Blog For Arizona

The Quislings

Ever since the unfortunate Mr. Quisling advocated to his countrymen collaboration with the Nazi's, his name has carried an unfortunate smell about it; the stink of fear.

The Democratic Party has it's own Quislings now; Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman and Edwards. They all voted for the terribly written, legally nonsensical resolution that allowed Bush to wage a unilateral, pre-emptive war for the first time in 150 years. They thought, perhaps in good-faith, perhaps not, that they could trust this President with the power of war restrained only by a document notable only for its ambiguity. But their folly is not what makes them Quislings. That is not the gravamen of their collaboration. No, what makes them traitors to their party is their adamant refusal to admit they were wrong.

The verdict is in; every one of the President rationales are lies. The strategic underpinning of the entire war was unsound. We are less safe that we were before the war began, much poorer, and missing 500 of some of our finest young people. Yet still these men will not repudiate their enablement of this tragedy and denounce this war for the monumental idiocy it is.

Instead they are putting a choke hold on the Democratic party, preventing it from denouncing Bush's perfidy with a single voice. Democrats remain torn, wishing to support their troops and their nation in need, yet daily seeing these men who would be President stretch their mealy mouths around Bush's ever expanding lies and choke them down, proclaiming that Iraq was the right thing to do, even if it was done for the wrong reasons. If you wonder why Bush's lies do not stick to him, why he gets away with his constant distortions, look no further than these Presidential wannabes. It is their monumental egos and ambition which prevent the Democratic party from pointing at the evidence, pointing at our honored dead, then pointing at the pretender in the Oval room and screaming as one, "J'accuse!"

They fear that admitting their mistake and properly denouncing the President and the war will catapult Dean to the nomination. They are likely right, but that's the price of being wrong, and they refuse to pay it. And Dean will win the Democratic nomination anyhow.

I do not for a moment believe that any of them honestly believe in their positions. Kerry's flip-flop from criticizing the war and moving away from his vote, to embracing it and denouncing Dean upon the capture of Saddam is a sad illustration of the hypocrisy of each of these men. Each eludes to having their own sources of intelligence which led them to their vote. They claim that they did not rely on the President's men. Prove it. Show us the sources and intelligence you relied on, because it was wrong too. They know Iraq is a boondoggle, that it is another Vietnam in the making, and that Bush lied to them. But that is not reason enough for them speak up.

Can you smell it? That Quisling stink of fear? They voted as they did because they feared the consequences if they didn't. They could, and probably would, admit being misled, of misjudging Bush; several of them have. But they can't and won't admit of the one damning thing - their fear.

What were they afraid of? What every Quisling is afraid of: losing their place and importance in the new order. They saw a man like Max Cleland taken out by a draft dodger not qualified to change Cleland's bed pan, and they were afraid to say no. Their dirty little secret, which prevents them from unifying the Democratic party for the coming battle, which will lose them the nomination, and which could cost the Democrat's nominee the election against Bush, is that they were afraid of Bush and his allies. Hence, the stench and the root of their conversion into Quislings. What history will record as one of the dumbest Presidential acts, may win Bush re-election; ironic, isn't it? And it won't be because he was accidentally right, or because the war was beneficial for America in the short term, but simply because he compromised his major opponents by scaring the hell out of them.

In their tightrope act of collaboration, lie the seeds of our defeat. Because they refuse to denounce the President and the war with a full measure of conviction, repudiating their mistakes, they may fatally weaken the nominee against Bush in the general election. To change enough people's perceptions of the war, the entire Democratic party must stand as one and say, "Hold! Enough!" If we fail to do so, and only a sizeable faction, or even a majority of the Democratic party leadership opposes the war, Bush is validated to a degree. Perhaps a degree large enough to lose Democrats and swing voters in sufficient numbers to elect Bush.

Make no mistake, the Quislings, by continuing to equivocate about their current support for the war, have become absolutely unelectable. "What?" you say, "They cannot be elected? But they are supposed to be the strongest against Bush." One cannot be elected if one is not nominated. They cannot be nominated. Too much of the Democratic base is infuriated at the war and will not vote for a candidate who supports it if there is any other option.

Is it frighteningly obvious that these men are being kicked around by an unknown Vermont Governor and an erstwhile Republican General who has never held elective office, simply because of their position on the war. How do the numerous professional strategists advising their campaigns miss the evidence? If you put out proposals roughly the same, or even better, than guy speaking against the war, whose resume you best, all the while getting better press on your candidate, and still that guy zips past you to become the frontrunner and you are falling behind Al Sharpton, there is something seriously wrong. Dean and Clark, lead nationally because the party wants anti-Iraq candidates, even a dubious one like Clark. If all of the major candidates came out adamantly against the war, condemned Bush for misleading them, and apologized to Democrats for their mistake, all the candidates would be on an even footing again, as well as enhancing all the Democrats chances of beating GOP incumbents and challengers in 2004. The Quislings think to start in the middle and convince most of their own party later. They are fools. The only way to win is unify the party, energize it, expand it, and infuse it with a powerful desire for change; collaborators can't accomplish that, only a pure partisan can. This election season, the sine qua non of partisanship is opposition to the Iraq war.

The four Quislings would take a hit, but they would recover soon enough. It is even possible that one of them could stop former Governor Dean, or the former lobbyist Clark. Most importantly, with the Democratic party unified in it's message against the Iraq war, our chances of changing minds and beating Bush are greatly improved. Politics is as more about speaking from authority than it is about the quality of one's ideas. Speaking from a party divided against itself, it is unlikely any Democrat can win against the GOP, even if that party keeps insisting that a bucket of dung is a chest of gold. A house divided against itself cannot rule.

The triangulators think that only be being "strong on defense" can the Democrats win the Presidency. They're right. People want a strong national defense policy, especially now, from their President. What they are dead wrong about is thinking that support for Iraq is being strong on defense. Iraq weakens us significantly. It smacks us down into the middle of nest of scorpions and says, "Dance!" Supporting the Presidents fail policy only perpetuates the mistake. The GOP drummed up support for the war in only a few months, Democrats have to undo that support before the election. Impossible? No, we have the facts on our side. If we can win this battle, America deserves four more years of Bush, and that's just what we'll get.

By the way, this is the guy who'll inherit the Presidency in 2008 if we don't get that flight-suit wearing, feces-tossing, chimp-thing out of our White House. Write to the Quislings. If you supported them at one time and then switched to another candidate, tell them why.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 1/16/2004 05:50:00 AM