Blankley Does It Again
Tony Blankley has a knack for writing the most insightful editorials. Here’s the latest:
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 a 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.
…
At a time when polls show 80 percent of the public (and over 60 percent of self-identified Democrats) approve 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 Democrats’ orbit” believe his presidency is “an unmitigated disaster.”
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There are 19 Democratic senators up for re-election next year. The Democratic activist base – in their demented fury with President Bush – is in a mood to make those senators walk the plank on popular Bush legislation all summer, fall and spring. With any luck, next November we can scoop up a large catch of Democratic senatorial political corpses. Only thereafter, in 2005, can we expect what is left of the congressional Democratic Party to become Syrian Democrats – and modify their voting behavior under duress from the president. The current crop – the Nebuchadnezzar wing of the Democratic Party – seem intent on ignoring the president’s request to give up their weapons of liberal destruction.
In other words, as I noted less eloquently a few months ago, the Democrats’ seething hatred for the president will likely prove to be their undoing.
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