Abortion Protests In Sioux Falls

I managed to get some pictures of the Planned Parenthood rally at the Sioux Falls Federal courthouse over my lunch break today – unfortunately I won’t be able to upload them or provide much commentary until early evening. Check back here then for some imagery and commentary…

UPDATE: I only had a few minutes to snap some photos – had I more time I would have loved to interview people on both sides of the debate. I’d estimate somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 people on the Planned Parenthood side, and maybe three dozen on the pro-life side across the narrow Phillips Avenue on the other side of the courthouse. There was no confrontation between the two groups. The Planned Parenthood people had their slogans and the pro-life people mainly prayed quietly.

As you can see, there were a few priests on the pro-life side – not surprising since Sioux Falls has a large Catholic population. I’m not sure how this debate will play out in this state – South Dakota is strongly religious and deeply conservative. At the same time, most South Dakotans – even those who are against the practice of abortion – may be very wary of this bill. South Dakotans don’t like to call attention to themselves, and this new law puts South Dakota firmly on the national spotlight.

Next to the Planned Parenthood protesters was a group of women dressed in black:

These were women who have had abortions that have come over to the pro-life side because of their experiences. In my experiences with the whole abortion debate, that isn’t uncommon, and the most viscerally anti-abortion people I’ve known have been women who had abortions when they were young and came to deeply regret it since.

I try not to deal with the abortion debate too much myself as its a debate with no good solutions. This rash law by the government of South Dakota has only hardened the battle lines in the abortion debate, which is not a positive direction. It won’t prevent abortions, and if this law is enforced the images of doctors being led away in handcuffs is going to turn a lot of fence-sitters over to the pro-abortion side.

At the same time, the argument that something as important as a nascent human life can be abstracted down to something as trivial as a “choice” is deeply disturbing to me. Human life is not a matter of choice. A society that pays so little respect to the most vulnerable is not a healthy society, and the arguments that abortion is about women’s health or “reproductive rights” strike me as largely fatuous.

The fact is that you cannot isolate sex and reproduction. They are biologically tied together. That doesn’t mean that sex is solely about reproduction, elsewise human culture and biology would be vastly different. At the same time, people can’t try to shirk the sometimes harsh realities of life. If a man sleeps with every woman he sees, sooner or later he’s going to end up with a paternity suit – and when it comes to reproductive law men are treated as second-class citizens. An allegation of rape, even when There seems to me to be a strong case that if women are granted full reproductive rights, men should be given the same consideration.

In the end, however, the South Dakota bill doesn’t change anything. The bill is going to be quickly struck down by the courts and the status quo will remain. Instead of pushing for a total ban, smart lawmakers should push for more and more restrictions on abortion along the lines of Germany. A law which requires mandatory counseling before an abortion can be performed makes sense for both the life of the fetus but also the mental and physical health of the mother. Had the South Dakota Legislature been thinking, they might have gone that direction before stirring up a hornet’s nest – more lives would have been saved, both children and mothers.

Why South Dakota’s Abortion Ban Is a Pyhrric Victory For Life

National Review has an excellent editorial on South Dakota’s abortion-ban legislation:

Since these statutes are extremely unlikely to result in the end of Roe, they will not succeed in making the law just. And since the courts will probably quickly strike down these laws, they will not stop a single abortion either.

That’s 0 for 3. On the plus side of the ledger, the states will have communicated that resistance to the Roe regime is stronger than the conventional wisdom about its popularity would suggest. But that is not a sufficiently valuable benefit to make up for the damage these laws are likely to do to the pro-life cause.

I completely agree. This was a horrendously rash decision that will set the pro-life cause back by years. Especially given that the bill doesn’t make exceptions for incest or rape. Instead of moving the culture towards one that values the lives of the unborn, the South Dakota Legislature has bloodied its hands by hardening the lines against the pro-life cause by making them look like a bunch of unthinking zealots – which I’m afraid in some cases may not be too far from the truth.

