Democrats surrender.
Here's CNN's take on the Downing street memo. Most instructive is this quote:
"After the minutes of the meeting became public, 89 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Bush asking for an explanation. The memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war, as well as the integrity of your administration," the letter said."
It's difficult to find an analogy for the pathetic bleatings of these Democrats. I think it's somewhat like having a number of lukewarm German opposition politicians during World War II finding out about an additional concentration camp through a secret memo and writing a letter to Hitler saying "This memo raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war, as well as the integrity of your administration." (And before anyone flips out at me for using a World War II analogy, I needed a conflict that we all agreed was wrong. Iraq II is not morally equivalent to the Nazi catastrophe.)
Troubling new questions? This memo tells us NOTHING we didn't already know. Spineless Democrats can pretend to be shocked and appalled to help appease their own tortured consciences. The House voted 296-133 approving the war--that's 70%. Where were they then?
posted by CharlesPeirce @ 9:13 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
As for your war analogy, it's well made and serves its purpose well, but I was about an inch away from commenting on the implications of your analogy that I'm sure you weren't focused on, and how it's indecent to place Hitler analogous to Bush.
That being said, I agree with you. I was wondering yesterday about the strange times facing both parties. On one hand we've got a bunch of small government Democrats with spines of jelly whining about this and that, changing every color at the whim of the zeitgeist, and generally behaving nothing like a classic liberal or Kennedy era democrat would ever dream. On the other hand, we've got big government Republicans running the country at the behest of special interest groups and starting wars they justify after the fact by heart-felt appeals to freedom.
I'm reminded of Reagan when he became a Republican talking about how the Democrats had lost their purpose and made a government whose scope was uselessly excessive. Strange that the party he so ardently strengthened during his time in office would move much in the direction he abhorred, and that, rather than moving in the opposite direction and forming a stable center, the Democrats would get even worse.
"Pathetic bleating Democrats" pretty much says it all. I think the Hitler analogy is right on. It exaggerates to make the point.
I'm not sure what has gone wrong with the Democrats in D.C. You might say that they always try to play by the rules, and when the Republicans rewrite the rules they don't object, they just say, "Oh, those are the rules now? Okay, I'll play by those." But I think that's letting them off too easily.
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