Holes: The Democrats keep digging bigger and bigger ones

The Weekly Standard ^ | 05/09/03 | Noemie Emery

[Pokey78]

GIDDY WITH FAILURE, Democrats are breaking new ground in political strategy. Deep in a hole, they are digging still deeper. They have found a new method of dealing with setbacks: They find out what caused them, and do it again.

Having unexpectedly lost four Senate seats in the 2002 midterms because of their obstruction and carping, they decided they hadn't attacked and obstructed enough. With a bare majority in the 107th Congress, they used a technical loophole to keep Bush's judges from reaching the floor of the Senate. In the 108th, with a bare minority, they are using a technical loophole--concurrent filibusters--to keep Bush's judges from reaching the floor of the Senate. Meanwhile, polls show that support for Senate Democrats and their leaders has been steadily falling, and they could lose four more seats in the upcoming contests.

Behind all of this looms the mother of all errors, the just-over war in Iraq. Has anyone, ever, played something so wrong? A few brave Democrats did vote on their principles, but these were the few among many. What hurt most Democrats--more than the votes they cast--was their reasoning: to preserve, in Clintonesque terms, their own viability, before trying to change the subject back to domestic issues. Which of course did not work. While Bush put his job and his neck on the line, Democrats were derriere-shielding. They voted for the war resolution, barely and grudgingly, and quickly went back to attacking the war and the president. They made charge after charge--which were later proved baseless:

They kept calling Bush a unilateralist long after he had assembled a 40-plus-nation coalition and repeatedly gone to the United Nations; they blamed him alone for the troubles with France and with Russia; they called him a bully and bungler after it had become clear that the real bully and bungler (and loser) was Jacques Chirac.

Then came the war and the worst of all happened: Democrats were drowned in a flood of good news. There were no wider wars, no more terrorist attacks, no strikes at Israel, no burning oil fields, no destructive Arab-street uprisings, no street-to-street fighting, and mercifully, very few deaths. After arguing that Iraq was a diversion from the war on terror, major al Qaeda figures were captured. After dismissing ties between Saddam and al Qaeda, links are now being uncovered. Even the Democrats' best worst hope--the looted museum--turned out to be useless. It was an inside job, it was unpreventable, and most of the missing artifacts have been found.

With so much good news going against them, the sight of Bush on the Abraham Lincoln was destined to drive the Democrats up walls. A politician connecting himself to a success he created? How unheard of! How lowdown! How crass! So the party wheeled out its most charming and plausible spokesmen.

Robert Byrd took to the floor of the Senate to call it the most disgraceful thing he had seen since he gave up his KKK membership. Maxine Waters seemed obsessed with the fit of the president's flight suit. Henry Waxman wants the GAO to investigate the whole event. Why did the president zoom in on a fighter when he could have been helicoptered in from the mainland? Why wasn't he rowed out from shore in a dinghy? For that matter, why did he take Air Force One all the way across the country when there are buses?

Waxman and Waters seem giddy with failure; failure has gone to their heads. Each time they complain, the footage of Bush is shown over and over and he gets to say how proud he is of the troops. Some people think the Democrats are afraid that the Lincoln footage will show up next year in campaign spots and are trying this tack to preempt it. I'm not so sure about that, but if the Republicans run ads featuring Waxman and Waters, they could stay in power for the rest of their lives.

How much is Karl Rove paying these people? Nothing would be quite enough.

[b4its2late]

I knew when W got elected President, the dems would be a fun bunch to watch self destruct.

[dixiechick2000]

Delightfully delicious article!

[OldFriend]

billclinton convinced the demonrats that they lost senate seats because they weren't mean enough!!! Let's not disabuse them of that idea.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

Ssshhhh!!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Latest effort at hole digging:

DNC's Terry McAuliffe Asks WH for Pledge Not to Use Carrier Footage in 2004 Campaign

And there is also this:

Poll: "Who do you think of as the leader of the Democratic party?" 55% say No Opinion or No One

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Screwed up the link above:

DNC's Terry McAuliffe Asks WH for Pledge Not to Use Carrier Footage in 2004 Campaign

[toolbreaker]

This has been a good week, hasn't it?

[suzyq5558]

Boy will i second that remark!
the dem's are really and truly pathetic and i believe most average folks are getting more than a bit fed up with all this bleating and whining over anything the president does.
the dems are putting consevatives in power for many years to come and i welcome that with all my heart ! so keep screeching guys.....

[ModernDayCato]

I don't always agree with W, but I haven't laughed this hard since the Reagan administration.

[Z-28]

Why are Democrats so ugly?

[Uncle Miltie]

The best part of this week is that when I turn on the news, there isn't any!

[lilylangtree]

Explains why the dumbocrats are fighting so hard not to give the tax cuts. All the RATS have to gripe about is the economy. Tax cuts would help the economy. With a recovery underway, the dumbocrats would have nothing to campaign on nor to point fingers at with their usual rhetoric of "Republicans are starving the people."

[Grampa Dave]

Great Article Bump.

[dixiechick2000]

"Latest effort at hole digging:"

BWAAAHAHAHAHA!

Dems just get funnier and funnier...

Thanks for the links.

[Dr Warmoose]

Why did the president zoom in on a fighter when he could have been helicoptered in from the mainland?

This has allways bothered me. The Demoncats complain that this is a waste of money. When the response to this complaint is reported as "It was a morale booster for the soldiers and for US citizens." The demoncats complain that the president has no business boosting the morale of soldiers and US citizens - that even one dime spent on patriotic events is just wrong. Does this mean that the Demoncats will banish all public airshows that feature current military aircraft? I had the privlege of watching a B2 fly-over last weekend. I guess the cost of doing a few passes is just too much and shouldn't have taken place. The coolest airshow I ever saw featured an A-10 doing aerial maneuvers that even a model RCer couldn't do. I guess the America hating demoncats (redundant?) would outlaw municipal participation in Independance Day fireworks and parades as being to jingoistic and expensive. It is much better that money earmarked for pumping up national morale be better spent dropping condoms in th jungles of Africa.

[mombonn]

derriere-shielding.

LOL, some of with the size of some of the derrieres . . . they'll have to order super-sized models!

[Nick Danger]

Having unexpectedly lost four Senate seats in the 2002 midterms because of their obstruction and carping

Yeah, the obstruction and the carping are certainly part of it, but I think there's more to it than that. The Democrats have cooties.

I'm serious. Nobody likes them. They carp and they obstruct, but there's so much more. They lie. They cheat at elections. And I hate to say this because it sounds discriminatory, but they are ugly. Plus they have an unnatural relationship with the afterlife. Many of their supporters are dead. And you can't tell me, after looking at Nancy Pelosi, that that is not some kind of ghola -- a thing that was dead once, but now is back. And it's in Congress, voting for who-knows-what.

Then there's the short guy, Whatsisname that stands on the telephone books. That guy whines. It's cooties, I tell ya. Dead cooties. Rich dead cooties, that just happened to dump the Global Crossing stock at the peak.

[SkyPilot]

Sis anyone hear Maxine (Kerosene) Waters? She called Peter King (hardly a right-wing conservative) a "racist!"

She was (is?) obsessed with the fit of Bush's flight suit. Hmmmmmm. She kept carping on and on and on about how it "tightly fit him!"

Hmmmmmmm........