The way to end abortion – or at least minimize its effects is to change the culture first and let the laws follow those changes. The civil rights movement succeeded because the moral injustices of segregation were made clear long before Brown v. Board of Education – the culture changed before the law. New advances in sonographic images made the idea of a child being something as abstract as a mere “choice” much harder for women to accept. Now, the South Dakota Legislature has single-handedly set back the pro-life cause by years. Now it’s once again about a bunch of heartless white males who want to oppress women rather than a group of people who see the measure of a nation in how well it protects the life of the most innocent of us. Once again it’s about court decisions and politics rather than human life.

This law has ensured that the abortion debate will only become more acrimonious, it will not strike down Roe, it will not prevent more abortions, and despite the fact that Gov. Rounds said that he had reservations about the bill, he signed it into law anyway. He, and the rest of those who did not consider the ramifications of this bill, bear the responsibility for the damage that it will cause.

Our Political Quagmire

It appears that a quagmire has resulted in an explosive civil war that pits brother against brother – and I’m not talking about Iraq, I’m talking about the Democratic Party. Molly Ivins says that she’s had enough of the DC Democrats and Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Howard Dean is facing an insurgency in his own party as George Soros makes an end-run around the DNC over voter data. The Democratic leadership is basically in disarray as the party starts to fracture between the Clinton wing and the Dean wing of the party.

The national political trends may be quite favorable for the Democrats at the moment, but you can’t win elections if you’ve got a party that’s as deeply divided as the Democrats. It would appear that both parties are spending their time shooting themselves in the feet rather than building up for the 2006 midterms. 2006 may go to the party that’s the least incompetent, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of American politics these days.

The Democrats don’t know how to be a minority party and the Republicans haven’t a clue how to be a majority party – which means that the Democrats have fallen towards reflexive Bush-bashing rather than forming an agenda, and the Republicans have been busy forgetting they had an agenda and have spend the last few years raiding the Treasury and preening for the cameras.

My guess is that 2006 is going to be a very low turnout election, especially in comparison to 2004. People are sick and tired of politics, and it’s pretty damned easy to understand why. The Democrats are shrill, the Republicans clueless, and both parties have demonstrated why building our nation’s capital on swampland was perhaps a bit too prescient. The Democrats are hoping that voters want to throw the bums out. The Republicans are hoping that the public won’t want to exchange new bums for old. Meanwhile, Iran continues to build nuclear weapons, spending continues to spiral out of control, and the stench of corruption still hangs over Congress.

The GOP and the White House had a solid agenda, but never seemed to want to defend it. If the GOP can’t stand for something going into 2006, this election could be a disaster. What’s worse is that the ports deal has severely harmed the GOP’s biggest advantage: national security. Even though the Democrats are engaging in political fratricide, winning due to the utter incompetence of the opposition isn’t anything worth crowing about. The Republicans need to return to the rhetoric of the “ownership society” and actually defend it against the attacks from the left. Social Security reform could have been a winning issue if the Republicans and conservative interest groups had been willing to take the left to the mat on the issue. Instead, we backed down. School choice was an idea that could have changed the political landscape – instead we got the No Child Left Behind Act, an act which hasn’t pleased anyone.

If a Republican majority means a bunch of missed opportunities to do more than throw pork around, a lot of conservatives will stay home on Election Day. Yes, the Democrats are divided. Yes, they’re shrill, boorish, hyper-partisan and unattractive to anyone who hasn’t swallowed the anti-Bush Kool-Aid then come back for seconds. At the same time, if we’re viewed as being little better, how can we expect to win.

It’s time for the GOP to get an agenda and stick to it. The President is trying to fight pork, and the Congress should follow suit. The Republicans need to show that they’re the party that will get tough on corruption, even if that means divorcing ourselves from the likes of Tom DeLay. Politics is a game of perceptions and right now the perceptions of our party are not good. You don’t win in politics by reaction – the Democrats learned that in 2002 and 2004. You win by leading. The Republican Party needs to take a lead on the issues. They need to run an anti-Establishment campaign from within – to regain the winning strategies of the 1994 Contract with America.

People are rightly sick and tired of government. They’re sick and tired of a monstrous federal bureaucracy that consumes everything and does nothing. The Republicans need to promise a governmen that is smaller, more transparent, and more responsive to the needs of our citizens. That used to be our signature ideology. Yet today, thanks to years of profligate spending, the Republican Party has lost touch with their roots.

