The new Copperhead Caucus: Hugh Hewitt shows how envy, hate now totally consume Tom Daschle

It did not take long for America's and Great Britain's fiercest critics to denounce the allied ultimatum to Saddam.

Chirac of France exclaimed: "Whether it concerns the necessary disarmament of Iraq or the desirable change of regime in this country, there is no justification for a unilateral decision to resort to force."

Schroeder of Germany announced: "My question was and is: Does the degree of threat stemming from the Iraqi dictator justify a war that will bring certain death to thousands of innocent men, women and children? My answer was and is: No."

And Daschle of South Dakota joined in: "I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."

Daschle of Dakota standing with Chirac and Schroeder? Yes, that's exactly what the leader of the Senate Democrats did. Though he voted for the resolution authorizing force last October, and though in 1998 he supported Bill Clinton's attack on Iraq, Daschle used the hours before the president's speech on Monday to hurl charges at George Bush.

The only possible explanation for this bitterness is that envy has now totally consumed Tom Daschle. It has destroyed his judgment, and it has unbalanced his understanding of the national interest. His hatred for George Bush is palpable, and he has lost the struggle to conceal it.

The roots of Daschle's jealousy date to the 2000 election, and then the first tax-cut debate when his own party deserted him to support Bush's proposals. In the aftermath of 9-11, as the president grew larger, Daschle's stature diminished even further as Bush commanded every moment and delivered every necessary inspiration. Daschle's desperation grew pronounced with his attacks that, incredibly, questioned whether Bush knew the 9-11 terrorists were coming.

Then came the campaign of the summer and fall 2002. Although Jim Jeffords had given Daschle the leadership of the Senate, Daschle could not convert that leadership or even history's decided pull toward the opposition in off-year elections to manage even a draw with Bush. Daschle's strategy led the Senate Democrats to a humiliating defeat and back into the minority. A forlorn Daschle looked shell-shocked on election night, but soon re-emerged and floated the possibility of his own campaign.

Wiser voices counseled Daschle to sit out the presidential sweepstakes. Daschle is known primarily for obstruction and Democrats worried about his judgment. With his ambitions broken, Daschle set about, Iago-like, to destroying the ambitions of others, first with Miguel Estrada, and teamed with the Senate's least-rational player Patrick Leahy to take Democrats into the uncharted territory on filibustering an appeals-court nominee.

That would have been reckless enough, but Monday's speech dove further. Just when you think Daschle has hit bottom, he digs another basement. Other Democrats responded with announcements of support for the country, like Carl Levin and Diane Feinstein. Presidential candidates suspended their campaigns. Columnists muted their denunciations.

But not Daschle. Jealousy has genuinely disfigured his judgment. He rages now, and his face cannot conceal his anger. George Bush dominates the politics of the country and is guiding the world toward a new era, and Daschle is reduced to sputtering about "one life."

Daschle is an embarrassment to the Democrats, but they are paralyzed and cannot move against him because of their pacifist wing – their Clintons, Kennedys, Leahys and Deans.

Safire's Political Dictionary explains "Copperhead" this way: "The copperheads were those Northerners who opposed the Union cause during the Civil War. The copperhead snake is considered by many to be the lowest of a low breed: It strikes without warning, contrasted with the fair-minded, noisy rattle-snake." FDR returned to use the word just prior to World War II when he denounced Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters as Copperheads.

Now there is a new Copperhead Caucus, with branches in Paris and Berlin. Tom Daschle is its American chair. The country will get to judge it in November 2004.

See also Hugh's OTHER commentary on Daschle published today, this one in the Weekly Standard:

Tom Daschle's Aid and Comfort
The minority leader's attack on George W. Bush
puts him in the dubious company of Charles Lindbergh.

by Hugh Hewitt
03/19/2003 12:00:00 AM

Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer
SENATOR TOM DASCHLE'S attack on President Bush on Monday was unprecedented for the leader of the opposition party in Congress, but high-profile Americans have a long history of getting it wrong on matters of war and peace. Most famous among these is Charles Lindbergh, who help found the America First Committee in September of 1940. Lindbergh barnstormed for isolationism, blasting the British as he went, demanding that America "not dissipate our strength, or help Europe dissipate hers, in these wars of politics and possession," exclaiming that "I would as soon see our country traffic in opium as in bombs," and denouncing the prospect of--sound familiar?--dead children: "I do not want to see American bombers dropping bombs which will kill and mutilate European children, even if they are not flown by American pilots."
Lindbergh's efforts were not without harm. They contributed to German miscalculation, as William Shirer makes clear in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." The German military attaché in Washington, General Friedrich von Boetticher "overestimated the influence of the isolationists in American politics," writes Shirer, "especially of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, who emerges in his dispatches as a great hero." One wonders how Daschle and others are being portrayed in the Iraqi dispatches this week.
Here is Shirer's summary of Lindbergh:
Charles A. Lindbergh, the hero flyer, who had seemed to this writer to have fallen with startling naivete, during his visits to Germany, to Nazi propaganda boasts, was already consigning Britain to defeat in speeches to large and enthusiastic audiences in America . . . He condemned England for having "encouraged the smaller nations of Europe to fight against hopeless odds." Apparently, it did not occur to this man that Yugoslavia and Greece, which Hitler had just crushed, were brutally attacked without provocation, and that they had instinctively tried to defend themselves because they had a sense of honor and because they had courage even in the face of hopeless odds. On April 28 Lindbergh resigned his commission as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve after President Roosevelt on the twenty-fifth had publicly branded him as a defeatist and an appeaser. The Secretary of War accepted the resignation.
Shirer dealt with Lindbergh in a footnote. A future historian of the war to liberate Iraq may not be so generous with Senator Daschle. President Bush, who has thus far dealt with his domestic and foreign critics with only indirect criticism, should keep in mind FDR's example. At some point the American public deserves to have the proponents of vulnerability at home and indecision abroad rebuked.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.
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