Posted on 09/25/2002 9:58:18 AM PDT by ThePythonicCow
By David S. Broder
Sunday, September 22, 2002; Page B07
One of the most instructive parts of my schedule is the hour spent every other week or so with fellow citizens in the chats that appear on washingtonpost.com.
They are not a cross section -- these are people seriously engaged in politics and public policy -- but the shifting tone and content of their questions and comments offer important clues to the trend of opinion, at least in that influential segment of the population.
Last week's chat was, of course, dominated by the topic of Iraq,
Good question. The party certainly has potential spokesmen, including the chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees and veterans of the Clinton administration Cabinet and National Security Council. Several things are going on, specific to Iraq. First, Saddam Hussein has no defenders in American public life. Almost everyone would like to see him gone. Second, there's a strong feeling he has been thumbing his nose for years at the United Nations and its inspectors. Third, no alternative strategy to reduce the threat of his using weapons of mass destruction is obvious. Fourth, the president, as commander in chief of the war on terrorism, has a standing that makes almost every politician wary of challenging him.
But there is something deeper -- and less justifiable -- at work. The Democratic leaders in Congress, in both the House and Senate, largely have abandoned principle and long-term strategy for the short-term tactics they think will help them in this November's election.
Tom Daschle's desire to hold the one-vote margin in the Senate and Dick Gephardt's hope to pick up the six additional seats that would switch control of the House are driving decisions -- even on large and consequential matters.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Anyhow, Rush Limbaugh just read the part above that I emboldened, in his tirade against Daschle's speech complaining that Bush is politicizing the war.
I wonder why Broder is so upset about this -- the Democrats abandoned any pretense of "principle" once when they climbed into bed with Bill Clinton in 1992 and then again when they refused to climb out in 1999.
But now that we have a man of some integrity and substance in the White House, and the Rats are getting cornered, it's becoming all too obvious. Daschle especially is acting like a scared cornered Rat. Cool. Foaming at the mouth too. Likely has rabies.
Gee, do you think it could have anything to do with the fact that [although larger issues were involved] the Vietnam War involved a small, obscure country half-way around the world that had not attacked us, whereas now we are fighting a war on people WHO FLEW PLANES INTO OUR BUILDINGS AND KILLED 3,000 OF OUR PEOPLE?
This is a rare instance of this blind pig of a journalist finding an acorn of political truth.
Congressman Billybob
Click for "Til Death Do Us Part."
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