Donald Sensing provides one of the best arguments for an increasingly popular theory about the recent Democrat political machinations. He thinks there's method in their madness:

So, knowing that the plan was to redeploy troops beginning next year, the Democrats decided to get in front of the wave: Demand the troops be sent home NOW and then when the Pentagon announces the plan to redeploy, take credit for it.

The two prongs of the attack serve two purposes. The "Bush lied us into war" wing satisfies the huge numbers of the party's base suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. The "declare victory and go home" attack preserves, however weakly, the party's appeal to traditionally patriotic Democratic voters, of which there are also huge numbers. Doubtless the Dem leadership sees the attacks as a two-fer.

The appeals to both wings are intended to garner huge dividends in November 2006.

With any president but George W. Bush, they'd be wrong. But GWB is the easiest president to blind side that I have seen in my life.

The lynchpin of Rev. Sensing's theory is the observation (accurate in my view) that the Bush administration is composed of politically inept strategists and tacticians (more the latter than the former). So, if that's all it takes to give substance to his theory then he's home free. But there are a couple of nagging doubts:

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Posted by: Demosophist at 12:14 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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Could someone tell me the basis for the whole uproar over Murtha?

Why the shock? Why the outrage?

No one saw this coming? Democrats wanting to cut and run?

Bill Clinton, Mogadishu, October 1993.

When I get home people 'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do ya do it man? Why? Just some war junkie?" Ya know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.

Posted by: Vinnie at 10:59 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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The flap over last night's vote in the Congress on a version of Murtha's proposal (or at least the way the "Arab Street," as well as our dedicated enemies, see it) reminded me of a theme I worked on for a short time last year. That theme concerned the extinction of the Democratic Party. The notion I had was that the Democrats would become so short-sightedly self-serving that they'd self-destruct, leaving the US a single-party coalition of sub-factions for the remainder of the Terror War. As I recall, I felt the denouement could be pushed out to the 2008 election, but Dan Darling (now with Winds of Change) felt it might hit sooner. Well, my updated impression is that either the Democrats or the nation itself will self-destruct some time between now and November, 2008. Ultimately there aren't two sides to history. If you're standing in the wrong place when the storm hits, you won't last long.

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Posted by: Demosophist at 02:35 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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I don't often read Josh Marshall, but he had a reputation for being a reasonably objective lefty (was willing to point out that the Rathergate memos were, well... not really evidence of anything negative about GWB) so I decided to see what he has to say about the Democrats' "that bad man tricked us, mommy" meme. Alas, there isn't even a mustard seed of objectivity now. To whit:

There's one point that's important to remember about the White House's pushback to cover up its collective dishonesty about Iraq. We've noted before that in scandals or political nominations the decisive issue is not the number of opponents, the intensity of their opposition or even the quality of their arguments. The decisive issue is most often whether the scandalee or the nominee has some committed base of support, even if it only amounts to a distinct minority.

So, if you were thinking some semblance of objective truth has any relevance, well just grow the heck up you impossible romantic. Because even though Joe Wilson's CIA debrief said the opposite of his NYT piece, we know what he meant, right? Because within the boundaries of the hermeneutic circle the phrase "the Iraqis were seeking uranium in Niger" means the same as "the Iraqis were not seeking uranium in Niger." Nobody's counting anyway. Do you see anybody counting? I don't see anybody counting. Relatively speaking...

A parallel dynamic is in play with respect to what the White House is trying to accomplish with this current pushback.

Isn't this a misuse of the term "parallel?" I mean, isn't he saying that the decisive issue is whether or not Bush has a committed base of support? Which, strictly speaking, would be the same, rather than a parallel dynamic... right? But maybe he means something else?

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Posted by: Demosophist at 11:23 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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From David Adesnik, on Oxblog "Are the Democrats Lying?":

"IF THE DEMOCRATS ARE LYING, THEN THEY REALLY ARE UNPATRIOTIC": That is the basic argument that Glenn makes here, and that Tom Maguire has aptly summed up by observing that

I believe there is a substantial difference between "Your false charges are undermining the troops" and "Your criticism is undermining our troops".

I agree with this argument in the abstract, although I don't think that it justifies what George Bush said. For Bush to be in the right, it should be transparently clear that his opponents are lying. I would argue that while the Democrats may not be telling the truth, it is not intentional. Instead, they have succumbed to confusion, short-sightedness, and unthinking resentment of the President.

Which, when you think about it, are ideal qualities to have in a political opponent, aren't they? Not just because an opponent with impaired judgment is easy to outmaneuver, but because they're a little less endearing to folks making up their minds about who ought to be governing them.

Update: David says, later:
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Posted by: Demosophist at 12:19 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Yeah, that's just what the Democratic Party needed: an isomorphic (one to one) correspondence between the party and the nightmarish conspiracy theories of the Chomsky/Moveon Left about how Bushitlerburton conspired to lead us into war for the sake of all this deucedly cheap oil we're getting. This, while managing to completely ignore the cynical trading of oil for food by some of the most prominent members of the "international establishment," that not only kept Iraqis starving and oppressed, but gave Saddam access to the Sears Build-Your-Own-WMD-Arsenal catalogue, should he like... ever get the itch. (Which we know he wouldn't because Joe Wilson says so... most of the time.)

Now just how is a reasonable person supposed to be unoffended by this obvious, and foolishly self-destructive, clamor for attention? On one side you've got the nomination of a brilliant and qualified conservative to the Supreme Court (who Michael Barone thinks won't be seriously opposed), the launch of a campaign to make ready for the next Influenza Pandemic (a move that Moveon criticized Bush for not having made earlier), a UN investigation of Syrian thuggery exposing a political assassination in Lebanon, and findings that will lead to indictments against prominent members of the "peace movement" who got rich acting as Saddamite conduits. On the other side the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight claims that these are all distractions, and that even though nearly everyone on the planet was certain Saddam was seeking WMD the whole thing was somehow a clever deception arranged by the Bush Administration. Yeah, that's a winner. Keep it up. We really need to vote you guys back into office.

Never saw that one coming...

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia)

Posted by: Demosophist at 10:24 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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