The Growing DINO Menace
With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?
Harold Ford’s recent paranoid response to the New Jersey court ruling concerning gay married couples really threw me today. I know that reasonable people can disagree, based on religion or tradition or semantics, on what marriage really means, but one tends to assume that if you’re a Democrat, you’re probably not hostile, at least, to the idea of gay unions in one way or another.
I don’t want to debate the gay marriage issue here. But I do think that one could characterize Ford’s response as hostile, and it clarified for me what the Democratic party now finds itself having to contend with. The tantalizing possibility of taking control of the senate is irresistible to Democrats, and understandably so. It seems to me, though, that the looming prospect of winning the senate is casting a large shadow that is obscuring the flaws in a few of our candidates. Democrats may want to think hard about the folks on which they’re hanging their drool-soaked hats.
Let’s start with Ford, running for Senate in Tennessee. For a summary of some of his positions, we go to Wikipedia:
He supported a ban on benefits for same-sex couples, as well as the Federal Marriage Amendment (which would ban same-sex marriage). He has told Democrats they should be more supportive of the Iraq War and criticized Senate Democrats who attempted to filibuster Samuel Alito… He was one of the few Democrats who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill, and he supports some restrictions on abortion.
Clearly, he’s no liberal golden boy. But he sometimes plays along, too.
…he has also opposed Bush’s energy proposals (including oil drilling in ANWR), has demonstrated support for adoption rights of same-sex couples, supports universal healthcare coverage, opposes the death penalty and indicates a willingness to reform illegal drug policy.
So, lots of reasons to vote for him, lots of reasons not to. Let’s look at some other folks.
Claire McCaskill, running for the open seat in Missouri, is a tough nut to crack. I haven’t seen much evidence of her taking strong stands on anything (excepting maybe supporting stem cell research, which probably ought to be a deal breaker for any candidate). She said that she would have voted for the egregious detainee bill, but so did a bunch of other Democratic senators like Rockefeller and Lautenberg. Are we still cool with them? She is against gay marriage, but opposed a constitutional amendment banning it. This puts her in the same camp as folks like John Kerry, who rarely (if ever) has his Democratic credentials challenged.
Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr. is a real mystery when viewed through blue-colored glasses. Yes, he’s going to clobber Rick Santorum in November, but do Democrats really know what they’ll be getting? Wikipedia, how I love your information distillation!
…[Casey] opposes abortion and federal expansion of stem cell research although he has never voted on these issues. His support of the morning after pill has drawn criticism from conservatives.
…he opposes gun control. He has publicly stated his support for overturning Roe v. Wade, keeping the death penalty, and for the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for seats on the Supreme Court.
And that’s not all, folks!
Casey also said that he would have voted to authorize force against Iraq “given the evidence available at the time”. He has said that we need to “finish the job”, and does not support a timeline and exit strategy.
Oh, but it goes on to say that he would not have voted for the war “knowing what he knows now.” Well, that’s good enough for me! Slap a ‘D’ on that man! So the idea is that Casey is a little less nutty than Santorum? Is that kind of person hard to find???
To really get an idea of how big our little blue tent is getting, one need look no further than the Virginia senate race, and former Navy Secretary Jim Webb. Democrats are thirsting for George Allen’s blood, and would probably do anything short of start a theocracy to eject him from the senate. Had any other candidate, especially Republican, been revealed to have written in staunch opposition to women in combat, and then gone on to say the Naval Academy’s dorms would be a “horny woman’s dream,” they would have been immediately eviscerated by everyone to the left of Bill Frist. But because the senate is in the balance (and because Allen is particularly loathsome), Democrats respond with excuses and qualifications and hopes that Allen will be caught on YouTube calling someone a “toaster“. The argument becomes “Webb might be sexist, but Allen’s a racist!” Are we saying one is more okay than the other? Webb, it seems to me, is a Republican at heart who opposes the Iraq war, has a little bit of sense, and wants to fix our nation’s standing in the world. Because of that, there is no room for him in the GOP. Where else can he go?
This electoral trend toward more conservative Democrats makes me wonder about where our country truly fits into the political spectrum. Have we really moved so far to the right that we can only run blue candidates in the bluest of states? Does that mean the real political fight in America is not between red and blue, but between blood red and violet? Isn’t that just what the right wants us to think?
No doubt, the current regime in Washington needs reigning in. The zealotry of the administration and its cohorts on Capitol Hill has to be curbed, or at least slowed. For the most part, all of these purple-ish folks are good people with sense, consciences, and (I think) a sincere desire to make things a little bit better, a little safer, and a little more fair. I say that if we need to run some “Democrats In Name Only” to get this job done, then send them on in. I’ll make cookies. It’ll be swell.
But we’re going to be forced to make some big decisions. If the Democrats perform less successfully than is generally predicted (which I believe will be the case), it may be easier. We can look and see that running less-than-blue candidates only muddies the waters, and isn’t worth the trade-off in core values. We’ll be forced to find a new strategy, maybe returning to our roots, or discovering new ones.
If, however, November 7th gives us a Democratic landslide, I think we get faced with an even tougher question. Will we use this victory as a foundation to be built upon, riding the momentum to help us wake America up to their best interests and best selves, and truly sell them on core Democratic values, or do we stick with what seems to be working, cast ourselves as a more sensible and less corrupt version of the Republicans, and hope no one notices that some of us aren’t scared of gays?
I suppose the deadline to figure that out will be November 2008. Or is it January 2008? Either way, I have a feeling we won’t quite be through with sifting through all the data by then. Hope I’m wrong.
