Count Me In

While not agreeing entirely with the tone and profanity (though I have cussed in my heart), I certainly find myself in agreement with both Not Buck Turgidson and Mason Conservative: I am thoroughly sick of the race-baiting occurring in the Virginia Senate campaign.

Racism is the nuclear bomb of political debate: if you're hit with it, there's little you can do to respond. The race hustlers have so successfully overtaken reality that they have been able to make even the most innocent phrase potentially explosive. Or at least, exploitable.

However, I am not going to engage in moral equivalency, for it is quite clear from the outset that Jim Webb's nutroots supporters have gone from Bush Derangement Syndrome to psychotic, and that this entire series of events can and should be laid directly at their feet. And it is truly disappointing that someone I like and respect --- even though we are political opposites --- as much as Ben Tribbett has joined on the nutroots bandwagon. In Ben's case, I wish it could be attributed solely to youthful exuberance, but he has so frequently demonstrated an insight and maturity beyond his years that I find myself hoping that he has been rolled.

There is a method to oppose the Bush Administration, American policy in Iraq, and any number of policies of the Bush Administration. Instead of constructive opposition, however, Virginia's Democrat nutroots are offering nothing more than hate.

Thus, it's not sufficient to say that invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein was unnecessary, ill-advised, and/or counter-productive, a colorable argument, even if ones with which I disagree. No, Democrats are claiming that: it was done for base personal economic profit; or that "Bush lied and people died," and never mind the worldwide intelligence consensus that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

I don't know if this hate campaign will alienate voters sufficient to keep them away from the polls; I tend to discount such concerns.

What I really wonder is whether this Democrat campaign of race-baiting isn't based upon concerns (perhaps discerned from polling data) that the Democrat hammerlock on minority voters in Virginia (and nationwide) is slipping away, as Republican policies spread prosperity to demographic groups previously not enjoying it, or rather, conditioned by Democrat politicians to expect government handouts.

But isn't it deliciously ironic that Jim Webb and his nutroots supporters are savaging George Allen, while they want Webb to join a Democrat Senate Caucus that included former KKK leader Robert Byrd (D-WV)?