If the voters this year have a choice between a party of bloated mediocrity and a party of pathological insanity, that’s not much of a choice. Voters deserve better, and our party needs to give them a better choice.

Bush Seeks Legislative Slim-Fast

President Bush is asking for extended recission authority – the right to force Congress to make an up-or-down vote on a porkbarrel project in a bill. In 1996 the Republican Congress passed the line-item veto that would allow the President to directly excise unnecessary riders to a bill. The Supreme Court upheld a Circuit Court ruling striking down the line-item veto in 1998 in the case of Clinton v. City of New York (985 F. Supp. 168). The Court felt that the line-item veto allowed the President to make de facto amendments to acts of the legislature – thus violating the principle of separation of powers.

This bill is designed to make an end-run around Clinton by not allowing the President to do directly interfere in the affairs of the Legislative Branch. However, the Courts may find that this bill also violates separation of powers – the President is still interfering with the text of a bill rather than performing the function of the excutive to either veto or pass a bill. It would appear that this new recission authority exists in a legal grey area at best – and could very well be unconstitutional as demanded.

There’s also the political concern over this bill. Imagine a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress working together to ensure that spending bills that benefitted Republican members of Congress were forced onto the floor while Democratic spending was not made to endure an up-or-down vote. Such a scenario is hardly unthinkable in today’s hyper-partisan climate.

The President’s heart is in the right place, but the fact is that the power of the purse is Constitutionally given to the legislative branch, and if President Bush wants to control spending then he must gather the political will to veto legislation that is saddled with pork. The President has not once used his veto powers, even when signing acts into law like the pork-stuffed Farm Bill and Highway Bills. It’s hardly surprising that many are looking at President Bush’s newfound sense of fiscal rectitude with suspicion – Bush has never been a budget hawk and it’s more than a little late for him to start now.

Congress needs to reform itself. It should pass rules that prevent bills from becoming mere vehicles for pork. They have plenty of options – a return to the PAYGO rules of the Budget Enforcement Act, single-issue rules for legislation, controls on the number of riders, mandating that all legislation be read on the floor before bringing in a vote. Controlling spending is not a function of the Executive aside from suggesting budgets and vetoing legislation. Bush can’t let Congress pass the buck on spending to him, and while this recission authority is tempting, it’s not the right solution towards tipping over the pork barrel.

South Dakota Bans Abortion

Gov. Mike Rounds has signed the South Dakota abortion ban into law, in direct defiance of Roe v. Wade. The bill bans nearly all abortions unless there is a direct threat to the life of the mother.

This bill leaves me conflicted. I personally find abortion to be a barbaric practice in which the life of an innocent child is sacrificed often for nothing more than the convenience of another person. At the same time, this action was taken rashly and will cost the state of South Dakota millions in legal fees and will probably never see the light of day in the Supreme Court. Had the Legislature wanted to approach this with more subtletly than a bull in a china shop they could have ratcheted up the restrictions on abortion in an incrementalist manner – instead they’ve gone for a blanket ban that is poorly written and poorly considered.

That being said, Roe is bad law – based on a horrendous stretching of the law that relies on “penumbras” and “emanations” rather than a concrete reading of the Constitution. Even if Roe were overturned, the chances of a blanket ban on abortion nationwide would be slim to none. States like California and New York would never vote to ban abortion, and those states represent the vast majority of abortions performed in this country. Those wishing to procure abortions will always have the option of going elsewhere to get them.

There were better options that would have dramatically cut back on the abortion rate (not that South Dakota has a particularly large abortion rate to begin with). Something like Germany’s mandatory conseling law could have passed muster with the Courts, helped reduce abortions, and heped change the culture towards a more pro-life end. Instead, the South Dakota legislature and Gov. Rounds have further inflamed the issue, forcing people to take sides, and passed a law that is blatantly in violation of federal law and is unlikely to ever be grated certiorari by the courts. Instead, the federal appeals court will strike the law down and the state of South Dakota will be out millions of dollars in legal fees.

