Just How Smart Are Dems - Road to the Middle Class

EVERYONE seems to think that the Democrats are brilliantly managing the politics of the Iraq war in preparation for the 2008 election. And when the Democratic Senate passed its war-funding bill complete with deadlines, S.A. Miller reports, they had their sound bite ready.

"We hope the president will reconsider his stubbornness and his refusal to listen to the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

Of course all the Democratic candidates at last night’s presidential debate—18 months before the election—were all against the war.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, said the war is "not America’s war to win or lose."

I think rather that the Democrats are steering a narrow and dangerous path between their angry-left base and the amorphous middle of the US electorate. If they had their druthers, I suspect they would just set back and complain and wait for 2008. But they know that the netroots demands that they do something.

Conservative Rich Lowry sees scoundrels and cynical operators.

Harry Reid had a bright, shining moment of honesty when he said that the war in Iraq is lost.

But he couldn’t admit it, and so retreated into “fog of evasion, contradictions and groan-inducing implausibilities.”

Reid said that he agreed with Gen. Petraus’s statement that the war was only partly military. But then he was too busy to listen to the general’s report on the war.

"No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than the Democrats," Reid maintains. What a pathetic canard.

Pity a poor Democrat. The United States has the most patriotic population of any of the western nations. But there are plenty of people who are not patriotic, and they are almost all members of the Democratic base. So Democratic leaders are torn between the majority of Americans with their simple pride in America and their liberal base that’s been taught to believe in a post-patriotic, supra-national world.

Democrats are trying to ride two horses at once. Chances are, it’s not going to work.

Sphere: Related Content | | print

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

mysql close 0