Emanuel was the untouchable attack dog for a president on top of the world.
Now, according to some liberal critics, he is “a cowardly, petty, small-minded thug.”
Discontent among liberal progressives against President Obama’s chief of staff has been bubbling for some time. It’s now nearing a boiling point.
And the narrative emerging from those who hate Emanuel is far different from the one that has been built up over the last few years about the political knife fighter from Chicago.
“The beltway crowd thinks of him as rough and tumble,” said a well-placed leader in the netroots community.
“Progressives see him as weak-kneed because they don’t think he’s fighting for them on anything really.”
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The story of Emanuel in 1992, after Bill Clinton was elected president, driving a steak knife into a table and shouting, “Dead!” over and over as he named off political enemies, was told again and again.
That story is now being reinterpreted by the ascendant liberal grassroots, which has grown disillusioned with the Obama White House.
“You’re not a tough guy if your first thought upon assuming the power of the presidency is to take it and use it to punish your enemies. You’re a cowardly, petty, small-minded thug,” said Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, a liberal blog that has been one of the most vocal critics of the health-care bill.
Tags: Jon Ward, Rahm Emanuel
