DLC Sounds General Quarters on the Pequod

R. Emmett Tyrrell has reached the same conclusion as a lot of us on the Right: unless the Democratic Party purges itself of the lunatic far Left that has it in a deathgrip and pointedly regains some credibility on foreign policy and national security - basically, "going Lieberman" - they are doomed to go the way of the Whigs. RET's money quote:

'Tis the end of 2005 and time to look back. In politics what do I see? Well, I see the Republican Party struggling against high seas. In the media the party is depicted as being in danger of losing to the Democrats in the off-year elections next fall. That probably will be the case, unless the Republicans have to run against the Democrats. Against the Democrats they could win with Warren Harding in the White House.

Believe it or not, there are some sane Donks out there, and they are seeing - and saying - things very similar to RET's observations:

Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush Administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security. That concern arises from recent moves by liberal Democrats to block the extension of parts of the USA Patriot Act in the Senate and denunciations of President Bush amid concerns that these initiatives could violate the civil liberties of innocent Americans.

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues. ...

"The Republicans still hold the advantage on every national-security issue we tested," said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, who co-authored a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) memo on the party's national-security weaknesses.

Nervousness among Democrats intensified earlier this month after Democrats led a filibuster against the Patriot Act that threatened to block the measure, followed by a victory cry from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who declared at a party rally, "We killed the Patriot Act."

And, as if ordered up on cue, yesterday Scott Rasmussen released a poll on the NSA's anti-terrorist eavesdropping program which produced results that have to be sending the three blind weasels (i.e. Dean, Reid, Pelosi) in paroxisms of petrified panic:

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree....

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans believe the NSA should be allowed to listen in on conversations between terror suspects and people living in the United States. That view is shared by 51% of Democrats and 57% of those not affiliated with either major political party. [emphasis added]

My friends, Democrat leaders are trying to base an impeachment drive on this issue and make that their 2006 centerpiece for why they should be restored to majority control of Congress when they are 41 percentage points behind on it in the polls and they don't even have a majority of their own rank & file with them.

But they won't learn because they haven't yet reached rock bottom. And as demented as the Donk upper echelon is these days, I can't begin to guess at how subterranean rock bottom has been driven. Unless they sink below the filibuster theshold in the Senate a year from now, I tend to doubt that a mid-term election is big enough to force them, or the Dem rank & file, to see the handwriting on the wall. That'll probably have to wait until 2008, and who knows what the political landscape will look like then (which is a cryptic way of saying, "Can Hillary Clinton triangulate her way to the White House?").

And so the S.S. Pequod sails onward, hard to port, its three-headed Captain Ahab in bloodthirsty pursuit of his elusive great white whale, and the only members of his crew who are willing to tell him that the whale is not, like, a guppy, but really a whale - or, for that matter, that elephants can't swim - have been locked away in the brig.

Sounds like Titanic without the love story....

[HT: CQ, Powerline, B4B]

UPDATE: I neglected to include Jim Geraghty's more specific race-by-race take, though what worth that can have eleven months in advance is, this side of Karnak the Magnificent, anybody's guess.