Robert Kagan explains why Joe Lieberman is the last honest democrat, and how he is paying for it.

Twenty-nine Democratic senators voted in the fall of 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq. There isn’t enough room on this page to list the Democratic foreign policy experts and former officials, including those from the top ranks of the Clinton administration, who supported the war publicly and privately — some of whom even signed letters calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Nor is there any need to list the many liberal, and conservative, columnists on this and other editorial pages around the country who supported the war, or the many prominent journalists who provided the reporting that helped convince so many that the war was necessary.

The question of the day is, what makes Joe Lieberman different? What makes him now anathema to a Democratic Party and to liberal columnists who once supported both him and the war? Why is there now a chance he will lose the Democratic primary in Connecticut after so many years of faithfully serving that state and his own party?..

If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war. Almost every leading Democratic politician and foreign policymaker, and many a liberal columnist, supported the war. Nor will he lose because he opposes withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. Most top Democratic policymakers agree that early withdrawal would be a mistake. Nor, finally, is it because he has been too chummy with President Bush. Lieberman has offered his share of criticism of the administration’s handling of the Iraq war and of many other administration policies.

No, Lieberman’s sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn’t recant. He didn’t say he was wrong. He didn’t turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn’t claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn’t try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn’t claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn’t go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted “public intellectuals.”

These have been the chosen tactics of self-preservation ever since events in Iraq started to go badly and the war became unpopular. Prominent intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, have turned on their friends and allies in an effort to avoid opprobrium for a war they publicly supported. Journalists have turned on their fellow journalists in an effort to make them scapegoats for the whole profession. Politicians have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain away their support for the war or, better still, to blame someone else for persuading them to support it.

Al Gore, the one-time Clinton administration hawk, airbrushed that history from his record. He turned on all those with whom he once agreed about Iraq and about many other foreign policy questions. And for this astonishing reversal he has been applauded by his fellow Democrats and may even get the party’s nomination.

Apparently, amazingly, dispiritingly, it all works. At least in the short run, dishonesty pays. Dissembling pays. Forgetting your past writings and statements pays. Condemning those with whom you once agreed pays. Phony self-flagellation followed by self-righteous self-congratulation pays. The only thing that doesn’t pay is honesty. If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

He is the last honest man, and he may pay the price for it. At least he will be able to sleep at night. And he can take some solace in knowing that history, at least an honest history, will be kinder to him than was his own party.

But the intellectually and morally dishonest left will also pay a price for driving the last honest, responsible, and patriotic individuals out of the democrat party. They will continue to lose election after election, and their party’s support, and national influence, will continue to dwindle.

Reuters reports:

A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators blocked legislation on Thursday that would have raised the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, because it also would have permanently cut estate taxes paid by the rich.

On a 56-42 vote, the Republican-led Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to clear the way for final congressional passage. Earlier approved by the House of Representatives, the bill would have raised the $5.15-per-hour minimum wage to $7.25 over three years.

It doesn’t matter in this country if you elect Republican majorities to both houses of Congress, you still can’t reform Social Security, confirm a Republican president’s nominees, or abolish the death tax.

Finding themselves in the minority, the democrats simply held a secret meeting in which they amended the Constitution without telling the rest of us.

The secret and undisclosed XXVIIIth Amendment reads: “When the democrat party is in the minority in the Senate, all controversial or significant legislative acts will require a Supermajority of sixty votes for passage.”

Probably efforts are actively underway to give democrat senators in future Congresses the famous Liberum Veto, a right (once accorded Polish senators, which had a great deal to do with the Partitions that eliminated Poland from the map of Europe) to dissolve the legislature and negate all legislation passed during the current session, simply by uttering the phrase nie pozwalam “I do not allow it!”

Even the Republican leadership’s spineless compromise with democrats agreeing to the economically fallacious raising of the minimum wage could not obtain the concession of the majority’s right to legislate.

If the democrats can run Congress as they please from a minority position in both houses, what won’t they be able to do once they regain majorities? Anyone who thinks that the sacred Senatorial filibuster will successfully impose the same 60-vote Supermajority requirement for major democrat legislative objectives or confirmations of appointments is living in a dreamworld.

We elected Republican majorities. The problem is that we failed to elect any Republican Senatorial leadership.

This kind of thing makes one wish one could send Bill Frist and Mitch MConnell off to a Swiss clinic where they would give them a series of injections of masculine sex hormones, and install some backbones.

Some people living on the West Coast do. They may soon find themselves within range of North Korean missiles.

