Re: One party's fringe is the other's mainstream

On May 21, 11:48 am, jose <josefsop...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
One party's fringe is the other's mainstream

By Jeff Jacoby

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com| If nothing else, Texas Congressman
Ron Paul's presidential candidacy makes it clear that the Republican
Party is not a monolith. It has its ideological fringe, which marches
to the beat of a very different drummer than George Bush and most GOP
candidates do.

With his isolationist opposition to the war in Iraq (and to American
foreign policy generally over the past half-century), Paul is the odd
man out in his party. To Republican ears, his claim during last week's
South Carolina debate that the United States was attacked on Sept. 11
"because . . . we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years" and that
Americans ought to "listen to the people who attacked us" was
blasphemous. If Rudy Giuliani hadn't pounced on it, one of the other
candidates would have.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," the former New York mayor
said acidly. "That we invited the attack because we were attacking
Iraq - I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some
pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11th."

Most Republicans regard Paul's idea of America's proper role in the
world - stay at home, avoid alliances, and expend no energy making the
world safer or protecting human rights - as eccentric. Invoking Osama
bin Laden as the legitimate voice of the Muslim Middle East is the
hallmark of a crank, not a conservative. No wonder Giuliani's
smackdown was applauded so forcefully.

There was a time, 60 or 70 years ago, when isolationism was
respectable in GOP circles. Paul insists that "the party has lost its
way" since then and pines for the leadership of Senator Robert A.
Taft, who "didn't even want to be in NATO."

But Taft didn't parrot the propaganda of America's enemies. He didn't
advise Americans to "listen to the people who attacked us" and do as
they demanded. He didn't accuse the United States of provoking Pearl
Harbor, or chide President Truman for lacking the "courage" to
withdraw US troops in the middle of the Korean War. Ron Paul may fancy
himself a latter-day Taft Republican, but by today's standards his
foreign-policy views place him among the Dennis Kucinich-Cindy Sheehan
Democrats.

Paul helps illustrate what may be the most significant difference
between the two major parties today: Republicans who don't take the
threat of radical Islam seriously are marginalized. Democrats who
don't do so constitute their party's mainstream.

At the Democratic debate on April 26, moderator Brian Williams asked
the eight candidates: "Show-of-hands question: Do you believe there is
such a thing as a global war on terror?" Only four - Hillary Clinton,
Bill Richardson, Christopher Dodd, and a noticeably hesitant Barack
Obama - raised their hands. Kucinich, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and
Mike Gravel did not. Unlike Ron Paul, who holds no important position
in the GOP, Biden is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Edwards was his party's vice presidential nominee in 2004.
The man with whom he shared the ticket that year, Senator John Kerry,
insisted that Islamist terror is merely "a nuisance" that "we're never
going to end," like gambling and prostitution.

What explains the Democrats' unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity
of the global jihad? In part, it may stem from the sense that
Islamists and the left share common foes. George Galloway, the radical
antiwar British parliamentarian, declared in 2005 that "the
progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same
enemies . . . . On the very grave big issues of the day - issues of
war, occupation, justice, opposition to globalization - the Muslims
and the progressives are on the same side."

But to a large extent, the Democrats' lack of seriousness about the
war we are in can only be explained by Bush Derangement Syndrome. The
term was coined by commentator Charles Krauthammer, a former
psychiatrist, who defines it as "the acute onset of paranoia in
otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -
nay, the very existence of George W. Bush."

What if not derangement can explain such fever-swamp nuttiness as the
findings of a new Rasmussen poll, which asked whether Bush knew about
the 9/11 attacks in advance? Among Democrats, 35 percent believe he
did know and another 26 percent weren't sure. Only 39 percent said he
didn't. In other words, nearly two out of three Democrats are
unwilling to say that Bush wasn't tipped off to 9/11 in advance.

In another poll recently, respondents were asked whether they
personally wanted Bush's new security strategy in Iraq to succeed -
not whether they expected it to, but whether they wanted it to. Among
Democrats, a stunning 49 percent either hope that the United States
will be defeated in Iraq or can't decide one way or the other. Only 51
percent, a bare majority, want the American effort against al-Qaeda in
Iraq to end in victory.

As long as the 43rd president remains in office, it seems, a
significant number of Americans will be so consumed with Bush-hatred
that they will be unable to acknowledge - let alone help defeat - the
real evil that confronts us all. Will they come to their senses after
Jan. 20, 2009? And even if they do, will it be too late?

One doesn't have to hate Bush to understand that he's a total neocon
stooge. PNAC as an experiment has failed miserably. But Bush will
probably be the last one to understand that.


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