Can The Dems Get Serious, Soon?

Let’s see…the madman of Iran is coming to the UN via Cuba…

President Bush has, in two days, made two remarkable – and exceedingly serious – speeches, the first on Iran and the second on military tribunals and how we are capturing terrorists and using the information gleaned from them to prevent further attacks (that second speech did a lot of myth-correcting, so you won’t see much about it in the press – go read the speech)…

And all we’re hearing – ALL we’re hearing – from the Democrats and their minions is “Sqwwwwaaarrrrk! Bush has finally conceded that we held captives in CIA prisons! Sqwwwwwaaaaarrrk!” and “Sqwwwaaarrrk! Bill Clinton, greatest and most unerring president ever! Sqwwwwwwaaaaarrrrk!”

Newsflash, Democrats: Make all the noise you want about those prisons…you’re going to find that, (except for the usual 30% who don’t like anything being done in the war on terror while Bush is in office) Americans support things like secret CIA prisons, which effectively gain intelligence against our enemies…just as they (to your surprise) supported the NSA wiretaps (and still largely do, even with all of your hyperventilating about it).

All you are doing, today, is telling the nation – eight weeks before election day – that you are still not serious about fighting terrorists and terrorism, that you are still about nothing more than being “against Bush.” And that’s not going to do it. With some voter fraud it might get you close to your goal, but it’s not going to put you back in power.

You, and our nation, would both be much better served if you would respond to the rumblings of Iran with something more than a subject change, and if you would respond to either recent Bush speech with something more than kneejerk opposition and heaps of scorn. The president has made serious speeches. Do you have a serious response?

We’d be better served if you would respond like grown ups to these issues, instead of like spiteful adolescents looking to distract rather than engage. But distraction seems to be all you can offer, lately.

Believe it or not, your cash-dispensing netroots aside, the rest of the nation would much prefer to see you Democrats express some willingness to work with the American president on some things – on the serious issues – than to watch you all-too-predictably oppose, oppose and ummm…oppose him on literally everything.

It has been five years since 9/11, and we have not been attacked again. It will happen someday, but it hasn’t happened yet. Think back to 9/11 and recall how certain we all were that “the other shoe” would drop any day. President Bush has worked hard – he’s made some mistakes, but he has kept this promise:

I will not forget the wound to our country and those who inflicted it. I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

You bitch, bitch, bitch all the time…but what are you offering?

We are in a campaign season right now, I know…but the “endless campaign” you folks have been on since 1992 is really starting to wear some of us out. You folks have never stopped campaigning to – at least between election cycles – actually go about the business of finding solutions. That would have been helpful, useful. But all you do is campaign, in season and out. Please point to an idea you’ve had, a solution you’ve come up with that isn’t actually already being done.

As Dr. Sanity muses, have you misidentified the enemy?

I am on record as wishing for the mental-health recovery of the Democrat party – a party to which I belonged for most of my life – but I don’t see it happening. I see a party that cannot get serious about anything beyond their “get Bush, by-any-means-necessary & politicize-everything-at-all times” mindset.

As loyal Democrat NYC Mayor Ed Koch said recently: Wake up! We’re at war!

Please, please, Democrats, try to focus. Try to move beyond daily manipulation of press and perceptions and actually engage, here. We are living in very serious times. You seem resolutely unserious.

You have become so unserious that James Lileks’ brilliant satire can work, as ludicrous as it is…because you’ve become a ludicrous party.

Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial, and that ended international terrorism. Leaderless, the rest of al-Qaida went back to their jobs as car salesmen, farmers and theoretical physicists. […]

The people of Afghanistan continued to live under a miserable regime, but the nation was diplomatically contained. To this day, the U.N. is prepared to deny credentials should the Taliban request them.

Iraq was the real surprise, of course. Proving the Clinton administration right, the Baathist regime owned up to al-Qaida ties and ongoing WMD programs, discontinued its support for Palestinian suicide bombers, and held free elections. The world was stunned when Saddam Hussein handed over power to a hitherto unknown politician who’d been a cleaning supply salesman and student of Gandhi.

Oh…and global warming is still hoo-ha.

Can the Dems get serious, soon?