Lurching Toward Oblivion

By now, the 93-6 drubbing that John Kerry's glomming of Jack Murtha's "RETREEEEEEEAAAAAATTTTT!!!!!!!!" gimmick (which is, in turn, blatantly ripped off from Yosemite Sam, but I digress...) absorbed in the Senate last week should feel very, very familiar. The dynamic of majority Republicans calling the Democrats' defeatist bluff by bringing their seditions to an actual on-the-record vote (Murtha's 403-3 pounding last November, Charlie Rangel's draft reinstatement gambit that lost 402-2 in the fall of 2004, for neither of which they, as primary sponsors, even voted themselves) is so well established that it makes one wonder why the minority party keeps stepping on these rakes. It's not as though they're camouflaged or anything. How many times do they have to take it between the eyes before they catch on to the need for at least a modicum of discretion (or "nuance"), or, God help them, a bona fide change of heart?

Here's their idea of "discretion":

Today, Senate Democrats Carl Levin and Jack Reed offered yet another plan for withdrawal from Iraq. Their plan was, more or less, the opposite of John Kerry's. Kerry wants the withdrawal of American troops to be completed by the end of the year. Levin and Reed want the withdrawal to begin by the end of the year, with no stipulation as to how long the withdrawal might take.

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell waggishly dubbed this Donk alternative "cut & jog," something I wish I had coined first. And although Brother Hinderaker considers the Levin/Reed resolution to be a me-tooing of the slow drawdown that is already under way, I cannot agree by simple recognition of where their focus is: on retreat. When the sober reality nobody wants to face, the veritable elephant in the room, is that we will be at war with Iran, perhaps as soon as this fall. And the troops they want to pull out with such alacrity (even "undefined") will be needed just where they are right now.

Still, from a tactical political standpoint, Levin and Reed are on the right track: sanding the hard anti-war edges off their party's true intentions in order to get the core notion of withdrawal established as the new meme, replacing the White House's oft-used "stay the course" slogan. Even if the idea is barely distinguishable from existing policy, it would change the public relations of the issue subtley but decisively, and give the Democrats the campaign coup of being the ones who "finally forced Bush to admit his mistakes and end the war." Wouldn't be substantively true, but that's how it'd be spun in the Extreme Media, and Republicans would, at best, be thrown on the defensive.

That's a best-case scenario, to be sure. However, the GOP didn't need to lift a finger to submarine Levin/Reed, because Mr. French did the honors for them:

After a number of Democrats tried fashioning a non-binding Senate resolution that would eliminate a specific timetable to avoid the charge of a cut-and-run strategy, Kerry undercut them by simply resubmitting his original proposal with a deadline only six months further out than the last.

How big an embarrassment has the Boston Balker become for them? They scheduled debate on his resolution for late this evening, or after the evening network news telecasts. And the New York Times ran a front-page story that Rush Limbaugh called "a shot across the Democrat bow":

This is an advice story from the New York Times and the editors, saying, "You guys are going to blow this big time if you don't get your act together." You have to look at this for what it is. This is not just simple reporting. This is the New York Times palpably afraid that the Democrats are blowing it.

Listen to some of the excerpts from this story that I have highlighted just for you. "As the Senate prepared for what promises to be a sharp debate starting today about whether to begin pulling troops from Iraq, Democratic leadership wants its members to rally behind a proposal that calls for some troops to move out by the end of the year, but does not set a fixed date for complete withdrawal. Mr. Kerry has insisted on setting a date for American combat troops to pull out in 12 months, saying anything less is too cautious....

"Senate Democrats have been loath to express their opinions publicly, determined to emphasize a united front but interviews with the New York Times suggest a frustration with Mr. Kerry never popular among the Democrat caucus and still unpopular among many Democrats for failing to defeat a President they considered vulnerable." [emphasis added]

Oh, if this doesn't bring back memories. Kerry's palpable dislikability was one of the hallmarks of the 2004 campaign. The man always has been, is, and always will be a pompous ass. The Democrats trying to put over the palpable fraud of enthusiastic support for "Gomer with the Gray Poupon" at the Boston Bacchanalia (in addition to trying to put over his own Vietnam-related frauds) was what made that despicable quadrennial exercise almost bearable. Everybody knew the one and only reason Sphincter-Mouth got the nomination was because the Donk base had come to its senses in the nick of time in Iowa and fled Howard Dean in stark-raving terror. Prior to that fortuitous convergence, Kerry's presidential bid had fallen off the face of the planet.

But if the king of Beacon Hill was unpopular before, he's insufferable now. Not only did he bumble away the Dems' last chance to directly avenge Florida 2K, but now he's pretending to be a senator for the transparently express purpose of running for president again in 2008. And just as he was the only man in America who didn't figure out that he was nothing more than the "anti-Dean" the last time around, so he, in his solipsistic, second-hand-ketchup-soaked hauteur, is convinced that he's entitled to another shot, no matter what it does to his party's chances of picking up congressional seats in November.

Just get a load of this:

"Stepping into an elevator on Capitol Hill late this week, Mr. Kerry was asked whether he was under pressure in the Democrats' meetings to withdraw his proposal to set a firm date to get out of Iraq. As he insisted he was not under pressure, Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, standing behind him, raised his eyebrows and then winked at the reporter."

And Kerry called Bush an "idiot"? This guy is being mocked behind his back by his own comrades and he's so submerged in his own towering, stupendous conceit that he's completely blind to it. Kind of like a grandparent you go to visit at the home whose mind is going who can remember events from decades ago with crystal lucidity but doesn't recognize you from the janitor when you walk in his/her room. I know whereof I speak, since I describe my maternal grandmother in her last few years. The difference is she was ninety-five fricking years old; Kerry is only sixty-two, supposedly "in possession of all his faculties, physical & mental, " and a sitting U.S. senator (allegedly), for heaven's sake. Sheesh, even Charlie Gordon figured it out eventually.

But you know what the kicker is? Nah, no mere description can do this justice - let Tim Chapman tell it directly:

In a 2003 speech in New York presidential candidate John Kerry accused the Bush Administration of a "cut and run strategy" in Iraq in which a timetable for withdrawal would be put in place. Today, John Kerry is proposing that strategy on the Senate floor. Here is the relevant text from the speech:

In fact, I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the Administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election…It would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops. That could risk the hijacking of Iraq by terrorist groups and former Ba’athists. [emphases added]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, John Kerry was against cutting and running from Iraq before he was for it. And he's making himself the national security poster boy for al Donka whether the party likes it or not.

Is it any wonder that El Rushbo observed:

The bottom line is this. Their morale is low, they're disoriented, their battle plans are failing, they're making life-threatening mistakes, they've got no replacements. I'm not talking about our troops, I'm talking about the Democrats.

This is the bunch that is going to sweep back to power in a few months? I'll believe that when I see it.

And maybe not even then.

UPDATE 6/22: Kerry II doubled Kerry I's support - it got massacred 86-13. Levin/Reed only failed 60-39, though, showing to everybody but Lurch and the "nutroots" that discretion is, after all, the better part of cowardice.

'NOTHER UPDATE: Michelle Malkin asks if the Democrats will go to the Senate floor today and break out in a rousing rendition of The HMS Pinafore.