Who the Heck is Sher Zieve?
I don't know. But check out the headline here, and then check out the "evidence" provided in support of it.
Whew. That is a non-sequitor of biblical proportions.
I don't know. But check out the headline here, and then check out the "evidence" provided in support of it.
Whew. That is a non-sequitor of biblical proportions.
posted by Winston Smith at
5:16 PM
5 Comments:
D'ya think?
"Poll Confirms Fringe Running Democrat Party"
and it refers to this graf from the original Zogby piece:
The survey also contained troubling news for Democrats. While high-profile Democrats in Washington, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, spar with GOP adversaries, 58% of self-described Democrats said they think their leaders should “accept their lower position in Congress and work together with Republicans to craft the best legislation possible.”
Add in Barack Obama's withdrawal from bi-partisan co-operation with John McCain on lobbying reform (under orders of the Democratic party brass), and the headline is certainly a stretch, but contains more truth than fiction.
Certainly too big a stretch for a newspaper, but it comes from a self-credentialed partisan blog. Non non sequitur. Sequitur.
tvd, that would be Obama refusing to service McCain's grandstanding.
You could be right, rilke, and I'm sorry that my eyes glaze over when I read some lefty blogger's account of what some other lefty guy said. Just can't hang, nor would I pump you likewise if it were righties doing the third-handedness.
If you have primary sources, like Obama himself, or some indication that Obama didn't get plinked by the Democrat braintrust, I am, as always :-) open.
Aside from this issue, I stand with the other part of what I wrote. Altho I was originally against Clinton's Kosovo adventure, I was glad that Dole and McCain got Clinton's back and whipped their party into line once we had troops comitted. To me, that's how a loyal opposition functions.
No doubt your mileage varies.
Non-non-non-sequitor. Non-sequitor.
To be sequitorial, something like this would have to be true:
Democratic leaders do not accept their lower position in Congress and do not work together with Republicans to craft the best legislation possible.
But they have. They've certainly cooperated more than Republicans did with Clinton. Perhaps what conservatives are thinking here is that House Democrats should continue to allow House Republicans to treat them like doormats (not allowing them to read legislation before voting on it, not assigning their committees rooms to meet in, etc.).
And as for Dole and McCain backing up Clinton on Kosovo: they were the exceptions not the rule. See e.g. DeLay's position. Furthermore, of course, the situations are disanalogous. Kosovo was a just war, competently carried out. Republicans *should* have backed the war. On the other hand, the invasion of Iraq was based on lies and deception, it's not clear whether it was just, and it's being incompetently run. We need MORE opposition to the actions of this dishonest and moronic administration, not less.
I WILL admit that some on the left are merely being obstructionist, but it seems to me that they're decidedly in the minority.
Also we might ask: would we even be in this fix at all if Republicans had backed up Clinton when he originally tried to get bin Laden, instead of accusing him of "wagging the dog" and "bombing an asprin factory"?
Actually, it was when Clinton fired 200 cruise missiles at Saddam the night before his impeachment hearings that he was most accused of wagging the dog. But no doubt there were other occasions.
And it was under Clinton that we turned down Sudan's offer of comprehensive intelligence on the entire al-Qaeda network, if not bin Laden himself.
Just a little housecleaning. (McCain and Dole also put the fix in and killed the impeachment trial. Good on them.)
But the real question is the concept of "loyal opposition." To me it means, "I oppose following this course, but now that we are committed, I will do everything in my power to ensure its success." Or, "I think this course is disaster, so I'm conscience-bound to get us to stop."
Either course is principled. Nothing in between.
If you've seen The Caine Mutiny, you know what I'm talking about.
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