The SF Examiner is grateful that President Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense system is as operational as it is today, and it knows who resisted its development.

North Korea’s threatening spate of missile launches — including an unsuccessful try with an advanced version of its Taepodong 2 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile that is capable of hitting the United States — has sparked a cacophony of talk from leaders and foreign policy experts around the world.

As they debate and discuss various options at the United Nations and in capitals around the globe, the rudimentary U.S. missile defense system is poised to shoot down anything launched from North Korea that threatens the American homeland or the critical interests of our regional allies like Japan and Australia.

Noticeably absent are the voices of those who, since President Reagan first proposed such a system in 1984, have fought development and deployment of the missile defense system the U.S. must now depend upon in dealing with North Korea. These folks have claimed over and over that the system they derisively call “Star Wars” can’t possibly work, would be too expensive, would incite a new world arms race, etc., etc. Names that come to mind in this regard include senators like Joe Biden, D-Del., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the Clinton-Gore administration that delayed and dilly-dallied with work on missile defense for most of the ’90s.

It is important that the American people understand two aspects of the current crisis as it relates to missile defense. First, the system President Bush recently ordered advanced from its testing stage to operational status when the North Koreans began preparing the Taepodong 2 launch is extremely rudimentary because it is still being developed. The system now includes only 11 ground-based launch sites in Alaska and California capable of knocking out long-range missiles like the Taepodong 2, and four Aegis-class Navy destroyers equipped with missile defense battle management systems and Standard-3 missiles capable of hitting medium range threats.

Second, they will no doubt protest to high heaven, but “Star Wars” critics must bear the major burden of responsibility for the delays and setbacks that have prevented the missile defense system from becoming fully operational long before the present crisis with North Korea. There have been technological problems, especially in the very early stages, but those were temporary and subject to American technological prowess.

Far more serious have been the setbacks engineered by the critics — like then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s maneuvers to kill the first Bush administration’s Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (G-PALS) plan, the Clinton-Gore gutting of the Strategic Defense Initiative office in 1993 and the delaying tactics used by Senate Democrats in the first years of this decade to reduce the current program’s funding.

It is a sobering thought to wonder how much more secure the United States and its allies would be today in the face of madness like North Korea’s launches if instead of a limited defense still in development we could depend upon the robust protection first proposed many years ago.

New West magazine profiles the American Hunters & Shooters Association, a democrat-front organization, founded by turncoat Gun Rights lobbyist Robert Ricker to compete with the National Rifle Association, and siphon away NRA support in the guise of a sportsmens’ advocacy organization while embracing an Environmentalist agenda and taking a compromising stance on Gun Control.

John Lott has these deceivers’ number.

Karl Rove, in a NH interview quoted by Raw Story, opines that the rise of the Blogoshpere has proven a much more useful and positive development for Republicans than it has for democrats.

I do also think that the Internet has proven to be a more powerful tool on our side than it has been for the other side. It has proven to be a tool on our side to sort of unite Conservatives and have a healthy intra-movement dialogue. But it’s essentially been something that has helped us gain in influence and broaden our appeal. Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger — hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and Conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.

despite Zarqawi’s death, reports the inimitable Scott Ott.

As Blackberry devices and cell phones on Capitol Hill hummed with news of the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yesterday, Congressional Democrats vowed that despite the loss they would fight on in “the war on the war on terror.”

“Zarqawi will be missed because he put a human face on the futility of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq,” said one unnamed lawmaker, who assured a reporter that “Democrats are still optimistic. We’re still looking for the silver lining.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a former Marine and vocal critic of the military occupation of Iraq, immediately denounced “the Zarqawi massacre” and suggested that the F-16 pilot who dropped the bombs had snapped under pressure and murdered the al Qaeda leader “in cold blood.”

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, demanded an explanation of the secret intelligence gathering techniques and surveillance used to find Mr. Zarqawi.

“I want to give the president an opportunity to explain the program to the Congress and to assure the American people that nobody’s civil rights were violated,” said Sen. Specter.

Meanwhile, Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and former presidential candidate Al Gore observed a moment of silence as they heard of the passing of Mr. Zarqawi, a fellow Internet pioneer.

Digby admires a country western song. He thinks that “Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture.”

