<New CAFE standards voted down.

A blatant attempt to destroy the SUV was stopped in the Senate. The proposal was correctly identified as such by its opponents, and voted down.

Despite the standard response from liberals in the Senate, basically boiling down to a wide-eyed "who, us?" (I get that a lot here too.), no one was being fooled. This was an attempt to eliminate a category of vehicle that has been declared politically incorrect, and had only one thing going for it: people needed them and wanted to own them.

Leftists have a deep-down contempt for the middle class in America, convinced that they are stupid, ignorant, and unable to see the world in the enlightened way that the leftist is able to. A while back I posted a thought experiment where I proposed a mythical Kansas family, and submitted that in 90 percent of cases, if they liked something, the left would be opposed to it. I stand by this. The middle class is the enemy of the leftist.

Make a list of prominent, well-known leftists and liberal leaders in your mind. How many of them qualify as "middle class?" What does Barbara Striesand drive to work? What does an average Senator drive to work? What kind of mileage DOES a limo get?

The SUV was like lemon juice on a paper cut to leftists. It created a visceral hatred that is difficult to track to its source (you can get a similar response by mentioning "McDonalds" in their presence). It may be that the independence granted by the individually-owned automobile has always been a sore spot to leftists, who worship mass transit projects that never make money and are forced on us by the enlightened. Here in California it is like pulling teeth to try and pry transportation funds away from favored mass transit boondoggles or crackpot commuter lanes, and use them to actually build and repair roads for the rest of us.

The SUV, a large, powerful vehicle with lots of room, designed for holding lots of kids and junk, was like waving a red flag in front of these people.

Ironically, the SUV is the result of earlier CAFE standards that made large vehicles--the ones people wanted--physically impossible. A loophole for trucks and vans was left in the standards, and the auto industry and consumers fled through this loophole to create a new class of truck that one could carry one's family around in. Why do you think pickups became an everyday vehicle?

When Rush Limbaugh predicted three years ago that the liberals would try to make SUVs illegal, he was laughed at. Nobody's laughing now.

There is no limit to the reach of the social engineers. Constant vigilance is required.