OBSCENETIES, VULGARITIES AND CHEAP SHOTS

Democrats, what in the world does your party stand for?

One day, you're going further left than Mao, following the glorified former mayor of an inconsequential northeastern state. Wherever Dean takes you, you all seem ready to go. Forfeit the war? Done. Undo all free trade pacts? Consider it done. Upend the basic foundations of our culture on a whim? Goody. Whatever the hardest lefty wants, you're ready to do.

Now some southern general jumps into the race, and you're all hot and bothered to follow him. He doesn't even know whether he'd have supported the Iraq war or not. One day he's all for it, the next day he's not. We report, and then apparently he'll decide. He also says that but for a couple of unreturned phone calls to Karl Rove, he'd have come out as a Republican. You mean Darth Vader himself created the Democrat that's now leading the pack? Actually, no. That seems to be yet another weird tale from the old soldier. And yet the Donks are all for him taking the party nomination and going up against Bush next year. What for? What does he stand for? Doesn't matter--he's not Bush, and for most Dems that's apparently good enough. Behold this exchange:

Indeed, after caustically comparing the actions of the Bush administration to what he described as the abuses of Richard M. Nixon, he said that he voted for Mr. Nixon in 1972. He also said he had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.

The general's remarks in a free-rolling 90-minute airborne interview suggested the extent of the adjustment he faces in becoming a presidential candidate.

"Mary, help!" he called to his press secretary, Mary Jacoby, at the front of the plane, as he faced questions about Iraq. "Come back and listen to this."

At one point, Ms. Jacoby interrupted the interview, which included four reporters who were traveling on the general's jet, to make certain that General Clark's views on the original Iraq resolution were clear.

"I want to clarify — we're moving quickly here," Ms. Jacoby said. "You said you would have voted for the resolution as leverage for a U.N.-based solution."

"Right," General Clark responded. "Exactly."

Meanwhile, over the weekend the Dems seemed to drag lots of worms out from under rocks to put them on stage at campaign rallies. Moby called President Bush an "evil f---" at a Kerry rally. At a Dean rally, Al Franken launched into a rant so foul and mentally off that the networks had to bleep most of it. Neither candidate protested, neither seemed terribly disturbed.

And then you have the champion swimmer of Chappaquiddick accusing the president of bribing other countries to support the post-war effort in Iraq. Even Time magazine protested that bit of lying.

And then there are the cheap shots. Not long after hurricane Isabel passed, Maryland Democrat spokesman David Paulsen slapped at Gov. Ehrlich for, well, something. Not acting to prevent a force of nature, I guess. And last night on MSNBC I happened to catch a few minutes of some Democrat taking pot shots at President Bush's foreign policy. He mentioned that Bush had run on a platform that promised a humbler foreign policy, but that his actualy foreign policy has been anything but.

I pause here for a sec to talk about that "humbler foreign policy" line. It made no sense to me when Bush kept using it. It still doesn't. But I think it's fair to say that those of us who lent him our support in 2000 didn't do it because we longed for a humble foreign policy. We liked him for other reasons, and we disliked Gore for lots of reasons. And it's fair to point out that prior to 9-11, Bush seemed content to be known as the Double T President--Tax cuts and T-ball. Then 9-11 came along...

And apparently that's what the Democrat spinner, and the Democrat party as a whole, missed--9-11. You know, the day that changed everything. Or maybe he doesn't think a few foreign policy adjustments were warranted by the mass murder of 3,000 on our soil. Or he doesn't think we should be disappointed when countries we twice saved stab us in the back when we need them to back us up. Or that somehow those countries' corrupt deals are preferrable and more worthy of support than a president who is doing the hard work of defending this country from a clear and present threat.

So I ask again, what do you Democrats actually stand for? The rabid left as represented by Howard Dean? Or the nebulous whatever represented by Gen. Clark, a man who think yes or no questions are too complicated to answer (imagine if Quayle had used that one...)? Do you stand for defending the country, or letting the French dictate our foreign policy?

I don't actually expect a coherent answer to these questions, by the way. I expect some vitriol, some heat, but very little light. You've provided exactly zero photons of enlightenment since 9-11, and I can't imagine you starting now.

(many links thanks to Hanks, as always)

MORE: Speaking of cheap shots, Bush is now to blame for making hurricanes worse? How dumb is that? Very dumb. Uh, and I wonder if Mr. Cole noticed that Isabel wasn't as bad as predicted, and certainly not as bad as Andrew a few years back, and thanks to better prediction models and longer warning times, wasn't as deadly as earlier hurricanes.

Of course not. Those are called facts, those stubborn things that get in the way of a timely, if stupid, argument. And arguing that dropping out of Kyoto makes hurricanes worse is a stupid argument indeed. Mr. Cole blithely asserts all sorts of meterological suppositions as fact, apparently uninformed that much of what we believe about weather is tied to flawed climatology models. The models are getting better, but they're still deeply flawed. And Kyoto was so bad that even the Clinton administration wouldn't sign on to it. They just gave it a cowardly cold shoulder.

(link courtesy Jeff Jarvis, who seems to think the accusation is valid)

MORE: A.M. Siriano takes a swipe at the foul-mouthed Franken, whom he says should never be compared to the right's bad girl, Ann Coulter. And though I hadn't thought about it much, he's absolutely right. Say what you want about Coulter, but she never stoops to the kind of juvenile, toilet level style of attack that Franken uses with abandon. Coulter sometimes goes over the top, but she always maintains a sense of decency and is always sharp.

Yes, even when she accuses the left of treason. What else would you call giving the bomb to the Russians? What else would you call accepting money from Soviet fronts during the Cold War? I'd call it treason.