Blue Crab Boulevard

The Uncanny Ability

Massimo Calabresi, writing in Time Magazine, has some astonishing maneuvering by Democrats that is going on right now. setting themselves up for even more humiliation on a national security debacle. Calabresi phrases it thusly: " The Democrats, however, have an uncanny ability to milk humiliation out of national security debates…" This is amazing.

The end is near for the Democrats' sorry handling of Michael Mukasey's nomination to be Attorney General, but that doesn't mean they are ready to close the book on the most recent debate over torture. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm the New York judge to head the Justice Department Tuesday, sending his nomination to the Senate floor, where it is expected to win broad support. That should end another humiliating national security-related defeat for the party, leaving members free to move on to issues where they stand a better chance of outmaneuvering Republicans, such as health care for kids or tax reform.

The Democrats, however, have an uncanny ability to milk humiliation out of national security debates, and behind the scenes the party's top Senate leaders are arguing over whether to pursue the issue of torture while they have the country's attention. Even though the party failed to block Mukasey over his refusal to state definitively that waterboarding is illegal, some Democrats believe they can win a straight vote to criminalize the harsh interrogation technique. Others fear that a renewed fight over torture would end not just in another defeat, but in an implicit congressional stamp of approval for the very practice they want to outlaw.

Calabresi reports that staffers are saying that Chuck Schumer is pushing - hard - for a vote on the Kennedy amendment (banning waterboarding). Others are counciling that going ahead with that without all the votes already in pocket is a potential disaster. This article indicates where the Democrats are having problems. They are losing fight after fight on Capitol Hill. That is causing their far left fringe to go bananas on them. But consider: Today they had a chance to go after Cheney - who the accuse daily of scurrilous behavior. They passed on that as fast as they could dance around it. They gave Michael Mukasey a horribly bad time - after Schumer suggested him as a compromise - then lost that battle.

They are letting their left wing drive them into humiliating defeats, over and over and over. In their zeal to appear to be doing something, they are doing nothing. In their zeal to attack all things Bush, they are beating hell out of themselves.

Thank heavens they never seem to learn.

Politics | Gaius Tuesday, 6 November , 2007

By NortonPete, Tuesday, 6 November , 2007 @ 9:24 pm

Your comments and this post are the best verbalization of the Democrats predictament both today and in months past. I say this because although it is obvious, one needs to have something to “chew on”, something to put in your pipe and smoke a bit, and this post has it.
Now as I sit and think about the Democrats situation you define and it reminds me of something said by one of the Kennedy kids, I think Joe jr. Something to the effect that the Democrats must “farm” all the disenchanted ( misfits ) and socially dysfunctional people and promise them whatever to succeed in wining their vote. Well what do you get when you fill a room with dysfunctional misfits? The Democratic Party.
Good reading for me, it feeds the mind. Thanks
By FedUp, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 7:38 am

Very good post! Thank you! Why do you suppose that rational people can look at the situations that the Dems get themselves into and never seem to learn from their mistakes? Coudl it be that they’ve ‘bought’ their seats and therefore don’t have to worry about being held accountable? William Jefferson??? John Murtha??? Ted Stevens??? (sorry, just had to include him). it’s a good thing that there are no tests for: integrity, literacy, patriotism required to be elected to public office… sad!!!
By martian, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 11:54 am

The problem with the Democratic Party is that their entire agenda is set by a few people at and near the top. The rest of them, including many politicians in Congress and at the state and local levels, along with their political activists are parrots who work from talking points handed down from above. I have found, in talking with many liberal Democrats, that they don’t really think about or investigate any issues on their own. They believe anything handed down from above as long as it fits into their narrow world view. If you challenge what they say either you are stupid, or gullible, or have fallen prey to industrial propaganda, or you just don’t understand. And it’s worse if you use actual facts to challenge them. Further, they have an incredible ability to completely ignore any fact that doesn’t fit their world view.

For this reason even something that is completely false can come to be touted as a fact by most liberals. For years the Democratic Party has lived by the strategy that anything you say loud enough and long enough eventually becomes the truth - no matter whether it started as the truth or not. Unfortunately, this seems to work quite well with the vast majority of “undecided” or “swing” voters. That’s how we ended up with Slick Willie in the White House for two terms!
By FedUp, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 12:23 pm

martian… very good points. I’d venture to say that Slick Willy is looking at another term in ‘office’. As for loud and long… can you say Global Warming???
By martian, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 12:48 pm

Global Warming, Clinton was impeached for having sex in the Oval Office (not for committing perjury in a court of law), “It’s the economy, Stupid!” at a time when every economist in the country agreed that the economy was ALREADY IN recovery, the unemployment rate is through the roof - at a time when new jobs were being created at the fastest rate in 3 decades, President Bush “stole the election” in 2000 because the Supreme Court stopped the recounts, there was never a complete recount in the 2000 election (a lie of ommision - it was true that all of the votes in Florida were never recounted - at the request of the Democratic Party! They only wanted votes recounted in districts they knew to be heavily Democratic and those re-counts were on their third iteration when the Supreme Court stepped in. I live in Florida, I was here through the whole thing. I know.). The list could go on for some time but you get the idea.
By mockinbird, Wednesday, 7 November , 2007 @ 4:24 pm

Martian’s first sentence is very good:their entire agenda is set by a few people at or near the top. It’s Marxist thought-top down, a dose or two of Macchiavelli and a whole lot of Narcissism. It won’t work here in America, we’re to smart.
True Socialist revolution needs a beard, a beret and a big ass gun.