By Rick Perlstein on September 4, 2007 - 2:06pm.

In the world of the Big Con, often the easiest marks are Democratic elected officials.

Supposed liberals, like my own senator, Illinois's Dick Durbin, pronounce themselves inclined to support the President's $197 billion supplemental request for Iraq funding—the one in which he tacked on an extra $50 billion at the last minute, perhaps just to prove that he could. Durbin said he would be for it in the same breath as he noted, as the Chicago Tribune paraphrased him, that the request "seems likely to prolong troop levels at their current elevated number into the spring of 2008."

In other words, he's objectively pro-surge, and this even before the made-up report that's supposed to prove "progress."

I can't believe what suckers these senators are. How hard was it to spot that the "surge" was a put-up job from the start? How hard was it to imagine the White House marketing meetings in which it was concocted? It's not even sophisticated hustling. "Hey, we'll just apply concentrated efforts to a tiny, tiny part of the country. Then, anything bad that happens anywhere in that whole big country outside Baghdad will be ignored as irrelevant to judging the surge. At the same time, we can pump up any good news from outsize the surge-zone as surge-a-riffic nonetheless! Anyone complains? We'll say: 'Support the troops!'"

Did bad stuff happen in the whole big country outside Baghdad? Sure enough. A stunning bombing with a death toll of over 500, but that happened up in Kurdistan, so it wasn't counted on the "surge" ledger. Check.

Did good stuff happen in the whole big country outside Baghdad? Sure enough. In the province of Anbar, tribal leaders declared war on al-Qaida. How un-surge-o-riffic was that? Entirely un-surge-o-riffic, in actual fact (it happened before the surge began); but the President and Defense Secretary Gates managed to call it surge-o-riffic nonetheless, and get their claim reported straight—check!

Come on, Durbin! Come on, Democratic lawmakers! You think this heads-we-win-tails-you-lose scheme wasn't all gameplanned in advance?

Full article: Easy marks

Right now the Dems are afraid to do anything that Republicans can use to label them "soft on terror." They fear that if another 9/11 style attack occurs between now and the election, they'll lose to the party that talks toughest. It doesn't matter that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with any putative war on terror. In politics truth is nothing, perception is everything.

quote:

Originally posted by John Maddox Roberts:
Right now the Dems are afraid to do anything that Republicans can use to label them "soft on terror." They fear that if another 9/11 style attack occurs between now and the election, they'll lose to the party that talks toughest. It doesn't matter that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with any putative war on terror. In politics truth is nothing, perception is everything.

I understand, but the public will also wonder what the point of electing Democrats is. if they behave worse than Republicans when it comes to allowing money to be spent for Iraq.

I wonder if Dem legislators don't represent their constituents better than we credit them for?

Rep voters' are typically more robust and demanding, I perceive, than Dem voters. (Of course, they robustly vote for stone idjuts, but they do so vigorously. Brutally, even. Witness those bus loads of Rep activists at the '00 Florida recount.)

In fact, recent exchanges on this board lead me to think that Dem legislators are in part enacting the 'we're so fucked' mentality that (I perceive) the more enlightened left so often projects.

Someone once attributed to Robert Frost this (necessarily paraphrased) quote: "Liberals are so polite they won't even disagree with each other."

Something like that. You know how in the Tom Tomorrow cartoons liberals are painted as way too reasonable for their own good (a caricature Joe Lieberman took to the reelection bank in one of the strangest and sickest end-runs of recent memory). And conservatives are painted as intractable ideologues with their ears stuffed in their ears?

Kinda saddens me. I'm a liberal (more than less) and I think I've been guilty of 'death by reasonableness' in the past.

Not no moah, though.

This is not to discount the blatant corruption all around by BigCo, Inc.