Scott Spiegel

Image by Scott Spiegel via Flickr

The Casey Anthony murder trial is the most depressing case currently working its way through the American court system, not just for the shocking and horrifying actions alleged, but for the way in which it embodies the prevalent left-wing worldview of phony victimhood.

All evidence suggests that 22-year-old Florida mother Casey Anthony killed her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, so she could resume the hard-partying lifestyle she enjoyed before she accidentally got pregnant with and gave birth to Caylee.

According to prosecutors, Anthony coldly, methodically drugged her daughter with chloroform, covered her mouth with duct tape to asphyxiate her, stuffed her dead body in a plastic bag, stowed it in the trunk of her car, concocted an elaborate series of lies to tell authorities and family regarding Caylee’s absence, and later dumped her daughter’s body in a swamp.

Anthony’s attorneys’ brilliant defense against the mass of forensic evidence the prosecutors presented to support their case was that Caylee actually fell in the family’s above-ground swimming pool and drowned—a claim for which they offered not a drop of physical evidence.  The accident happened due to neglect from Anthony which, they argued, was justified because she had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

In fact, the claim of sexual abuse was betrayed by such a complete lack of evidence during the trial that the judge refused to even let the defense utter it again in their closing arguments.

Defense attorneys couldn’t explain why Anthony would cover up an accidental death rather than call 911, why Anthony’s father would help cover up the death of his beloved granddaughter, why Anthony’s car’s trunk had traces of chloroform in it, or why Caylee’s skull had rotting strips of duct tape over its mouth and nose.

The defense called Caylee’s death an “accident that snowballed out of control”—you know, like when the hundreds of children who drown every year are whisked away by their conspiratorial mothers and grandfathers, wrapped in duct tape to make their deaths look like homicides, crammed in a car trunk for two weeks, and plunked in a nearby swamp.  Those sorts of everyday out-of-control accidents.

Anthony refused to take the stand, no doubt because she knew prosecutors would tear her testimony to shreds.  Even defense attorneys conceded that this congenital liar’s credibility was moot, due to the complicated, detailed fabrications she had fed investigators and her parents for a month after Caylee’s death.  These lies included nonexistent friends, a phony job at Universal Studios, a fake Mexican nanny scapegoat named “Zanny” who supposedly kidnapped Caylee, and an imaginary father for her daughter.

Inspection of Anthony’s computer’s hard drive revealed that in the months leading up to Caylee’s death, someone had done internet searches on phrases such as “how to make chloroform,” “neck-breaking,” and “ruptured spleen and death.”

There hasn’t been a case this open-and-shut since the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Naturally, where Simpson’s defense team argued that he was innocent because police who investigated the crime might have been racist, Anthony’s defense team argued that the outrageously suspicious actions Anthony performed after Caylee’s death were plausible because of the “abuse” Casey had experienced as a child.

Suppose even for a minute that you believed the defense’s crackpot theory about Anthony covering up an accidental death and making it look like a homicide because she “panicked.”  The victimhood excuse they offered for her actions reflects the trendy modern worldview that people are not responsible for their actions, but are rather the product of societal forces beyond their control that push them to and fro like trash on the beach.  Anthony’s defense attorneys argued that her elaborate lies were proof, not that she was a calculating liar who was responsible for the crime all evidence suggests she committed, but that she needed help and compassion because there was “something wrong with her.”  Is there any other era in American history in which attorneys would cast someone like Casey Anthony as the victim in this trial with a straight face?

Lead defense attorney Jose Baez argued that Anthony couldn’t help telling bald-faced lies about her daughter, because the sexual abuse from her father had “trained” her to lie about stressful events.  That’s funny—I don’t recall, say, concentration camp survivors becoming pathological liars who cover up every misstep in their lives because they were “trained” to lie about stressful events.

Even prosecutor Jeff Ashton succumbed to this passive, victim-oriented stance in the language of his closing arguments: “[T]he conflict between the life that she wanted and the life that was thrust upon her was simply irreconcilable.”

Thrust upon her?  There was only one act of thrusting in this sorry saga, and Casey Anthony was fully amenable to it.

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Everyone’s bemoaning Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s “political” decision to run for Senate as an Independent instead of a Republican, since he knows he’d lose the primary to Marco Rubio.

Everyone’s missing the point.

The political rule-bending is tied to the ideology.  Liberals and centrists are more likely to bend the rules to win elections and votes than conservatives.  It’s part of their political philosophy.