I’m for the low man on the totem pole
And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul
And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift
And the single mom raisin’ her kids
I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees
And I’m for the sinner who finally believes
And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands
And the soldiers who fight for this land

Chorus:

And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag
And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag
I’m just one of many
Who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

(Merle Haggard)
I guess my opinion is all out of style

(Gretchen Wilson)
Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled
And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan

(Merle Haggard)
And the world already knows where I stand

Repeat Chorus

(Merle Haggard)
Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag

(Gretchen Wilson)
Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag
We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

And Digby wishes his own camp enjoyed an equivalently strong cultural identity:

The non-southern Party appears to exist mainly as a repository of opposition to conservative policies. Is that true?

Perhaps the big question is this: If you could write a country song about Blue State identity, what would the lyrics say?

That sounds like an invitation, doesn’t it?

FBI agents reportedly searched the House office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, on Saturday evening and last Sunday in connection with a bribery and corruption investigation.

Prominent Repubican Congressional leaders, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and current Speaker Dennis Hastert, have criticized the FBI’s conduct, and raised Constitutional objections.

Some of the most respected voices on the right side of the Blogosphere, including Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and Roger L. Simon have objected to the position taken by the Speakers.

Our good friends need to pause for breath, and reflect seriously. The principle of separation of powers matters greatly. Congressional immunity from arrest matters tremendously. These principles of Republican government are infinitely more important than the successful conviction of one more corrupt democrat congressman. History demonstrates abundantly that we can survive the culture of political corruption of the democrat party. But free government could readily be brought to an end by the domination of the several branches of the federal government by a single branch.

In recent history, Congress has been far more guilty than the Executive of arrogating unauthorized powers to itself, and attacking the Executive on the basis of trumped up and exaggerated charges. But, it is certainly possible to imagine an aggressive ultra-liberal president trying to remove Congressional opposition by false allegations of corruption. Some of us believe that the House Majority Leader was successfuly removed by false charges lodged by a partisan county prosecutor in Texas.

It is on rare occasions like this, in which political leaders take principled positions, ignoring their own party’s interests, that our faith in our system of government and its institutions is justified and confirmed.

Read the US Constitution, Article I. Section 6 which states:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

I think it is impossible to avoid considering Congressional offices as part of the “going to and returning from the same” aspect of Congressional attendance. And the 18th century concept of a felony would apply to what were then commonly capital crimes of violence, not to ordinary bribery and corruption.

Of course, the determination of all this may, and should be left to the wisdom of Third Branch of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court. But, in the meantime, we should be proud that Republican Legislative leaders will defend the rights of their branch of government, even in the case of its least worthy member.

Varifrank has been following news reports and listening to Congressional democrats, and is able to sum up the rules.

Don’t fight before Ramadan as it interrupts the UN sponsored peace process.

Don’t fight during Ramadan because it shows disrespect to an honored people and a great religion.

Don’t fight after Ramadan since so many civilians will simply be caught in the potential crossfire.

And so on.

Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. in backseat of car with daughter Nancy and wife Nancy. Photo from 1948. Courtesy of the D’Alesandro family via the Baltimore Sun.

When the democrats retake the majority of the House of Representatives, San Francisco’s own Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker.

Last Sunday’s Chronicle‘s puff piece describes Nancy Pelosi’s carefully constructed network of political obligation, inadvertently revealing the essence of how it’s all supposed to work:

Pelosi’s prowess for building this type of political power stretches back to the dynasty built by her father at a time when political capital came in the form of favors, not campaign cash.

Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., was a New Deal Democrat who served five terms in Congress and three as mayor of Baltimore. He enlisted his seven children in building the “favor file” that served as the core of his political machine.

Neighbors who were short on food, out of work or otherwise down on their luck would knock on the door at all hours, and whoever’s turn it was to staff the front office would help them find food, work or whatever they needed.

“During the leaner years, we had in our back room the equivalent of a soup kitchen,” said Pelosi’s brother, Tommy D’Alesandro III, who also eventually served a term as Baltimore mayor. “It was dealing with human nature in the raw. Any kind of problem, we were there.”

Family members would note the name of the constituent and the services rendered on yellow legal paper to be transferred to the favor file, a box of index cards.

The cards were pulled into service when it was time to organize for the next election.

Recalled D’Alesandro: “We’d call people up and say, ‘Mrs. So-and-So, we did this favor for you and now my father is running for re-election. We’d like to borrow your car to get people out to vote’ or ‘you can come lick stamps’ or ‘you can organize a coffee klatch.’ ”

Fifty years later, Pelosi’s staff keeps her modern day equivalent of the favor file in a political data base program in the headquarters of the Democratic Congressional Committee. It’s a list of 29,432 loyal donors that Pelosi has built one personal contact at a time.

