Paging Howard Dean

For many Democrats, the whole point of wedding themselves to John Kerry was the chance to oust the hated George Bush from the Oval Office, and the main reason for wanting Bush ousted, ostensibly, was the Iraq war. For these left/liberals Howard Dean was their first love, but they realized that Dean was too volatile to be elected so they abandoned Dean to elope with Kerry.

Kerry wooed these starry-eyed lovers away from the hapless governor of Vermont by whispering into their ears that enticing sweet talk about Bush lying to us about WMD and leading us into an elective, unnecessary war in Iraq. Kerry seduced them by fueling their anti-Bush hysteria with all the right words and consummated the seduction at Boston.

Now the Democrats find themselves in an awful state. They have yielded themselves to Kerry only to wake up Tuesday morning to find that, on the most critical issue of the election, he has chosen to sidle up so close to the devil himself that his position is now indistinguishable from what Bush has been saying all along.

The sense of betrayal, one would think, must be surging through the Democrat rank and file like a stadium wave. Yet, if there is outrage out there, it's pretty hard to find. William F.Buckley writes about this in a column here. Buckley says:

The statement made on Monday by John Kerry is the climactic event in this matter. Sen. Kerry said that notwithstanding all that is known now, whatever have been the developments in the past year, if he had it to do again, he'd vote as he did: in favor of giving the president the power he requested, before going on to wage war in Iraq.

Buckley is emphasizing here an incredible admission by the Massachussetts senator. Kerry is evidently acknowledging that war with Iraq was justified even if there were no WMD there. His objections to what Bush did turn out to be little more than procedural quibbles. This must be causing rank and file Bush-haters to break out in hives. They hate Bush because of Iraq, and Kerry is telling them that he would vote to authorize war with Iraq again even if he knew Saddam had no WMD!

Perhaps equally as maddening for Democrats, one must assume, is what Kerry said about how long troops should remain in Iraq. Buckley writes:

[H]ere is how Kerry put it: "I believe if you do the kind of alliance-building that is available to us, that it is appropriate to have a goal of reducing our troops over that period of time. Obviously we have to see how events unfold." Indeed. How events unfold. What events?

Here is where Kerry underwrote the Iraq venture in terms extraordinarily comprehensive. "The measurement has to be, as I've said all along, the stability of Iraq, the ability to have the elections, and the training and transformation of the Iraqi security force itself." Get from your paper supplier the thinnest sheet in the inventory, and you won't succeed in wedging it between the Republican and the Democratic position on the nature of our strategic objectives in Iraq.

Liberals who were ecstatic about Kerry at the convention in Boston have no one to blame but themselves. They should have known that when a flip-flopper flips you never know which side he'll wind up on, and he definitely won't respect you in the morning.