This was a rash decision that will have dramatic and long-reaching consequences, and will end up setting back the pro-life cause by years. Instead of following an incrementalist model that would help change attitudes about abortion, the state of South Dakota has ensured that the abortion debate will continue to be one of acrimony – and ultimately nothing will have been decided.

The Legislature and Gov. Rounds are now celebrating what will ultimately be a Pyrhrric victory in the defense of the unborn, and their ill-considered law has caused far more harm than good.

Ports Fallout Hitting Bush

It looks like the issue of having American ports managed by a Dubai-based company is producing a definite decline in President Bush’s poll numbers. Gallup shows Bush’s approval rating at 38% and 66% opposed to the ports deal. The latest FoxNews/Opinion Dynamics poll has results that are quite similar and LA Times finds even less support for the ports deal. While the last CBS News poll dramatically oversampled Democrats it is quite clear that Bush has taken a political hit from this issue.

Even if the policy behind the ports deal is a solid one, and it does look as though Dubai Ports World is a decent enough company, the politics of the issue were completely bungled. Bush’s support levels seem to have a floor right around 40% when he has the support of his party – which is consistant with partisan ID in America today. However, in cases where Bush has managed to offend members of his own party – Katrina, Harriet Miers, and now the ports deal, his approval ratings continue to fall.

Bush has done the dumbest thing he could possibly do, which is undercut himself on his signature issue. He’s not only hurt himself, but he’s also undercut the whole GOP on the security issue. If the Democrats can start outflanking the Republicans on national defense and security, the GOP will be in a whole lot of trouble in the upcoming midterm elections. Despite the fact that the Democrats remain weak, disorganized, and hyper-partisan, the GOP is hardly doing much better at this point. If the GOP loses their edge on security, things will get pretty interesting – and if you’ve seen Serenity you know what I mean by “pretty interesting.”

Bush’s boneheaded move on the ports issue has cost him politically, and it’s hardly surprising that it has. Bush has once again managed to play right into the hands of his critics by looking like he and his administration were asleep at the wheel. The threat of a veto on this ports issue was never prefaced by an adequate explanation of why anyone should support the deal despite the fact that there were plenty of reasons why it did not represent a threat to US national security. It seemed like a complete overreaction and instantly burned bridges with Congress and the public.

Bush seems absolutely uninterested in playing political hardball these days, which is understandable given the vitriolic nature of the media. The problem is that when you’re a target, you damn well better start firing back if you don’t want to end up being cut to shreds. Bush has not done this. There’s been very little effort to craft a coherent message on key issues. Congress and the White House seem to be utterly disconnected. On immigration and national security, Bush is alienating the conservative base. If it comes down to leftist anger and conservative apathy, the Republicans are going to find themelves in a very bad place in 2006.

The issues we face are too important to have the unhinged Democratic Party take control of Congress. The Republicans have to start getting their heads in the game, and if Bush continues to make one political blunder after another while taking fire from all sides from a relentlessly hostile media the captain may take the ship down with him.

What’s The Big Idea?

Over at Asymmetrical Information there’s an interesting piece on the paucity of Big Ideas coming from the left these days:

Conservatives have a few things that pretty much all of them can agree on: the lower taxes are, the better; government programmes and regulations often create more problems than they solve; keep your damn hands off our guns. Pretty much everyone from the Libertarians to James Dobson and Co. can get behind this platform, and sell it to the American public. You can even add “The US military should be able to kick the [expletive deleted] of anyone who threatens us in any way” and keep all but the most hard-core Libertarians. I’m sure there are a couple of other things you could throw in, and still get a platform that is reasonably large, coherent, and agreeable to not only pretty much the entire conservative movement, but a fair number of moderates besides. There are lots–LOTS–of things that the conservatives disagree on, from gay marriage to flag burning. But there are enough that the conservative movement can craft a mission statement and sell it to America.