This is the democrat model for life in America. Nancy Pelosi lives in the grand mansion atop Pacific Heights, and the rest of us come, desperate and hat in hand, to the back door, begging for a job, a favor, or maybe for just a meal. Lady Bountiful Pelosi comes to the door, graciously dispenses to us our alms, and our names are duly recorded in the great card file. Now we owe our livelihood, our personal independence, our vote, unspecified other future services to be arranged, and possibly our immortal souls, to the party machine. Nancy Pelosi is royalty. The rest of us are serfs.

It’s very simple. Just look at this chart from Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle’s admiring profile of Nancy Pelosi. Tom Delay was the House of Representative’s champion fund-raiser in the 2004 House elections, managing to donate $981,278 to Republican colleagues.

Delay’s K Street Project reversed 40 years of the Washington lobbying establishment overwhelmingly financially favoring Democrat candidates. The turn-around effectuated by Delay moved K Street from contributing 70 percent of its campaign funds to Democrats and 30 percent to Republicans to 60 percent Republican, 40 percent Democrat.

It was all about the money. Delay out fund-raised them, and worse, Delay moved lobbyist campaign contributions in the direction of the GOP. Elimination of Delay is a centerpiece of Democrat strategy for a return to power and long-term Congressional dominance.

Faced with declining poll numbers in his re-election race for the House, Tom Delay chose to step aside in order to keep his seat in Republican hands.

In 2004, we defeated democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle fair and square, campaigning against him on issues and positions. In return, democrats have successfully driven the Republican House Majority Leader out of office, by calculatedly dragging out a partisan prosecution based on trumped up charges. Tom Delay’s career was not brought to an end by wrong-doing. It was brought to an end by ruthless partisanship, the manipulation of the legal system, and by successful use of the MSM propaganda machine.

Today, the left-side of the Blogosphere is celebrating, and the right-side of the blogosphere is blandly reporting Delay’s resignation as a news story, or worse, welcoming it.

Glenn Reynolds shrugs, cites Delay’s unfortunate “no fat left in the budget” line, and says “I was never much of a fan.” Wake up, people, we have suffered a serious defeat.

The left has demonstrated again, as it did with Newt Gingrich, that when a conservative Republican becomes too powerful, too influential, too effective, they can take him out.

First, the media machine goes to work on demonizing him as a personality. An endless series of photos with surly, snarly, or goofy expressions will be published, accompanied by lovingly detailed reporting of every indiscreet expression, gaffe, or unwise remark. After many months, the public naturally develops the sense that there’s this really mean, and strange in a sinister kind of way, guy, who’s somehow suddenly become terribly important in Washington, and who is a threat to everything that’s good.

Then, come the scandals. “We already knew he was nasty and strange, who would have imagined he was also a crook?”

A political career today is like a running a restaurant in the Big City. if they want to close you down, they send in the health and the building inspectors, and there are so many regulations, the building code is so large and so detailed, that is impossible to be in complete compliance, if they need to, they can always find a violation. In Delay’s case, they sent in Ronnie Earle (a leftwing activist who has used the Bolshevik base of a big university to get elected county prosecutor) to cook up a few alleged violations of arcane campaign finance regulations, which charges he had to run repeatedly past rubber-stamp grand juries before he could get one to vote an indictment.

But today, months have dragged by, that bogus Texas prosecution has remained unresolved, a new lobbying scandal has erupted, and the liberal meda has been hammering on him for what seems like forever. NowTom Delay finds himself in the position of some famous outlaw trying to win the votes of a constituency which is wondering why he isn’t already in jail. It’s common knowledge, at this point, that this Delay fellow is some kind of a crook, a nasty customer, and the kind of guy who bullies people and breaks all the rules. Who’s going to vote for Black Bart for Congress?

Delay’s a keen politician. Seeing he was losing, Tom Delay decided he would take a bullet for the Grand Old Party, and resign. The left rejoices, but you cannot find a sympathetic word for poor old Tom Delay on the right this morning. I know a fellow who has been in the Conservative Movement since its early days, who has often remarked that “the Conservative Movement has never learned to care for its wounded, or bury its dead.” Days like today suggest he may be right.

I didn’t like that Congressional budget either, but I know that Tom Delay is one of us: a Republican and a conservative. He has fought with us on the same side for decades, and we owe him something. On mere practical political grounds, we should also not be quite so cooperative, when the left undertakes one of these carefully contrived political assassinations. How many strong and competent Congressional leaders do you think we are ever going to find? If we let our adversaries destroy the reputations of each one of them in turn, and drive all of them from office, the left is certainly going to win.