Jewish World Review April 16, 2003 / 14 Nisan, 5763

Tony Blankley

Blankley
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Our own domestic Senate Republican Guard better be prepared for a grinding


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | If Saddam had been joined by Congressional Democrats on the barricades in Fortress Baghdad, the 3rd Division would be calling for reinforcements to take the city.

Stonewall Daschle, Black Jack "Pershing" Kerry, Ted "Stalingrad" Kennedy, Nancy "the 'Frisco Enforcer" Pelosi and the rest of the last-ditch Democratic gang may be wrongheaded, but they are tough as nails. They would have put a little steel in the spine of Saddam's Republican Guard. Our own domestic Senate Republican Guard better be prepared for a grinding, often seemingly pointless, war of attrition on the floor and in the corridors of the Senate between now and November 2004.

Not until after the election will the surviving Democrats likely decide to play the part of Syria, and learn from recent experience to be more cooperative with President Bush. Which is a long way of saying that following the swift and heroic war leadership of the president, his supporters should brace themselves for a year and half of legislative disappointments.

The Democratic Party leadership is in a strange mental place right at the moment. Their activist base, big contributors and major party interests are more deeply misaligned with the American public than at any time since 1972. Just consider what Harold Meyerson, the editor of the liberal American Prospect, wrote in the Washington Post yesterday about the Democratic presidential race: " ... for labor's constituents -- as for those of every major institutional player in the Democrat's orbit -- the Bush presidency has proved an unmitigated disaster, so defeating Bush trumps every other consideration. 'This will be one of the least ideological battles that we -- the party's institutional powers -- have ever had,' said a (big labor) consultant." Mr. Meyerson went on to characterize the Democratic Party activists' view on the Iraq war as "a kind of exasperated ambivalence."

Let me emphasize, Mr. Meyerson is one of the leading intellectual gurus of the Democratic Party -- he's their friend. He knows them well, and, it is my sense, he has got their mood about right.

At a time when polls show 80 percent of the public (and over 60 percent of self-identified Democrats) approves of Mr. Bush's handling of the Iraq war, the Democratic activists are feeling an "exasperated ambivalence." At a time when three out of four Americans approve the job the president is doing overall as president, "every major institutional player in the Democrat's orbit" believes his presidency is "an unmitigated disaster."

Putting aside what Daschle, Kerry, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership actually think about issues, no party leadership -- of either party -- can stray too far, for too long from the strong feelings of their party's activists, contributors and special interests. In military terms, they can't outrun their supply lines -- unless they are prepared to be a guerrilla band and live off the land. And Tom "the Dakota Indoorsman" Daschle, Jack "57 Varieties" Kerry and Ted "Another Chivas" Kennedy don't strike me as natural born guerrillas.

But they are tough competitors who will carry the fight of their party's activist base to the floor of the Senate. That base doesn't want to parley or cut deals with President Bush. They want him skinned alive at the next election. Moderate Democratic senators, who might be induced to support some of the president's legislative initiatives such as tax cuts, will be pressured to the point of agony by their leadership, contributors and special interests never to support the president. The best way -- so they judge -- to beat President Bush in 2004 is to make him seem a legislative failure for the next year and a half.

That, plus their devout prayers for a bum economy next spring, is their theory of victory and their reason for living for the next 18 months.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.




Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

04/03/03: At this human moment we need to act like humans, not just calculating analysts
04/02/03: If we could only draft Jennings' eyebrow to the cause, we wouldn't need the 4th Armored Division?
03/26/03: This war is showing the world who we really are
03/19/03: Time for America to laugh at itself
03/13/03: They're coming out of the woodwork: Russert, Buchanan and Moran
03/05/03: Franc-tireur
02/26/03: World history is shifting under our feet --- even our most experienced statesmen are, effectively, inexperienced
02/19/03: The shame! We've mischaracterized the French 02/12/03: Schroeder and Chirac will be disproportionately undercutting their interests
02/05/03: We need to rise above our temporary anger and seek to preserve our bonds with our European cousins
01/29/03: Who is President Bush's stupidest opponent: Saddam Hussein or Tom Daschle?
01/22/03: We call them our European cousins --- but I demand a DNA test
01/16/03: Dems bare partisan teeth
01/02/03: Before the cheering must come the struggle
12/27/02: Long ago and far away
12/18/02: Be glad that Gore's gone?
12/11/02: What fun! A titanic, once-in-a-century partisan battle royal is in the offing
12/04/02: Kerry atwitter
11/27/02: The unThankful list
11/20/02: First the scare, then the yawn
11/13/02: It's going to be a long two years for Lefty Pelosi and the Frisco Dems
11/06/02: Technology: A pollster's worst enemy --- thank goodness!
10/31/02: Watch this election's Wheel of Fate
10/23/02: The Ari and Colin Show: Politics has never been, well, more vaudeville-like
10/09/02: Bush beats drums of realism
10/02/02: Needed: A political chromatograph to detect any true statements in the public domain
09/25/02: Buchanan's new mag
09/18/02: There are many forms of peace
09/11/02: The imperial period of our history starts
09/04/02: Memo to Powell: In periods of upheaval, the refusal to act gives aid to those bent on destruction
08/30/02: Logging old growth is a sham issue

© 2002, Creators Syndicate