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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Democratic Field

The Democratic Field

This year’s Democratic Presidential field is unusual. I can’t imagine John F. Kennedy or Harry Truman feeling comfortable with this group of candidates. There are no perfect candidates and no perfect presidents, but over the years there has been a general understanding that both parties put the country over politics. That is where the term "loyal opposition" originated, if I’m not mistaken.

Today, however, it appears that politics triumphs country on the Democratic side. Good economic news is bad news for the Democrats and they and their allies in the news media spin it that way. Is there a hurricane? It must be George Bush’s fault. Even the weather can’t escape being politicized. Good and indisputable news that the surge is working must be denied and doubted. 

Where did such partisanship come from? What happened to "politics stops at the water’s edge?"
In some ways it can be traced back to 1948 when young Democratic activist George McGovern refused to back Harry Truman and bolted to Norman Thomas’ Socialist Party. It’s hard to imagine what George found so bad about big spending, high tax, somewhat shady Harry Truman. He probably didn’t like it that Harry had the courage and good sense to drop the bomb to end the War in the Pacific Theater. A decision, by the way, that saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American and Japanese lives.

Perhaps it was the fact that Harry was just too much of an America-first patriot for George. Regardless, since 1972 when George McGovern and the prairie radicals took over the Democratic Party, it has never been the same. George failed in his bid for the White House, but the Democratic Party has been firmly in the hands of the prairie radical element since 1972. Bill Clinton likes to talk about following in the footsteps of JFK, but he and Hillary are really children of George McGovern, not Jack Kennedy.

The views of John Kennedy on foreign policy and taxes in the 1960s would make him an outcast in today’s Democratic Party. After all, it was Kennedy who sent "advisors" into Vietnam and his running mate, Lyndon Johnson, who prosecuted the Vietnam War.

Those who were rioting outside the convention in Chicago in 1968 are the same folks who are calling our soldiers terrorists and Nazis today. They are the same folks who are running for the Democratic nomination for President and who think that the United States is far, far from being a great nation. They believe that this is a terrible nation of bigots, racists, war mongers, planet desecraters, evil capitalists, and imperialists. They reject traditional moral values and free markets. They can’t wait for the day that America becomes like Europe—a weak, socialist economic basket case.

Hillary Clinton is ambitious for power beyond words. She wants to bring socialist medicine to the US, not because it will result in better medical care (she has never once said that), but because it will result in equal care (except for elitists like Hillary and Bill, of course).

Barak Obama hasn’t even served one full term in the US Senate, yet he apparently feels he is ready to sit in the Oval Office. He too, calls for an immediate withdrawal of American troops, even in the face of unchallengeable evidence that the surge is working and the tide of the war has turned.

Trial lawyer extraordinaire and environmental hypocrite in chief, John Edwards, advocates policies that would put everyone in the poor house. And the rest of the field follows similar lines—pull out the troops, socialize medical service, raise taxes, grant blanket amnesty, cut the military, etc.

It’s a depressing field for a Party that brought our nation leaders like Truman and Kennedy. They were Americans first, and politicians second. They also understood a thing or two about economics and foreign policy. Sadly, the same can’t be said for this year’s candidates put forward by the Democratic Party.

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