Is perhaps understandable.
He is, after all, an apostate. He no longer believes whole-heartedly in the Holy Writ - that "it's all Bush's fault". Instead, he has a view of reality that is far from that of the 'reality-based crowd', and is not at all popular. Although his other views haven't changed, it's the view that we have to actually fight those who would destroy us that's a significant problem for the left. That national defense isn't something that can be left to the State Department. That the good guys are the US military, not the lawyers and activists and the 'freedom fighters' slaughtering Iraqis in an attempt to force us out.
He says things that the Democrats don't want to hear. Well, I can't say I blame them - after all, for all their insistance that they've got a wide-open stance when it comes it ideas, they're probably the most stratified and rigid group of folks to come along since the Marxist dialectic took the Russian peasantry by storm. (And I'm talking Karl, not Groucho. Just so there's no confusion.) Dissent is not allowed, not encouraged, not tolerated. So when Sen. Joeseph Lieberman comes out with this...
Say It's So, Joe... it's hard to see this as something which might be positive for the Democratic party. It could well be, IF (and you'll notice it's a good-sized 'if') the people who are nominally in charge of the party realize that a lot of what they're being told is the 'will of the people' is simply the squeaky wheel of activism rearing a very ugly head up to where it can get attention."Between 2002 and 2006, there was a battle within the Democratic Party. . . . We could rightly criticize the Bush administration when it failed to live up to its own rhetoric, or when it bungled the execution of its policies. But I felt that we should not minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamist extremism, or the fundamental rightness of the muscular, internationalist, and morally self-confident response that President Bush had chosen in response to it.
But that was not the choice most Democrats made. . . . Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.
Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America's moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving. . . ."
That the long-term good of the country is NOT dependent on the Democratic Party forcing us out of Iraq, and giving a black eye to Bush. That in less than two years, Bush will be out of office, and the Democratic party had damn well better have something in mind other than the continuation of "Bush=Hitler" chants and passing out pork projects in billion-dollar lots.
The first thing they can do is drop the anti-war rhetoric. There's a good bit of evidence that anti-war sentiment isn't precisely popular. (If you'll recall the latest round of anti-war demonstrations, there was a notable lack of participants.) You might also notice the current crop of anti-war films aren't terribly popular. (Okay, they're tanking. And hard.) Why would this be so if there's so much anti-war fevor?
It doesn't really take a rocket scientist to understand that there's quite a few Americans who get the idea that Islam doesn't equal '"Peace", instead, the concept behind it is "Submission". And that submission to the tenents of Islam isn't something they're wanting to do. So, since as a nation we're not willing to give Islamic fundamentalism a try, and since the Islamic fundamentalists see it as their job to kill the unbelievers and apostates - it might be a good idea to actually take them at their word when they say they want to destroy the West.
Pelosi and Reid don't get that. Lieberman does.
If Hillary (God help us) should actually win the Democratic horse-race, the ONLY way I could see voting for her would be if she would have Lieberman as the VP. That's about as likely as me winning the lottery, I realize. Conversely, since Lieberman's an independent, I'd have little trouble voting for any Republican ticket with him in the VP slot.
But Joe gets it. In order to survive as a Party - whether Democrat or Republican - you have to ensure the survival of the country first. And the current heads of the Democratic Party haven't got that idea down. Indeed, they may be utterly unable to grasp it.
J.