Democrats: I Wonder What it Feels Like to be So Irrelevant, but They Had the Front Page

By: Steve Yuhas

The time frame was obvious: Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, is indicted (front page); no Rove indictment (front page), Judge Sam Alito is nominated to the Supreme Court and 100 NOW gals show up for a protest and since nobody was paying attention to Democrats they demand a secret session of the Senate to talk about the intelligence that took us to war in Iraq (bottom of the fold front page).  Americans couldn’t care less about what was said because the Senate is a bunch of blowhards who get apoplectic about everything and Democrats were losing traction on what should be a “controversy,” but isn’t.

So what did America get for the Democratic stunt into closing down the Senate to demand yet more investigations into intelligence failures that everyone knows happened before the Iraq war?  Nothing more than we got after the previous investigations including the 9-11 Commission and the Senate report (and if you’re one of Joe Wilson’s supporters his “report” that consisted of his schedule of Starbuck visits in Niger with “high ranking officials” that his wife sent him on).

Today nobody cares about the secret session, but what Democrats did not manage to do in years of obstruction for the Bush agenda is to galvanize not just the activists on the right, but also the moderate folks who believe in the “civility” of the body. 

The gang of 14 Senators, the group of more moderate Senators who could stop or give a green light to any judicial nomination, has whittled itself to the gang of 12 (not exactly a gang anymore – more like a gaggle) and there are more than sufficient votes to stop a filibuster of Judge Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.  Democrats thought their little Rule 21 invocation would galvanize their base, but they were already galvanized (they’re against the war and hate President Bush); what they didn’t count on was the galvanization of the Republican Party.

The CIA leak case has people believing that a deep gash has been cut into the credibility of the Vice President’s office, but Libby has been indicted on equivalent charges as Martha Stewart and although he faces more time in prison he’d surely be sent to a Camp Cupcake if he is ultimately convicted (he will plead not guilty on Thursday).  When a political party puts their credibility on the line and desires to replay what started the Iraq war (forget for a minute that many of these same Democrats voted for this war) and re-fight the 2004 election – they really are desperate.

Desperation aside one has to wonder if Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, thought he was doing something that Americans would care about when he invoked Rule 21 and when a crony stood ready to 2nd the motion.  Now that it has been done – Republicans should start doing it all the time because the American people really don’t care and would rather the Senate close down than talk about issues that have long since left the minds of most normal people.

Now the CIA is being looked at by the European Union and others because they are daring to hold suspected terrorists in secret locations in Eastern Europe (I call for an American investigation into the riots in France that have been going on for a week) and the Middle East.  Nice that they have their priorities straight – who cares about the fact that France is burning and that unemployment in Europe is at 11 percent?  Investigate the American intelligence community (maybe someone should send them a copy of the previous investigations about the CIA and they and Harry Reid can compare notes).

The whole investigation mentality of the left is insidious: investigate why Rove was not indicted for anything when Libby was, look into the non-outing of a nobody at the CIA and hold hearings with France and Luxembourg about the CIA holding terrorists somewhere that the EU disapproves of.  It all sounds absurd, but in the end that is the new Democratic Party – allied with the UN and the EU – two very popular (did you note the sarcasm) bodies in America.  I don’t think it will sit well with the American people that Democrats are siding with the French and UN when terrorists want to cut off our heads.

But, that is their position!

There is sufficient time for Democrats to make the front pages again: they can talk about how important a federal law over abortion is, they can take the position that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction (despite the fact that everyone from Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and the United Nations said that Iraq did) and then when Iran gets an itch to start bombing Israel they can sit on their hands while Israel defends herself against an enemy that America has thus far simply “condemned.”  That is not the side that someone would want to be on – at least not a rational person, but hey – at least we’re working on not getting a bird flu pandemic.

While Americans begin gearing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hanukkah) Democrats are desperate just to get into the newspapers and they’re there: side by side with the countries that Americans love to hate. 

The Democratic Party has been taken over by lesbians demanding the right to an abortion (how would a lesbian get pregnant accidentally?), people who hate war today even though they love war when it is started by a Democrat (didn’t Bill Clinton say that we’d be out of Bosnia by the first Christmas – where is the exit strategy?), the European Union and the UN.  Word is that they will soon announce that al-Jazeera as their official news channel (CNN is not liberal enough).  Not exactly a party any rational American would want to be part of (although it is popular with terrorists and Europeans).

What an amazing transition for a party that used to be in power that can do little anymore than hold temper tantrums and press conferences cheered in Tehran and Paris (someone in Paris should really get a handle on the week long riots that have been going on instead of watching the Democrats in America hold tantrums).  I almost forgot about Syria, they like the Democrats too, but not as much as they did when they thought they could stop the confirmation of Ambassador John Bolton at the UN, but they couldn’t.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 based in San Diego.  He may be reached at steve@steveyuhas.com or www.steveyuhas.com