After all this time, you still believe the Democrats will go on defense?
Did they go on defense when the Republicans shut down the government in order to get a better budget?
I recall the MSM made sure everyone believed it was the Republicans fault they had to turn back with their kids after showing up at a National Park.
Did they go on defense when President Clinton was impeached?
I recall that the MSM made sure everyone believed it was all about sex, and his private life, and all those women were trailor trash and liars out for money.
Did they go on defense when they lost the Senate in 2000?
I recall Hillary had a book publisher offer Jeffords a very lucrative book deal so he could set up a trust fund to care for his retarded kid, and we lost control after 4 months when Jeffords became an Independent, and left the Republican Party.
Did they go on defense when President Bush made one of the best speeches in the life of this country 10 days after the worst terrorist attack in this country and soared to 90% approval rating?
I seem to remember Hillary Clinton 10 days later showing up on the floor of the Senate brandishing a newspaper with the large headline--BUSH LIED.
And my sincere prediction is that if we'd humiliated them by eeking through a victory for Luttig or some other known die-hard conservative, that they would have made our lives hell by obstructing every single thing we wanted or needed from then on.
And in the process, we'd run the deep risk of having the MSM spin the story so that much of the country was too angry with Bush trying to shove a mean spirited Neanderthal onto the bench to listen to his reasons for staying the course in Iraq and Afghanistan or his reasons for wanting social security reform, or his reasons for vetoing a defense bill loaded with a socialized medicine program, and most definitely they wouldn't listen to his reasons to make the tax cuts permanent.
Senators voting for the nominee who are in vulnerable states would need lots of mark-ups to make the folks back home happy so they'd be forgiven for their Supreme Court vote. These, of course, would make the deficit worse, and make it even harder to get the tax cuts permanent, which would destory the economic progress we've made under Bush's tax cut.
And with a deeply divided country, made worse by an angry partisan battle in the Senate, the national will to stay the course in Iraq would be weakened.
There is a lot to consider when you pick a fight. Sam Houston kept running away from Santa Ana till he got him where he wanted him...far from supply lines, overconfident, with his army divided and half sent elsewhere, and on the downslope of a battlefield of Sam Houston's choosing...on 'good ground'.
Bush, like Sam Houston, is a student of history.
Who was winning elections while all that was going on? The simple fact is that Dems were reacting and were off balance and looked hysterical and were exposed as being idiots during all those examples you cite. Do they ever score political points? Sure. But it hasn't been enough to derail the Republicans. Keeping them off balance by acting on principle is the best way to win political fights against Dems, because they are exposed as being a cult of hate and anti americanism. You can't appease aggressors. If we treated terrorists like you wanted to treat democrats, we'd lose the war.
Precisely.