Wizblog

A New Low

I suppose I could carry on again about how Ted Kennedy is a detestable blowhard and an embarrassment to the Senate (no mean feat). Talked me into it. Why this time? Well, he took the occasion of Condi Rice's confirmation hearings to refer to liberated Iraq one week before their first free election in history as "a catastrophic failure", and to say that had Ms. Rice not provided Congress with "false reasons" for going to war, "it might have changed the course of history". He's certainly correct that if Bush had not led a coalition to free Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, and that Bush has indeed altered the history of the Iraqi people from how it might have looked under Uday and Qusay. Silly me, I thought the prospects of next week's elections might redound to Rice's credit.

Nothing galls the Democrats more it seems, than the suggestion made by next week's historic events that George Bush might have accomplished something positive by deposing a vicious tyrant, liberating 25 million people and planting the seeds of democracy in Iraq. It's certain that their focus next week will be on whatever violence may result in opposition to the election, instead of the fact that the election is actually taking place with what appears to be a higher level of participation than this two century-old democracy can muster.

The performance today by the pompous windbag Kennedy, his cohort the former Klansman Sen. Byrd, and Sen. Dayton was disgraceful. Byrd ("once a Klansman,..."?) sought to block the doorway to the Cabinet for this brilliant black woman from Birmingham. Dayton flat out called the Secretary of State designate a liar. And Teddy, called again into service by his party to step to the microphone as their most vicious partisan attack dog, proved again why he lacks the respect both of his brothers earned. But then again, (to steal Taranto's line) it's "not the first time he's tried to sink a woman."