The election is coming and liberals need a way to fire up a dormant base. In 2008, liberals delivered the scalp of Joe Lieberman to their base. Why? Joe supported the Iraq war. The same war that Obama has continued since he’s been in office. Joe was a consistent liberal vote on every issue, except Iraq.

Joe’s real problem was that he was vocal about his support. Worse still, he consorted with the enemy. He worked with and liked John McCain. Never mind that the bills that they worked on together were liberal. Joe had to go.

More than all of that, the left needed an enemy. That’s what energizes their base. They needed someone to illustrate to the base that they were listening. Someone had to get the axe.

Now it’s 2010 and the liberal policies have been an utter failure. The democrats have lost the center. Worse still, the base is upset about Obama’s war and and his failure to close the base at Guantanamo Bay (AKA Gitmo). The liberal base needs blood or they won’t see a reason to vote.

Add to that that the democrats have done such a great job demonizing Fox News to their base that any mention of the name is like showing a bull a red cape. Enter Juan Williams. A liberal NPR commentator who occasionally appears on Fox News (and he’s not the only one). They had to be licking their chops when Juan made a fairly innocuous statement about Muslims. In the full context of the show, his statement was very mild. He simply stated how he felt:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

However, NPR would have none of it. He was fired for “bigoted remarks” and the CEO went on imply that he needed a shrink (classy). She later apologized for the shrink remark.

There’s just one problem though. The entire thing has now blown up in NPR’s face. Left, right, and center are united in one thing: that NPR stepped over the line–way over teh line. All of this is playing out two weeks before the midterm elections. The Politically Correct gestapo is being unmasked now, and we will have the opportunity to vote on it.