Uninspired politics and politicians

David Limbaugh:

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... what we're seeing, so far, is that the Democrats' taste of power is emboldening them to greater heights of stridency against the war and the president's successful economic policies. It is leading them to demand total adherence to their dogmatic views and catastrophic remedies for global warming when the science in support of their dogma is increasingly dubious. They are mistaking their default victory in November as affirmation of an agenda they never bothered to offer.

Their hubris aside, it's doubtful their presidential candidates could resist the demands of their increasingly liberal core constituencies. These groups control the money and the influence and will not be ignored.

For a while it seemed that Hillary could straddle the fence, puffing up her machismo by feigning non-dovish-extremism on Iraq without alienating a base that would trust that her heart still belonged to Saul Alinsky-type leftist radicals. But the base has obviously lost confidence that Hillary's appetite for power won't overcome her allegiance to the cause.

They've communicated this distrust to Hillary so consistently now that she's been forced to lurch back in their direction with the result that if anyone were to juxtapose her varying positions on Iraq, she'd be exposed as a sociopathic opportunist.

Unfortunately for Hillary, she has a couple of potentially formidable challengers who just might do the Republicans' work for them in highlighting her flagrant inconsistencies. How she handles this obstacle will be of critical importance for her viability in the general election.

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Hillary is acutely aware of her dilemma and has apparently decided to pull out all the stops -- for now -- to regain favor with the base. In that spirit she has made some patently ridiculous statements of late, like her promise to end the war -- presto chango -- if it hasn't ended by her crowning in January 2008 and her threat to confiscate and redistribute oil company profits.

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David is not that inspired by the Republican alternatives at this point either. I think Democrats and others are misinterpreting the polls on the war. Dissatisfaction polling does not tell you whether people want to lose the war. You have to ask that question and when you do you find that many of the dissatisfied want to do more to win and think the current administration is not doing enough.

That is the challenge that the Republican candidate has to present to the country. He can also point out that Hillary has already made a promise that she cannot keep. Retreating from Iraq is not going to end the war there are elsewhere. It will only end when our enemies determine that their cause is hopeless or we all either dead or Muslims.