Has Obama caught Lieberman cooties?

I get amused at the left as exemplified by the Kos Kids. I know they can't help it, and I'm sure that they aren't deliberately attempting to provide me with entertainment, but I do get amused and I suspect that they have absolutely no clue that they are. These self styled partisans fall into the class of what I call "True Believers," that group of people that put their particular brand of politics out front without any attempt at rational discussion, they do it simply because it feels right to them. That is to say, they truly believe in their POV which has not necessarily been rationally arrived at.

Their stance on the supporters/detractors of the current war in Iraq is a good example. I for one, believe that the effort in Iraq is a noble one, but I can also believe that there are those who opposed the effort from the beginning out of careful rational deliberation. There is nothing inherently wrong with being anti-war. No one perhaps, it is said, is more anti-war than the soldier and I was once a soldier, my father was a soldier, my grandfather and great-grandfather were soldiers. Having said that, a soldier also knows that there are times when war is the best option, of several bad options. As John Stuart Mill noted:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

But I digress, the Kos Kids are, for whatever reason anti-war and disdain, nay, lothe anyone who disagrees with them. They took on Joe Lieberman and lost, they supported John Kerry and lost, they supported Barack Obama for saying he was against the war from the beginning and John Edwards for "apologizing" for his vote for the war. That was until this Sunday. Kos notes:

If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.

Then Kos states flatly:

What a ridiculous thing to say. Not only is it bad policy, not only is it bad politics, it's also a terrible negotiating approach.

Instead of threatening Bush with even more restrictions and daring him to veto funding for the troops out of pique, Barack just surrendered to him.

And the Kos Kids went to town! I won't link to Kos, you can look it up if you've a mind to, but trust me on this, Kos and his minions will chew up and spit out any Democrat who dares to leave the Kossack Commune on the issue of the War. Obama did so when he noted the truth of real-politic that the American People will not tolerate abandonment of the troops.

The Democrats have put forth a multitude of "plans" to withdraw from Iraq, none of which had a snowball's chance until they larded up one "non-binding" plan with pork to get sufficient votes. As Charlie Rangel noted to Tim Russert:

Because they needed the votes. That bill, we lost so many Democrats, one, because people thought we went too far and other's because we didn't go far enough. So a lot of things had to go into a bill that certainly those of us who respect great legislation did not want in there…And I didn't care what was in that bill if there was anything to slow down, to say what the American people said in the last election, ‘get out of Iraq.’”

Mr. Rangel is wrong, the anti-war sentiment is not there. There is however, a feeling that the Bush Administration had botched the war and the Democrats were exceptionally good at exploiting that feeling. But they have, I think, misread the results and now, they know it. That is why they cannot get sufficient votes to force a withdrawal. Indeed, they really don't want to because the Democrats know with a certainty what will happen if we withdraw. The bloodbath will make the Khemer Rouge look like saints and the sectarian violence seen today will seem like a picnic in the park.

Obama is, at least, cognizant of that fact and stated his take on reality. Now, at least, there is insufficient support in Congress to override President Bush's threatened veto and if the Democrats should override it given some circumstance in the future, the "loss" of Iraq to the islamofascists will be directly on their shoulders. Kos could care less, he and his followers are true believers and will not tolerate any other point of view. One comment (out of over 700) in particular struck me:

The Lieberman influence leapt to mind the instant I read this. It's as if Obama's lips moved, but Holy Joe's whiny, nasal voice came out.

I don't know that this can be attributed to bad advice, however. Obama has always tended to be overcautious and sensitive to whatever the prevailing "centrist" opinion of the moment happens to be. In short, he tends to triangulate a bit, though to a lesser extent than Hillary does. Where is the boldness and willingness to challenge the political establishment that we expect from our candidates?

If Obama were truly the champion of a "new" style of politics, he would have the courage to stand with the rest of the Democrats in fighting bush's plans, instead of giving up. The last thing we need from our candidates is an attitude of appeasement towards an unpopular president whose position has been rejected by the vast majority of Americans. [emphasis added]

Kos and company have not, nor will they ever, forgive Joe Lieberman, one of the most liberal of all Democrats, for taking a contrary position on the war and anyone that even remotely echos a Lieberman position seems to have suddenly caught Lieberman's "cooties." How juvenile!

A tip O' The GM Derby to Brazilian Neocon a new found friend.

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Posted by GM Roper at April 2, 2007 07:15 AM | TrackBack