What’s the liberal Big Idea? Raise taxes? I’d say pretty much all the liberals I know are for that . . . but raising taxes, even “raising taxes on the rich”, is not an ends, but a means, unless you’re the kind of emotional toddler who wants to take other people’s things away just because you can’t have them. And the left (into which I throw moderate Democrats, just as I’ll throw moderate Republicans on the right) does not agree what it wants to do with the taxes it raises. The DLC types (and swing voters) want to close the budget deficit in a (IMHO futile) attempt to build the Clinton legacy. The left-liberals want a big government health care programme, and other sorts of Great Society style social programmes. The far left wants . . . ohhh, a lot of things, but they’re not going to get any of them, so that hardly seems relevant.

She hits on a very important point here. Conservatives disagree on a whole host of issues, but agree on general principles: government should be small, national defense is important, and taxes should be low. You can write it on a notecard. Granted, that is a dramatic oversimplification, and conservatives don’t travel in ideological lockstep like some would claim, but there’s ane element of truth here.

The left doesn’t have big ideas because they’ve become Balkanized by their own form of identity politics. Gays and auto workers have very little in common. African-Americans and Hispanics are as socially conservative as the “theocratic” right. All these groups are united by the thin promise of some government largesse down the road, which is why the closest thing that the Democrats have to a coherent ideology is the belief in bigger and more expansive government.

The problem with that ideology is that the Democrats are dramatically out of step with the movement of society. Look at the changes in society over the past few decades. It used to be that you went to a travel agency to plan a vacation – it was annoying and costly to do it yourself. Now, everyone from Expedia to Travelocity makes it easy for individuals to book flights, hotels, and cars in a few minutes and right from their houses. It used to be that people had to either struggle through complicated tax forms or pay an accountant to do their taxes for them. Now, you can buy a piece of software that can guide you through your taxes in an evening and have your return automatically credited to your bank account. In every aspect of society, things are moving towards the empowerment of the individual over the power of groups.

For all the talk of a “progressive” movement, the “progressives” seem to be a throwback to an older era. As society moves towards further rights for individuals, identity politics are based on group identity over individualism. “Progressive” economics are based on shifting the balance of economic power towards the states – the argument they make is that we should raise taxes to pay for social programs. Fair enough, except that social programs tend not to work, and the left is also trying to wear the mantle of the deficit hawk – those aren’t compatible positions.

One of the reasons for the current political realignment in America is that the policies of the left are contrary to the direction of society. Because of that shift, the left has become increasingly shrill. For all the talk about how Bush is ratcheting up fear, every election cycle we get the same message that Republicans will put Grandma on the street and make Little Timmy eat expired cat food for school lunch. The way in which both John Roberts and Sam Alito were demonized is part and parcel of the left’s M.O. these days – and the way in which no one outside donors to groups like People for the American Way cared is also part and parcel of how effective those attacks have become. The problem with those scare tactics is that they don’t do anything to appeal to an audience who don’t already think that Dick Cheney enjoys a tall glass of puréed puppy in the morning.

Ironically enough, it’s Bush that appears to be illustrating the most why Big Government doesn’t work. If I were a believer in some kind of political “rope-a-dope” in the White House to make the Democrats embrace smaller government I’d say that the plan is working brilliantly. However, I don’t believe that and think that Bush’s “compassionate conservativism” is really just another term for “being a budgetary squish” and that it’s an experiment doomed to failure. It has forced the issue of fiscal sanity towards the forefront of our political culture, but the fact is that as long as the government can run up masses of debt the idea that we can spend our way into smaller government just doesn’t work.

The Bush Administration may be doing a wonderful job of pissing away the GOP’s narrow electoral advantages in advance of the midterms, but in the long run it’s the left that has the most to worry. Elections aren’t won by wonkish policy proposals (Kerry, Gore in 2000) or hatred of the Other Guy (Dean, Gore today). They’re won be an ideology that can reach across party lines and capture the vital center. The left doesn’t have one, and their ideological instincts cut against the grain of American society today. As one commenter wryly notes: “A number of people look at the government and don’t see FDR trying to pull the U.S. out of Depression, they see Patty and Selma at the DMV.” Empowering the state over the individual just doesn’t work in an age when individuals are more empowered than ever before. So long as “progressivism” stands in opposition to individual liberty, it will never be a dominant force in American politics.

