Happy Day for the GOP

August 8, 2006: It was a dark day in America. It was a bright day in America.

The dark descended over Connecticut when the Democratic Party rejected their three term senator and 2000 vice-presidential nominee in favor of a nobody whose only qualification was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Democrat incumbent Joe Lieberman, a staunch liberal, lost to challenger Ned Lamont a “light-weight dilettante” because Joe voted for the invasion of Iraq and had the guts to stand by his convictions.

While Democrats like John Kerry – he served in Vietnam, you know – have retracted their support for the war in the middle of hostilities – just like he did during the Vietnam War – Lieberman has been among the few Democrats who want the US to finish the job. It didn’t help Joe’s campaign that the Israel-Hezbollah war started up contributing to anti-Semitic feelings among the left wing Democrats who opposed him.

The sad thing is that one of the two major parties in US politics has now declared its absolute objection to our war effort and its intention to give up in Iraq.

Lamont's victory represents the end of the long tradition of strong-on-national-defense Democratic leaders in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. After Democrat Senator Zell Miller left the party that he believed no longer represented America in 2004, Lieberman was the only one left. Now you can be a lifelong liberal who voted against all the Bush tax cuts, who is for the Kyoto accords, same-sex marriage and partial-birth abortion, but against Judge Alito, and still be purged from the party because of your patriotism.

Ann Coulter wrote, "I suppose we'll have to wait yet another election cycle for all those Scoop Jackson Democrats to come roaring back in and give us a Democratic Party that does not consistently root against America. Democrats don't oppose the war on terrorism because they hate Bush: They hate Bush because he is fighting the war on terrorism. They would hate him for fighting terrorists even if he had a "D" after his name. In the past three decades, there have been more legitimate sightings of Big Foot than of Scoop Jackson Democrats."

The New York Post reported: "So now that the wackadoo wing of the party has a bloody scalp, what are they going to do with it? Wave it at Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon and Afghanistan and Indonesia and Great Britain and Spain and Israel and New York and declare peace? That will work for sure. They better also wear armor and duck."

On the bright side, Lieberman’s loss is a gift to the Republican Party. At a time when Republicans should be back on their heels because of the war's unpopularity, “the Democrats' rejection of a sensible, moralistic centrist has handed the GOP a weapon that could have vast ramifications for both the midterm elections of '06 and the big dance of '08.”

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said the rejection of a well-liked Senator who was strong on national defense showed that Democratic candidates must embrace "defeatism and isolation" or "risk being purged" by their party. "It is also a sign of what the Democratic Party is has become in the 21st century. It reflects an unfortunate embrace of isolationism, defeatism, and blame America first.”

Is this depiction of the Democratic Party too harsh? In 2004, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked likely voters if they believed America was generally a fair and decent country and whether they believed the world would be a better place if more countries were like America.

Only 46 percent of Democrats agreed that America is generally a fair and decent country, and only 48 percent of Democrats said they thought that the world would be a better place if more countries were like the United States.

By contrast, 83 percent of Republicans agreed that America is generally fair and decent, and 81 percent agreed that the world would be a better place if more countries were like the United States.

It must be inspirational to be a Democrat, the party of the angry left, of weakness and isolation on national security, socialist leanings on domestic policy and self-loathing.

Meanwhile, reports of Joe Lieberman's political death are "premature and grossly exaggerated." Lieberman has registered as an independent and he will win the race in November. I, for one, will be sending him some money.