Clap Trap

There's an article by Mary Katharine Ham over at Townhall today and it's entitled, "I know a Marine, and he knows the stakes." It's about the Iraq Study Group Report which she, like many Conservatives, isn't happy about. And her emotional attack on the Iraq Study Group is to say that the Marines who are fighting over there would want us to go on fighting until we win, no matter how long that is.

At Walter Reed, I doubt there are many men who think asking Iran and Syria for help is the “right thing.” They have spent years and lives and limbs trying to defeat the insurgent arms of these radical governments and the violence they foment, and now the Washington policy elite and press corps would ask them to team with them in a misguided attempt to quell violence in Iraq.

Only at Washington dinner parties could such a sell-out be worthy of so many smiles.

I don't know what Ms. Ham's solution is. Presumably it is something along the lines of stay the course or fight the war to win or some other homily that boils down to let's kill them till they love us.

Not matter how long it takes or how many more Marines we put in Walter Reed or in Arlington.

Do the Democrats have a Plan?

Do they need one?

First things first; it's always wise to describe your political enemies as dullards who don't know what they are doing, politically. Stand back a little, stand on higher ground, survey the political landscape, pick out a mistake your political opponent is making, and underline it, pontificating sadly about how this failure makes them unlikely to win in the next election cycle.

People want to bet on the right horse. Even if they support the losing candidate, they will support him more if they think he is going to win.

Mary Katherine Ham's latest article decries the Democrats for failing to put forward a plan of what they are going to do if they are put in the drivers seat. In one sense she's right; we do need to put forward more of what we are in favor us. On the other hand, it wouldn't matter if we did, if we let Republicans and the Media define us; we can talk about programs until we are blue in the face. Unless they can find specific attacks against our programs, they will continue to pretend we care for nothing except hating Bush.

But it wouldn't hurt for us to nationalize this election more than we have.

Hybrid Bloggers

This is the term Mary Katherine Ham has created in her latest article to cover bloggers who are conservative but would vote for a Democrat if he were conservative enough. Presumably it would also describe those liberal bloggers who would vote for a Republican if her were liberal enough (like, oh, say that nice John McCain or Rudy Guiliani).

But on the right they are full of kindness and sweetness for their moderates or hybrids, on the left we have Deborah Fritch (who, if you don't remember, threatened to do bad things to a conservatives bloggers child) and a certain disdain for Joe Lieberman.

I can’t help but think that, as blogs continue to become a bigger part of electoral politics and the parties inevitably become more practiced at working with them, this difference in approach doesn’t bode well for Democrats. As much as the Left blogosphere likes to accuse the whole center-right of existing only to parrot the command-and-control messages of Chimpy McBushitler, it is the Left blogosphere that has seemed so intent on alienating itself and the Democratic Party from political hybrids and moderate Democrats of late, and doing so in dramatic, nasty fashion.

Why are left-wing bloggers tired of moderates like Joe Lieberman? Because Joe Lieberman has enabled the Bush administration in every one of it's schemes, and also because Lieberman has made it clear what we thinks of the people to the left of him. It's really that simple.

And of course Conservatives share the same frustrations with Republicans they feel aren't sufficiently conservative. The Ace of Spades HQ blog recently made this suggestion.

I suggest a Enemies List of certain Republicans. We keep the list small at first, just the most egregious offenders, as a warning to the rest. Pour encouragement les otres, or however that goes. ("Every once in a while you have to hang a few admirals to encourage the others.")

The Enemies List would be a full blogosphere press on an absolute, full, total boycott on all donations/volunteering to the GOP members on the list. We wouldn't necessarily hold back votes; but we damn sure would make it tougher for these guys to get re-elected.

I think it's about time.

. . . If a few of them lose elections because of this-- well, so be it. We can afford to lose a free-spending Republican here and there without losing control of Congress.

He put Trent Lott on that list; his readers also suggested Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Spector, John McCain and others. I could pull up more examples of Conservatives slamming into their moderates.

But that doesn't fit the story, I suppose. The Republicans, having little to run on, need something to run against. And Liberals Bloggers, despite their lack of power or influence, will just have to do for now.