The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, condemning a “xenophobic and jingoistic” Republican Party and collection of GOP presidential candidates, declared that her left-leaning party has become the political center as a result.
“I think the left is the center of America right now,” said Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Adding “not the far left,” she told reporters, “I think the messages that come from left of center, that focus on reaching the cornerstones of a middle class life, are really where Americans are today.”
Democratic Party Chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Michael Bonfigli/Christian Science Monitor
By comparison, she said the Republicans are now a voice for the Tea Party. “The Republican Party voter is strangled by their right wing extremists, by their Tea Party base.”
While most polls show that the country remains centrist or center right in politics, her claim was that on balance, the Democrats and especially the Democratic presidential candidates are closer to where voters find themselves than the positions staked out by the Donald Trump-led GOP.
“If your question is that it’s now mainstream to believe that people should have the right to equality and reach the middle class and it’s off to the extreme right where the Republicans are because they’re wrong on all the issues, and they are the opposite of all the issues that I just described, then yes, I think America is leaning more toward where our party is focused,” she said at a media breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
She gave an example of GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz visiting with Kim Davis, the Kentucky court clerk who chose jail over issuing legal marriage certificates to gay couples.
“You’ve got Republican presidential candidates who think it’s OK to defy the United States Supreme Court and think it’s OK to do so, to deny people their constitutional rights. That’s where the Republican Party is,” said Wasserman Schultz, in her second term as party boss.
During the interview, she also took multiple shots at the GOP candidates, focusing on Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
On Rubio, she was especially harsh, charging that he pulled back support for immigration reform after party voters yelled.
That move, she said, “showed what a chicken Marco Rubio is. And I think the last thing voters want to do is elect a chicken who is going to stick his finger in the wind and see which way it blows. The last time I checked, the president of the United States has a pretty high pressure job and you can’t turn tail and run from tough decisions.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