Obsession

Hillary Clinton, whose hubris knows no bounds, is now complaining that Karl Rove “obsesses” about her.

Let’s see, she’s a sitting US Senator, the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic nomination, and shares the last name of the only nationally-successful Democratic politician in the last 14 years. You’re damn right that a political strategist is going to be watching her career closely.

Then again, given that it’s over two years before the election and Hillary fatigue has already set in, perhaps the junior Senator from New York’s political future isn’t quite that bright. Bill Clinton may have had the morals of an alleycat, but he was one of America’s best politicians. He was able to reach out to the American people in a way that only the most gifted masters of political rhetoric can. In contrast, Hillary tends to come off as shrill and preachy. The fact that she shares her husband’s sense of self-importance without the benefit of his charm means that while Hillary may be the front-runner now, that may not be guaranteed in the future.

Cheney’s Speech

I managed to catch reruns of Dick Cheney’s interview with Brit Hume last night, and it was a very different side of the Vice President. Cheney’s always been the Administration attack dog, but he seemed genuinely remorseful about the incident in which his close friend Harry Whittington was accidentally shot.

The media will no doubt be fixated on Cheney’s poor media response, but the only people who care about such things are people in the media. The rest of the country has absolutely no interest in the usual self-important swagger of the media in wondering why they didn’t get to send News Copter 5 in while Whittington was still bleeding on the ground. Cheney’s staffers should have done more to brief the media early on, but the utterly idiotic and self-important whining of the media that they were scooped by a local paper is another example of how the media lives in its own bubble.

As for Cheney, seeing a more human side of him will probably help rather than hurt his numbers – not that the Vice President is the type who gives a damn about approval ratings. He is a lame duck, he has no intention of furthering his political career towards higher office. He isn’t running in 2008 (although I wish he would announce that he would just so Helen Thomas’ head would explode like a watermelon at a Gallagher show). He’s there to do the job, and that’s what he intends to do – which in many ways is a refreshing change from the disingenuous ass-kissing antics of those politicians seeking to leave their slime trails higher and higher along the ladder of government.

As far as I’m concerned, and I’m sure this is true for most of America, this is a personal tragedy for Cheney and Whittington, and not a matter of public concern. Hunting accidents are part of the sport, and a moment’s inattention can have disastrous – even fatal – results. Cheney clearly feels terrible about this event, as well he should, and he’s taken full responsibility for his actions. The media will naturally flog this dead horse until it’s rendered into glue, and the left will continue to act unhinged as Terry McAuliffe’s idiotic and shameful comments demonstrate, but for those outside the media bubble this is just a particularly sad historical footnote.

A Return To Normalcy For The Democrats?

That’s the advice Mickey Kaus is selling to the Democrats. He argues that theming their 2006 and 2008 campaigns with “a return to normalcy” will provide the message that the Democrats so desperately need.

The problem with this plan begins early:

The essential premise is that Bush has stretched the military, the Constitution and the civility of our politics to the limit in reaction to the threat of future 9/11s. All this fevered straining and leveraging may have been appropriate at the time, but there’s no real need to keep running in hyperdrive. We can routinize the anti-terror struggle the way we routinized the Cold War, when just as much was at stake. We don’t have to make an end run around the Constitution or a duly-passed statute (wiretapping). We don’t have to torture prisoners or hold them forever without hearings. We don’t have to slight disaster relief (Katrina) because the Department of Homeland Security worries only about terrorists. We don’t have to unmask CIA agents in a desperate effort to build a case for war. ** We don’t have to alienate our allies. We don’t have to run giant deficits to finance our armed forces, as if the “Global War on Terror” were a temporary crisis that will be over in three years. It’s not. It’s a semi-permanent part of the landscape. Democrats can contain the terrorist threat the way, for four decades, they helped contain the Russians–while (as during the Cold War) we allow ourselves to turn our attention to domestic problems such as health care and Social Security.

