י Ann Coulter on the Democratic Presidential Candidates. Ann Coulter's January 21 column is quite good. The current Democrats are behaving even more weirdly than politicians usually do. Switches on abortion are old news, and usually occur over decade-long periods, so a generous observer might accept that they are true changes of opinion. But two of the mostly intemperately expressed Democrat views are: (1) The Iraq War is evil, and (2) The Patriot Act is evil, yet many of the politicians expressing them actually voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and voted for them at a time when the cost-benefit analysis for both things was much more unfavorable than now. (At the time, the Iraq War was a huge risk, with the possibility of thousands of Americans killed and military defeat; the Patriot Act is criticized for various potential abuses which simply have not materialized.)

All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! This is with the exception of Joe Lieberman who, as an observant Jew, is forbidden to backpedal after sundown on Fridays.
...
Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the secret burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about.
For all his talk, even Dick Gephardt was willing to abandon blue-collar workers in a heartbeat. The Teamsters haven't asked for much, only two big votes in the past decade: (1) Oppose NAFTA, and (2) support drilling on a small, godforsaken patch of the Alaskan wilderness, as the people who actually live there have been begging us to do for decades. Like all the other Democrats, Gephardt voted against the Teamsters -- but with Barbra Streisand -- to oppose drilling in the godforsaken Alaskan wilderness.
When Gephardt entered politics he was pro-life. But then, like Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich and scores of other Democrats with national ambitions, he quickly figured out that position wasn't, well ... viable. In short order he had adopted the whole NARAL party line. That's how you woo old-time union Democrats.
On Monday night, Gephardt was shocked to discover that blue-collar Democrats have gone the way of patriotic Democrats: They're all Republicans now. (But thanks for that NAFTA vote a decade ago!)

There must be some way to improve the "abort babies using solar power" aphorism, though. It is true the Democrats would surrender everything for the abortion issue, but solar power is not that important. I wonder if Miss Coulter did not dare say "abort babies using trial lawyers and affirmative action"?

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.01.24b.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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