-By Warner Todd Huston
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, the Democrat Party suffered two embarrassments over its platform by the elimination both God and the capital of Israel from the document. Worse, when a move was made to reinsert them into the guiding positions of the party, the floor erupted in loud boos.
Earlier in the day news leaked out that the Democrat Party platform saw the word “God” removed from it. Hot on the heels of that news it was discovered that anti-Israel activists had also succeeded in removing the affirmation that Jerusalem is the rightful capital of the nation of Israel.
As the chattering classes in the news media wrangled over these deletions, the Democrat Party began to feel pressure to fix this sleight to God and our biggest Mid East ally, Israel.
The pressure built to the point where a move was made to put these items back into the platform. And so, on a voice vote from the podium at the convention, the changes were introduced to loud booing from the floor.
It was worse than a simple booing of support for Israel and God, though. The voice vote procedure was clearly rigged by the chair of the convention, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and the voice of the convention’s delegates was ignored.
With the two important issues removed from the platform, the Party needed to bring their reinsertion to a floor vote. Mayor Villaraigosa had the resolution to reinsert the words read to the convention and then called for a floor vote to approve it. The rules state that two thirds of the floor needed to agree to the change for it to be approved.
Villaraigosa’s first attempt brought as many voices saying they didn’t want God and Jerusalem back in the platform as those that did.
At first Villaraigosa thought to just say that the resolution was passed, but he immediately realized that would be wrong. Confused, he tried the voice vote again. Again the nays were at least as loud as the yeas. A third time Villaraigosa called for a voice vote and even though the results were again even, he simply declared the change approved.
Clearly this was a railroaded issue. Obviously the Party was embarrassed by the news of the removal of these words and wanted them reinserted no matter what the party delegates wanted. Democrats put the lie to their own claim of being interested in democracy.
Here is a photo supplied by Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren to prove it.
But let’s also note that this means that at least half the delegates at this convention were against religion and Israel both being put in the Party platform.
The new language about Jerusalem now reads, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”
It has also been reported that Obama had reviewed the new platform language before the controversy began and had seen nothing wrong with it. But once the furor began, they say the president contacted the convention officials and insisted the two part be reinserted. But, it seems the fact is Obama was not bothered by any of this until a fuss was kicked up.
This isn’t the only controversy that Democrats had over Israel this week. On Monday night Democrat National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was caught lying saying that she heard Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren state that Republicans are “dangerous for Israel.”
Oren denied ever having said anything like that, saying, “I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”
And to prove that the Democrats never had any intention at all to actually pay attention to and abide by any two-thirds vote, Villaraigosa was reading his prearranged instructions right from the teleprompter.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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