The problem is that once again cements the Democrats as the party of weakness on national security. That and civil values continue to be the Democrat’s two biggest weaknesses. The fact is that Kaus is once again trying to apply Cold War doctrines to an enemy that can’t be contained in the way that the US tried to contain Soviet Communism. Fanatics like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad don’t necessarily worry about mutually assured destruction – besides, who would we nuke in response to an al-Qaeda nuclear attack?

Kaus’ strategy essentially is the Democratic strategy, and it hasn’t worked in the last four years. He’s right that the Democrats are much stronger on domestic issues than foreign policy, but in the post-9/11 world the Democrats have not yet been able to adapt to the fact that the old doctrines just don’t apply anymore. In those rare cases where the Democrats have made serious arguments on national security, very few of them have reflected the fundamental shift in world politics that have occurred in the wake of September 11, 2001.

What can the Democrats do to stop being weak on national security? They have some strong arguments that Bush is not the right person to bring democracy to the Middle East. He’s too tainted in the eyes of the world. The incidents at Abu Ghraib have forever tarred us as torturers. We’re doing a decent enough job militarily (tarring the war hasn’t brought the Democrats any advantage), but Bush is terminally tone-deaf when it comes to winning the larger ideological struggle.

The Democrats should adopt a comprehensive strategy for national security along the lines of the one proposed by General Wesley Clark. Clark’s one of the few Democrats who can say that he earned the endorsement of Michael Moore but still stands a chance of showing a viable and strong Democratic plan for Iraq. The Democrats need to say that they will strongly protect the national security of the United States, they will not allow for failure in Iraq, and they will work to repair the damage done to the American image abroad. In other words, an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove.

What else could the Democrats do? Purge the MoveOn.org crowd. Fire Howard Dean. Replace Harry Reid in the Senate with a moderate like Joe Lieberman (which of course, the Democrats wouldn’t even consider doing). If Lieberman won’t do, make Evan Bayh the Majority Leader. Get someone who can speak to Middle America in their own terms. Get rid of Nancy Pelosi in the House. A San Francisco liberal has many strikes against them from the beginning. Start positioning the Democratic Party as a party that will not back down from a fight.

If the Democrats want a return to normalcy, they also have to act normal. The Democrats should send a memo to every Democratic member of Congress. No more attacking Bush. It alienates anyone who doesn’t share their ravenous dislike of the President. There are 40% of the people who are die-hard Bush supporters. There are 40% of the people who hate Bush with a passion. Whichever party can reach out to the 20% that are in between will win. In 2004, Bush improved his position in regards to nearly every demographic because it became a contest between Bush and not Bush. Any race where your own side becomes nothing more than a negation of the other side is a losing race. Hatred of Bush does not win elections.

If 2006 becomes an election where voters choose between the status quo and a Democratic Party whose primary focus is a politically-motivated impeachment of President Bush, the Democratic Party will lose. The politics of personal destruction didn’t work for the Republicans in the 1990s, and it won’t work for the Democrats this year or in 2008.

The Democrats should continually focus the center of political attention away from Bush and towards domestic issues. The more the Democrats harp on NSA wiretaps, Valerie Plame, Iraq, and other issues of national security, the more they cement themselves as party of weakness on national security issues. Those issues may matter to the Democratic base, but they alienate everyone else.

The Democratic left wants to push their party harder and harder towards the “progressive” left. If the “netroots” take control of the Democratic Party, they’ll lose. No matter how much the Democrats try to “frame” issues to appeal to their caricature of the American voter, they can’t win if they’re a party dominated by a secular, liberal elite.

While the partisan in me relishes the idea of another Democratic defeat, the Republicans need strong competition to keep from getting complacent. We need a Democratic Party able to prod the Republicans towards fiscal responsibility. We need a party that can help push democratization and temper some of the diplomatic blunders of the Bush Administration. We need an effective, capable, and sane opposition. Right now, the Democratic Party is none of those things. For the good of their own party and the nation, the Democrats need to be able to effectively challenge the Democrats. While the weakness and continued partisanship of the Democrats is the political godsend of the GOP at the moment, having one political party in a two-party system dive off an ideological cliff is not healthy. If the Democrats want to win, Democratic moderates must seize control of their party before the radicals steer it further and further away from the American mainstream.