Give Us Liberty

David Horowitz: Democratic Party Will Disappear From the Political Scene

November 21st, 2010

Conservative activist and best-selling author David Horowitz tells Newsmax that the Democratic Party has been “seized by a religious cult” of leftists and will go the way of the 19th-century Whig Party — disappearing from the political scene.
He also declares that giving terrorist suspects the rights of American citizens and trying them in civilian courts is “a form of national suicide” and says the tea party movement is a “huge development” that will keep Republicans true to conservative principles.
Horowitz is founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, founder of Students for Academic Freedom, and co-author of “The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.”
Conservative activist and best-selling author David Horowitz tells Newsmax that the Democratic Party has been “seized by a religious cult” of leftists and will go the way of the 19th-century Whig Party — disappearing from the political scene.
He also declares that giving terrorist suspects the rights of American citizens and trying them in civilian courts is “a form of national suicide” and says the tea party movement is a “huge development” that will keep Republicans true to conservative principles.
Horowitz is founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, founder of Students for Academic Freedom, and co-author of “The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.”
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He was interviewed by Newsmax.TV while hosting Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, Fla., a gathering of key players in the conservative movement, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann — seeking ways to exploit the “window of opportunity” afforded by the recent Republican gains in the midterm elections.
A civilian court on Wednesday cleared terrorist suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of all but one of the 285 charges he faced stemming from the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Horowitz was asked what effect the verdict would have on the administration’s plan to try other terrorist suspects in civilian courts.
“It’s completely over. This jury managed to convict him of plotting to blow up a building in which hundreds of people were killed but couldn’t convict him of killing the people,” says Horowitz, whose most recent book is “Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign for an Academic Bill Of Rights.”
“Our civilian courts are set up to protect the innocent to such an extent that they protect the guilty.
“When you have the trial of a terrorist, there are national security secrets involved. That is, the way we gather intelligence has to be protected from our enemies, because if they know how we gather it then we can’t gather it that way. So you can’t present the evidence in court without destroying our capabilities. That’s why you should never try a terrorist in a civilian court.
“The Obama administration is a left-wing administration and therefore it believes that America is guilty. We’re the predators, and to atone for our sins we have to show people that we will bend over backwards — really it’s a form of national suicide — to demonstrate that we will give rights to people who want to kill us and have no rights as American citizens, and somehow demonstrate to the world that we’ve turned over a new leaf and we’re not going to be the bad guys anymore.”
He adds: “This is just one of the many catastrophes they’ve dreamed up for us.”
Asked about the political problems the Democrats face in the wake of their poor showing in the midterm elections, Horowitz declares: “The Democratic Party has been seized by a religious cult. I like to call it neocommunism. You can call them socialists. You can call them leftists. Because of their religion, they believe that Obamacare, for example, is the door to a brave new world, to a future where everybody’s going to be equal and taken care of.
“They want a government-controlled medical system because they want a government-controlled socialized system.
“So they can’t accept the reality that the American people have rejected this and it’s never going to happen.
“This is not the old Democratic Party. These people see themselves as visionaries, as an army of the saints marching through the electoral process opposed by the army of Satan, which is us. And nothing is going to cure that mentality except a colossal drubbing at the polls. They’re going to have to lose for years to change.”
Horowitz believes the polarization of the Republicans and Democrats into a left-wing party and a conservative party has been taking place since the George McGovern presidential campaign in 1972. And now, he says, it has reached “a tipping point.”
The Democratic Party is “now a socialist party,” Horowitz tells Newsmax. “Traditional Democrats are a tiny minority within the party.
“This is going to proceed until the Democratic Party reduces itself to such a minority that it can’t win, which is going to be hard to do because the Democrats have wedded people to the state — half the country is getting a government check for something or other — so it’s going to be a long process.”
Asked whether the far-left Democrats have alienated Americans to the point that they will go the way of the Whig Party and simply disappear from the political scene, Horowitz responds: “Yes. [But] it’s a long process.”
Will it happen in this lifetime? he was asked.
“Oh yeah, I would say that. Some people’s lifetime. I wouldn’t say in my lifetime.”
The tea party movement will keep elected Republicans “honest” to conservative principles by carefully monitoring what they do while in office, Horowitz says.
“The tea party is the most important thing that’s happened to the conservative movement in America, and to the Republican Party, since the Second World War. This is a huge development, because until now the right has not had a grass-roots movement that will keep the Republican Party honest.
“Politicians, when they go to Washington, they’ve got to deal, they’ve got these complex constituencies. There’s always this temptation that nobody’s looking — we’ll make these deals, they’re practical and we’ll get re-elected.
“What’s driving the Democratic Party to the left is the grassroots movements, like the so-called anti-war movement, which is really just an anti-America movement, and these socialist unions.
“Why would they re-elect Nancy Pelosi [to the House speaker’s post] to lead them when she just led them through a disaster? That’s because Pelosi controls all the money. She is a reliable force for the SEIU. These unions are run by people with a communist mentality, which Nancy Pelosi shares.
“So the tea party movement is our answer to that, and the only hope we have of keeping the Republican Party honest is that they’re going to look over [Republicans’] shoulders.”
Horowitz argues that security officials are going too far with their use of body scanners and intimate pat-downs of passengers at airports.
“The left has got into control of our government and it is the radical party line that we can’t look for the terrorists,” he says.
“Where are the terrorists? They come from Middle Eastern countries. We can’t even have special screening, which we should have, for anybody who comes from a Middle Eastern through our airports. You profile who the likely terrorists might be and you screen those people. You don’t screen old ladies in wheelchairs.”