Democrats are said to be keen about “connecting the dots”—so let’s see if we can connect a few for them.
Dot Number One: Last week, MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in the New York Times directed at David Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, accusing him of betraying America and “cooking the books”—and many leading Democrats, including Senator Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t condemn it (to their credit a few, like John Kerry, did).
Dot Number Two: In December 2004, the executive director of MoveOn.org’s PAC said of the Democratic Party: “Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.”
Dot Number Three: According to a story in last May’s New York Times, “Every morning, representatives from a cluster of antiwar groups [including MoveOn.org] gather for a conference call with Democratic leadership staff members in the House and the Senate. . . . “The principle under which we’ve been operating is more like a political campaign,” Mr. Matzzie [Tom Matzzie, MoveOn.org's Washington director] said. “The central strategy is creating that toxic environment for people who want to continue this [Iraq] debacle.”
Dot Number Four: We read this in The Politico today:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) traveled to New York on Monday and huddled with leaders of the anti-Iraq-war movement, his latest effort to reassure this increasingly restive group that Democrats are doing everything they can to end the war. . . . Impatience rising, some activists are urging that Democrats who are not aggressive enough in confronting Bush on Iraq themselves be challenged with primary opponents or third-party candidacies in 2008. “People are feeling like we invested all this time and money in changing the political equation and where has it led us?” said former congressman Tom Andrews, leader of Win Without War. . . . Andrews, antiwar activist Tom Hayden, Code Pink’s Dana Balicki, and Leslie Cagan, director of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of antiwar groups, said there is open talk of third-party challenges from the Left . . .
Dot Number Five: This morning we read from the Associated Press:
After weeks of suggesting Democrats would temper their approach to Iraq legislation in a bid to attract more Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared abruptly Tuesday that he had no plans to do so. The Democratic leader said he will call for a vote this month on several antiwar proposals, including one by Senator Carl Levin that would insist President Bush end U.S. combat next summer. The proposals would be mandatory and not leave Bush wiggle room, said Reid, D-Nev. “There (are) no goals. It’s all definite time lines,” he told reporters of the planned legislation. . . . Democrats are in a box on the Iraq war debate, lacking the votes to pass legislation ordering troops home, but tied to a support base that wants nothing less.
Let’s now connect these dots and draw some conclusions from them, shall we?
MoveOn.org—an angry, far-left, antiwar group—views the modern Democratic Party and its leadership as its cat’s-paw, and there’s little reason to dispute this judgment. The problem for many Democrats is that a Great Unmasking is taking place. For one thing, it’s difficult to say they oppose the war but support the troops when they train their fire on the commanding general of the troops, whose main transgression appears to be that he’s helping America succeed in an epic struggle against radical Islam.
Beyond that, the Democratic Party’s aversion to any (authentic) good news from Iraq, when combined with their effort to accelerate a premature withdrawal from that traumatized country, would lead to an American defeat and a victory for jihadism. This would be reckless—and it would reinforce the view among many Americans that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted on national security matters.
When MoveOn.org says jump, the Democratic Party asks, “How high?” There should be, and eventually there will be, a political price to pay for this ugly alliance.
