‘You Bring The Pitchforks, I’ll Bring The Torches’
One of the lefty sites announced a "blogswarm alert" against David Broder's column yesterday in anticipation of its publication today. I first noticed it over on Memeorandum. Well, Broder's column is out and the mob is queuing up already. Broder has been an object of hate for the left for quite some time, but it really gelled when he dismissed Ned Lamont as a really bad choice of candidates foisted on the Democrats by "elitist insurgents" last year. Broder, of course, is actually not a fan of the Bush administration and had devoted a lot of column inches attacking Bush policies. But today, he unloads on Harry Reid. Hence the blogswarm call.
Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.
If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.
President Bush's highly developed tolerance for egregious incompetence in his administration may have met its supreme test in Attorney General Gonzales, who at various times has taken complete responsibility for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and professed complete ignorance of the reasons for their dismissal. This demonstration of serial obfuscation so impressed the president that he rushed out to declare that Gonzales had "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job."
As if that were not mind-boggling enough, consider the mental gyrations performed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as he rationalized the recent comment from his majority leader, Harry Reid, the leading light of Searchlight, Nev., that the war in Iraq "is lost."
On "Fox News Sunday," Schumer offered this clarification of Reid's off-the-cuff comment. "What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost — in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this — we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."
Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word "is" has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.
It gets better from there. As I have stated repeatedly, I firmly believe Reid and his House counterpart Pelosi will come to be reviled by the Democrats in the not too distant future. So I don't find Broder's conclusions here to be unusual. I think Harry Reid's comment about the war being lost was a political nightmare for the Democrats. Witness the abrupt backpedaling he did on the Senate floor. And the fancy footwork of the other Senators. But the left, oh my, are they angry at Broder for pointing that out.
The warning signs have been there for a while now that the media is not going to continue providing cover for Reid or Pelosi if they continue the mad rush to the left. Personally, I'd bet Broder's political beliefs rest somewhere on the centrist Democratic side of the political spectrum. As do many of the members of the mainstream media. And as the media cover fades away, the public is going to be less and less happy with the direction the Congressional leadership is heading in. Watch Memeorandum for updates as the day goes by. Broder's column is right at the top at the moment.
By daveinboca, April 26, 2007 @ 11:32 am
Broder is a liberal of the sort before ‘68 turned them into a Blue Team support squad for cultural degeneration. A Blue Plate special of drugs, defeatism, dysfunction, and generational decline. Broder may be a living fossil, but he harks back to a better time for Dems, the generation before they sluiced themselves down the chute into the tank where the biggest chunks rise to the top.