The first Morning Jolt of the week features a look at Rand Paul’s compromise talk and a famous forensic obstetrician branches out into parasitology, but a bit more on the surprise news of Ricardo Sanchez:
Maybe Texas Democrats Meant to Run Former CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez
A bunch of conservative bloggers, including myself, noted the rumor that Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, could end up running for Senate in Texas as a Democrat.
Ed Driscoll tries to get his head around a stunning about-face: “In 2004, the New York Times, perhaps the chief house organ of Democrat politics, ran 32 consecutive front page stories on the incident at Abu Ghraib, establishing during that election year that this was a very, verybad thing. (The more recent “Obama Ghraib” incident in Afghanistan? Not so much, of course.) But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from apparently wanting to, as Bryan Preston writes at the Tatler, “run the highest ranking officer who was connected to Abu Ghraib, whom the Army found to be derelict in his duties”, for the US Senate.”
Glenn Reynolds adds, “It’s like they never cared about this stuff except insofar as they could score cheap partisan points. Gobsmackingly vile. Various readers expect to see Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, etc. flacking for this guy. Well, stay tuned.”
At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey tries to put the latest shift in the other dramatic 180 degree turns in Democrats’ thinking on matters of war: “I swear, sometimes it is difficult to keep up with progressives and Democrats. First they demand an exit from Iraq, and then the most progressive administration in decades starts signaling that they want to stay in Iraq longer than George Bush did. Speaking of Bush, remember when the Left screamed about the “imperial Presidency” because Bush went to war in Iraq without sufficient consultation with Congress? Their champion in 2008, Barack Obama, took us to war in Libya without any consultation with Congress in 2011. Not only that, but the White House openly scoffed at the idea that Congressional approval was necessary at all.”
Finally, Moe Lane brings the fury: “ If Sanchez runs as a Democrat, the groups that would have been most likely to push for further investigation at this late date – the antiwar Left – will not be interested in pursuing the issue. The antiwar Left will, in fact, enthusiastically support the man who was their head devil in their designated Hell on Earth… because to do otherwise would be to show some elementary sense of self-worth and dignity, and the antiwar Left has neither. So – when your Democratic masters get around to picking your candidate for you – go ahead and endorse Sanchez, ye progressives. Get on the floor and lick those boots. Not that Sanchez will win, anyway; 2012 will be a bad year for a Democrat in Texas. But it’s always fun to watch the antiwar movement futilely beat its own ‘principles’ to death on command for the benefit of their masters. You’d think that it’d get old eventually, but no… [But] we cannot allow the Democrats to get away with encouraging the aforementioned smears without consequences. The Left fund-raised on Abu Ghraib; in fact, it probably still does. They must be forced to either stay consistent to their past positions, or else publicly admit that they never believed in those positions in the first place.
As a Jets fan, I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to guys named Sanchez.