"The Last Honest Man"

Robert Kagen has an excellent piece in today's Washington Post on the Democratic Party's lynching of Joe Lieberman:

...Lieberman's sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn't recant. He didn't say he was wrong. He didn't turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn't claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn't try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn't claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn't go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted "public intellectuals."

....If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

He is the last honest man, and he may pay the price for it.

While many columnists root around to try to put together disparate pieces as evidence of "The End of the Right?", they blithely ignore the takeover of the Democratic party by its most leftist element, a viciously anti-war, anti-military, head-in-the sand element, and one that stridently smacks down any that are not in 100% agreement with their credo. Lieberman, possibly one of the most truly respected elected officials by all sides of the political spectrum (more so than the media-created McCain legend), is being tossed out of his party, you see, because he only voted against President Bush 90% of the time. Impure! Impure!

Reminds me of 1968 - hippiedom was at its height, universities and big cities were torn asunder by riots, and the unpopular Vietnam War continued to drag on with thousands dying on an annual basis. The Democrats, fully in thrall to that decade's anti-war left, nominated Hubert H. Humphry as their Presidential candidate. The election would go to the Democrats; it was a shoe-in, right?

America instead turned to one Richard M. Nixon instead, much to the amazement of the intellectual elite (and media) of the time. And he got us out of 'Nam, went to China, stood up to the Russians, and actually brokered the peace that followed the Yom Kipper war in 1973 (after, of course, his re-election in '72). In a crisis, America knew that strength, not appeasment and navel-gazing, was what was needed to successful move the nation forward.

Will the Democrats repeat the mistakes made 40 years ago? I here it coming down the tracks, a train that cannot be stopped, propelled by its own momentum, shrieking off of a cliff, taking good men like Mr. Lieberman down with them...