Some political metaphors come easily.
Like this one: our dog Watson is a Goldendoodle. Kind, intelligent, protective, and selectively vocal. He barks at squirrels, passing trucks, loud motorcycles, and other dogs on the move.
In other words, he barks at things that exist.
A smaller dog lives across the pond from us, and to protect his identity, let's call him Richard Noggin. It barks, too. A lot! But, not at things; he barks for hours at nothing, into the void. Simply, it's sound and fury in a little package. When its owners leave, they let it out on their upper deck.
I'm convinced the dog is sweet, but his owners are the problem. I like to think of them as many modern liberals are often described: proud of never correcting bad behavior. Worse, it appears they treat the noise as a virtue.
Watson, in this comparison, represents the Right. Richard Noggin represents the 2025 version of the Left.
Watson, in his wise and compassionate way, chose me as his human after my increasingly intelligent and attractive wife and I started spending time together. (He was Winston's younger brother.) Watson has always been clever in ways that surprise you. Here's a quick example showing his brains. Watson's greatest activity, next to me petting him, is playing ball. Late one afternoon, I wasn't able to find a ball because of the bright glare from the sun. After he tired of waiting for me, without command or coaxing, he trotted to where the ball lay, paused right next to it, then calmly trotted back to the center of the yard to wait for me.
What Watson did was recognize the problem, help solve it, and then continue the process. When it's working, it's an accurate representation of the Right: responsive, productive, and able to shut up when the job is done.
In other words, Scott Jennings with Abby Phillip, or Tom Cotton, taking apart a failed Senate ambush. The quiet, forceful energy of Trump-appointed judges committing Herculean efforts to restore sanity to the courts, like Emil Bove, who was recently confirmed despite the Democrats' shrieking.
Writing at our sister site, RedState, Bob Hoge called their opposition histrionic, which did nothing but waste time.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), meanwhile, called him a "Trumpian henchman." Such leadership, Chuck, such an effort to unite. Bove had an answer: "I am not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer," the newly minted judge said during confirmation hearings. "I’m a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this."
Conservatives like Watson bark when something matters. Liberals like Noggin just bark.
Across the pond, Richard Noggin (get it?) is the Energizer Bunny that never stops barking at clouds, breezes, and imaginary threats for hours. It's nothing malicious, just reflexive, incessant, droning noise.
That's the current Democratic Party.
Let's start with Cory Booker, who recently melted down on the Senate floor to accuse his fellow Democrats of having a blasé attitude about "Trump fight'n." RedState's Bonchie highlighted Booker's core argument that "Orange Man is just that bad."
He just kept going and going, screaming at the top of his lungs, pretending to be a warrior as if he were storming the beaches of Normandy. He wasn't, though, and that's what makes this so pathetic. This package of bills is not controversial, which is why Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) co-sponsored them with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-TX).
Yet, Booker gave that deranged speech as a response to Cortez Masto daring to put partisanship aside for something as nonpartisan as funding law enforcement.
Even John Sexton, writing at another of our sister sites, HotAir, pointed out how Booker’s rants reveal the party’s hollowness: tired of “all the winning,” but unable to articulate what a Democrat win even looks like anymore (source).
Booker apparently never showed up during the markup sessions when those bills were being put together, but he did show up yesterday to have a tantrum about the bills and demand an amendment, which Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Amy Klobuchar saw as a poison pill.
...
Booker responds with the worst insult known to Democrats; he again suggests Sen. Klobuchar, and really all Senate Dems, are "complicit" with President Trump.
We can't forget our favorite creepy uncle, Senator Chuck Schumer. Despite the economy and the GDP "unexpectedly" improving, Chuck can't acknowledge the progress; he goes full Eeyore. Instead of the Senate letterhead, the phrase, "The Sky is Falling," should be centered and bold at the top of the paper.
I get that it must not be a great time to be Chuck Schumer (or Elizabeth Warren), seeing that your party is in shambles, you’re directionless, and your nemesis is running out of room in his trophy case because he just keeps winning. But to take good news for America and talk about ominous monsters “lurking under the hood” is a really bad look, and shows us yet again why you are in the position you are in.
It’s not a strategy; it’s barking. A lot of loud, continuous barking.
As if you need further proof, there's the reaction to Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad. In the now "infamous" campaign, cleverly tagged "Good Jeans," the actress showed classic denim in a way that the left found triggering. Leftist media, but I repeat myself, accused American Eagle of promoting such racist tropes as "whiteness," "eugenics," and, if you can believe it, Nazi-era propaganda aesthetics.
What in the name of all that is good was American Eagle thinking?
My PJ Media teammate Rick Moran nailed it on the nose when describing it as "Cultural earthquake," not because the ad had a message, but because the Left ran out of things to bark about.
The poor dears were particularly upset when one of the ads mentioned "genes" and where Ms. Sweeney got her incredible good looks.
She says a word that sounds like “jeans,” and then says they “are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.”
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more. She sort of left out what the Brits say are "the naughty bits."
“My jeans are blue," says the innocent-looking bombshell.
Well, that's what set off the left, sending them into paroxysms of rage and concern.
“This is literal Nazi propaganda,” announced one viral post. “Did they mean to include a bunch of Nazi dog whistles in this?” asked another.
And MSNBC even wrote the ad “glorifies white nostalgia.” This is where they are: blue jeans are the progenitor of the upcoming Fourth Reich. (We need to get T-shirts.)
Watson would give it a wayward sniff, while Richard Noggin would bark until the power grid for the entire eastern seaboard.
Minnesota's "Nice" Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar, tried her hand at empathizing with struggling families by acknowledging the high grocery store prices. Nick Arama, also with our sister site RedState, wrote that Amy from next door illustrated her point. Kind of.
Well… she didn’t have one.
Klobuchar claimed that she was walking into a grocery store when she saw a woman coming out of the store. The woman was looking at her receipt, saying, "No, no." "That's how people are feeling," Klobuchar claimed.
People were highly doubtful that this even happened. Then, even according to Klobuchar's story, she's reading into what the person is thinking, how does she know what the woman was saying "No, no" to? Perhaps she forgot the butter that she wanted to buy.
Of course, Klobuchar's claims make no sense.
First, inflation has been in check under President Donald Trump, so what is she even talking about?
Here is the perfect Richard Noggin moment, barking about a real problem, but offering no ideas on how to catch that squirrel.
Watson is a dog with a plan, barking when danger appears, solving problems others don't see, bringing the ball back, and waiting patiently for his human to catch up.
Richard Noggin, on the other hand, seemingly is a friendly enough dog, but howls at shadows, panics with each wind gust, and needs continual assurances from owners too embarrassed to admit they've lost control of him years ago.
Conservatives are like Watson: Alert, thoughtful, motivated by action, not noise. Liberals are like Richard Noggin: Incessant barking, never listening, loud, yet lost.
Watson chases squirrels.
Richard held a press conference denouncing the privilege of tree access.
Legacy Media Gaslights. PJ Media Enlightens.
If you’re tired of being talked down to by smug anchors who treat facts like optional toppings, come where the truth still matters. Join PJ Media VIP today. Use promo code FIGHT for 60% off and get honest reporting with a backbone.