Sad but maybe true

Justin Raimondo describes himself as Old Right, or paleoconservative.  I describe the foreign-policy outlook he represents as Old Right isolationism.

In this article, he makes a pitch for people discontented with the Iraq War:  War: The Great Clarifier Antiwar.com 08/04/06.  His particular viewpoint isn't significant within the Republican Party at the moment.  But he provides a big reminder of the fact that the Democrats will not automatically benefit from the widescale public discontent over the Iraq War.  They do have to articulate some kind of attractive alternative if they want to capitalize on the potential for political realignment over foreign policy and war-related issues.

And a posture of, "we're as eager for war as the Republicans but we're just more competent at it", that won't do it.

Raimondo writes:

The left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which is making political capital out of the Iraqi quagmire, has nothing to say about Israel's Lebanese quagmire – and especially not about our part in subsidizing and egging them on.  The Democrats pushed to have Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki barred from speaking to a joint session of Congress because he had dared describe the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as "aggression" – a faux pas in Washington no matter what party you belong to.  Congress voted to endorse the murderous Israeli assault, without mentioning any need for restraint or deploring the targeting of civilians and Lebanon's infrastructure: there were only eight dissenting votes.

Yet this Soviet-like near-unanimity is belied by developments on the Right, where Republican "realists" are questioning the value of our government's "special relationship" with Israel – and warning us about the power wielded by the Israel lobby, which virtually dictates U.S. policy in the Middle East.  Israel's disgraceful conduct in prosecuting the war has further alienated many who, like Professor Steve Bainbridge – who teaches law at UCLA and writes a popular blog – are dissenting from the neocon-orchestrated cheering section for the IDF.

You can see in those two paragraphs a hint of ways that conservatives could pitch themselves to voters as antiwar while being anything but liberal or progressive.

And that the "sad but maybe true" part.  For all the incredible failings of the Republican Party during the Cheney-Bush administration, the Democrats could fritter away the potential realignments that could come out of the backlash.

If anyone is wondering, I didn't mind that some Dems grumped about Al-Maliki's position.  The Islamist Iraqi government of which he's a part is anti-Israel and anti-Semitism is common among the Islamists there.  I was also glad to see the Dems willing to cause a minor fuss about Maliki's address to the Congress, since basically it was a Republican Party campaign speech.

Still, as a practical matter, there's no way he could maintain credibility among his constituents if he had publicly attacked Lebanese Hizbullah at that time.  Yep, that's the kind of government we've been sending our soldiers to fight to install and defend.  So I don't really mind that the Dems took advantage of the opportunity to highlight that in a context where it wasn't easy for the Republicans to criticize them for not being hawkish enough for doing what they did.