Behold the following Democratic party-hoppers in recent years:

•    Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republicans in 2001 to swing the balance to Democrats early in George W. Bush’s first term, after being promised cushier arrangements by Democratic leaders

•    Liberal Mayor Mike Bloomberg switched from Republican to Independent in 2007 to garner greater support for his nanny-state governing style in New York

•    Arlen Specter left the Republicans for the Democrats last year in anticipation of a difficult primary race

•    New York Senate Democrats Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada, Jr. became Republicans temporarily last summer in an attempt to enhance their leadership positions, then switched back to being Democrats when their bid failed

•    RINO Dede Scozzafava endorsed Democratic candidate Bill Owens over conservative Doug Hoffman after dropping out of NY-23 last November

Also witness the following liberal rule-bending over the last decade:

•    Al Gore’s campaign pushed for hand recounts using loosened standards in select counties in the 2000 Florida presidential recount

•    Democrats won other elections by finding judges to approve different counting standards in Minnesota (Al Franken, Senate) and Washington (Christine Gregoire, Governor)

•    New Jersey Democrats put Frank Lautenberg on the ballot in 2002 after their candidate Robert Torricelli was hit with corruption charges, despite a law on the books against changing candidates so late in the election

•    Massachusetts Democrats withheld the right of Republican Governor Mitt Romney to appoint a successor in 2004 if John Kerry became president, then changed the rules in 2009 so Governor Deval Patrick could install a Democrat to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat until the special election

•    Mayor Bloomberg successfully pushed in 2007 to change the rule he had argued for in 2001 that had prevented Republican Rudy Guiliani from serving more than two terms, so that Bloomberg could go on to serve three terms himself

•    Democrats recently maneuvered to pass their health care bill, including using budget reconciliation to overcome a non-filibuster-proof Senate majority and an unenforceable executive order banning abortion funding to overcome their absence of a House majority in favor of the bill

In contrast, whenever a conservative abandons Democrats, it’s almost always due to newfound disdain for the party’s agenda.  It also almost always seems to happen at a completely inconsequential time, when there’s no crucial vote at stake or favors to be handed out, or even when the candidate has something to lose.

Alabama Representative Parker Griffith switched parties last December, citing revulsion over the direction in which House leaders were taking the country.  Griffith did not switch to join a majority party like Specter or improve his electoral chances like Crist—he did it because, as he put it, Democratic leaders “continue to push an agenda focused on massive new spending, tax increases, bailouts, and a health care bill that is bad for our healthcare system…  [A]fter watching this agenda firsthand, I now believe that the differences in the two parties could not be more clear, and that… I must align myself with the Republican party.”

New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg rejected President Obama’s offer of Commerce Secretary last year, after having met with Obama about the position and coordinated with Governor John Lynch to name a replacement Senator.  When Gregg got a closer look at Obama’s massive stimulus proposal and plans to politicize the Census, he ran for the hills.  There was nothing opportunistic above Gregg’s move—if anything, it cost him a prestigious position and soured his relations with the new administration.

Texas Representative Ralph Hall became a Republican in 2004 after 54 years of being a moderate Democrat.  Rumors had been circulating since the Republican Revolution that he would switch parties, but he didn’t do so when it was expedient, preferring instead to “pull my party back toward the middle.”  Hall was instrumental in forming the moderate coalition of Blue Dog Democrats.  After years of watching his party bash President Bush over Iraq, Hall changed parties, explaining, “When the country is at war you need to support the president.  Some of my fellow congressmen have not been doing that.”  Far from showering him with plumb assignments, Republican leaders refused to allocate funding for Hall’s district—as Hall said, “the only reason I was given was that I was a Democrat.”  The party eventually embraced him; but the point is that Hall did not switch for political opportunism, but rather at great cost to himself.

Virginia Representative Virgil Goode switched parties in 2000 after Democrats gave him hell over voting for three of the articles of impeachment against President Clinton.  Goode is rather ideologically conservative anyway, having voted for the Iraq War, the surge, and tough anti-amnesty immigration and veterans’ rights legislation.  He won reelection in 2000 as an Independent—a politically risky move, but one that genuinely reflected his evolving ideology—before joining the Republicans in 2002.

While hawkish Senator Joe Lieberman did leave the Democratic Party in 2006 to run in the general election as an Independent Democrat, he at least had the guts to face his opponent Ned Lamont in the primary first.  Lieberman did not, like Crist, go around quoting Abraham Lincoln, saying that he was switching parties so he could better serve the cause of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and that his change in party had nothing—absolutely nothing!—to do with his reelection prospects.

There’s a reason liberals and moderates are more likely to switch parties or bend election rules in their favor.  They do not, at their core, all the way down, believe in a stable, predictable rule of law, as clearly stated and adhered to by all citizens in a system of government known as a republic.  They believe in doing whatever they can get away with, if they can convince enough people at the time that it’s right for them to do it—hence the “democracy” in Democratic.

Show me a DINO who bolted for the Republican Party for ulterior motives, and I’ll show you a rare creature indeed.



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