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From Jeff Goldstein's blog:

Typical Dreher—tells us all that the sky is falling, then tries to barricade himself against criticism for his flabby, defeatist attitude by predicting that criticism in advance. So very very brave of Rod. “A pox on those conservative bloggers and their reactionary response to reason,” he practically squeals. “Why won’t they just resign themselves to the truth?—that when a ‘crusty’ retired Marine begins making impassioned speeches about surrendering in Iraq, well, it’s game over, man. Game over!”
All rather transparent, I think.
To me, what is so insulting about posts like Dreher’s is that they strain so very hard to appear dispassionate; and yet, one really need not be part of the evil VRWC Dreher seems tacitly to believe is alive and well and living on the right side of the blogosphere to be able see through such barely concealed panic and rhetorical hamfistedness.
Here’s the thing: It’s okay to say you are now for withdrawing the troops, Rod. Really— there’s no need to soften us with a lot of heavyhanded talk about defining moments and ground shifts.
But what you shouldn’t do is insult our intelligence. It’s quite possible to take someone like Murtha seriously (perhaps he truly is passionate in his convictions, irrelevant though that may be) and to find him absolutely and unabashedly wrong at the same time. At which point, our taking him seriously on the strength of his emotional appeals has very little whatever to do with how we should regard the war in Iraq, which, from a truly dispassionate standpoint, we simply cannot afford to lose.
Dreher suggests that he is simply warning conservatives that once they lose people like Murtha, the war effort is in trouble. But the fact of the matter is, the war effort is only in trouble if people like Dreher—writing for the National Review—continue to make a big deal out of losing every Democrat like Murtha, who has clearly allowed emotionalism to cloud his better judgment.
The war in Iraq is right because it is right. And that’s all there is to it, really. We must stay until the war is won. Anything short of that would prove a terrible strategic blow to this country, and would make us less safe for years to come.
http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/

Typical Dreher—tells us all that the sky is falling, then tries to barricade himself against criticism for his flabby, defeatist attitude by predicting that criticism in advance. So very very brave of Rod. “A pox on those conservative bloggers and their reactionary response to reason,” he practically squeals. “Why won’t they just resign themselves to the truth?—that when a ‘crusty’ retired Marine begins making impassioned speeches about surrendering in Iraq, well, it’s game over, man. Game over!”

Just too damn good. Oh, much thanks for posting that.

The Harris poll on approval ratings is pretty funny when you look at it closely. Yes Bush's approval, per Harris, has fallen to 34%. But look again, and you will see that Democrats in Congress have fallen even faster. Their approval rating is now at 25%. Everybody outside of moveon.org knows that they are raving, chair-chewing lunatic freaks. On the positive side, they are entertaining in a way.