Well, the Congressional Democrats have unveiled their latest “plan” on Iraq, and it’s a doozy. Others are having a field day with it, and I might go into that later, but there’s one element about it that I don’t think that the Democrats recognized.
Back in the 2000 election, the Gore campaign — in one of the most despicable political acts I’ve ever seen, and considering what both sides did in that race alone that says a LOT — sent lawyers armed with memos outlining just how to eliminate absentee ballots cast by service members stationed overseas. Yes, Al Gore, who touted his Viet Nam tour over George W. Bush’s domestic Air National Guard stint, did his level best to deny those serving our nation and protecting our rights their own right to participate in the election.
Gore’s theory (well, probably the Gore campaign’s theory, but his name was on the top of the ticket) was that active-duty personnel tend to vote Republican, and excluding their votes would eliminate more Bush votes than Gore votes.
Well, not a hell of a lot has changed since 2000 in that respect. In fact, support for the war is pretty damned high among active-duty military personnel, especially those in Iraq (as demonstrated by the above-average re-enlistment rates among those personnel), as well as general Republican support.
So here’s the Democratic plan: to take this substantial block of voters who, as a net, vote more for Republicans than Democrats, and bring them back home just in time to register for the 2008 presidential election. Further, they will be brought home without — in all likelihood — being allowed to finish the mission that they so strongly support. Yup, that ought to pretty much lock them into casting their vote for the Democratic nominee, especially since that person will either have opposed their war from the start, or have since said that they were “tricked” into supporting it.
I begin to see why Democrats are usually the ones who back stricter gun-control laws. It seems that every time they turn around, they’re shooting themselves in the foot again.
Sooner or later, though, they’re gonna run out of feet.
