It looks like Russ Feingold’s move to official censure President Bush is going over like a fart in church. Senate Democrats are claiming they “need more time” to go over the resolution, which is a polite way of saying “hell no, we’re not putting this up for a vote.”
Feingold has been jockeying into position to be the left-wing Democrat’s poster boy in 2008, and this censure resolution is part of that positioning strategy. The Democratic “progressives” are already facing a backlash against those Democrats who aren’t ideologically extreme enough for them, and the possibility of someone like Feingold running an insurgent candidacy against a centrist Democrat continues to grow the more Feingold shows off for the MoveOn.org crowd.
The Democrats just can’t help themselves – Bush is their white whale and they’re a million little Ahabs trying to go after him. Instead of focusing on the issues in 2006, the Democrat’s rhetoric will be more of the same Bush-bashing that plays only to their base and alienates everyone else. The fact that Feingold is pushing the NSA surveillance issue – one of the few issues Bush has any traction on at the moment is further evidence of just how much anti-Bush tunnel vision exists within the Democratic base.
No wonder Harry Reid is trying to sweep Feingold’s resolution under the rug – but sooner or later the “progressive” inmates will finish taking over the Democratic asylum, and the chances of a Democratic takeover in 2006 will fall preciptiously.
Newt Gingrich was censured with barely a blip on the radar screen outside the Beltway. I’ll grant you that Democrats raising the I-word are treading on this ice, but the kind of censure Feingold is calling for would hardly bring the republic to its knees. And my guess it that a solid 55-60% of Americans would support it.
The party that aligns itself with Creationists shouldn’t be lecturing about ideological extremism. Hi pot, you’re black.