The Great Realignment of 2006 lasted a little over a week before it turned into the Great Sellout. ~Justin Raimondo

Give me strength.  I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn’t it?  If I recall correctly, when the corruption rap helped bring down the Red Republicans and CREW was hot on their trail, there weren’t too many cries of foul play and conspiracy from our friends at Antiwar.  Now that accusations of corruption happen to land on Jack Murtha the “ethically challenged” (accusations that, by the way, go beyond Abscam), that most useful convert to the antiwar cause, it is a sinister and terrible conspiracy bent on “betraying” the Democrats’ supposed “mandate” to…do what exactly?  The election was many things.  It was a stunning vote of no-confidence in the administration’s policy on Iraq.  It was not, however, a blanket endorsement of an antiwar position, much less an antiwar + withdrawal position, even if a majority of Americans do believe the war was a mistake.  It was definitely not the Great Realignment of 2006.  Murtha’s failure to capture the position of Majority Leader was not some “mugging” or “knifing” (someone is beginning to use the phrases preferred by Lieberman apologists–all that’s missing is the reference to a “purge”!); his 86 votes were probably a lot more than he would have gotten had Pelosi not stuck her neck out for him.  If she backed up Murtha not only for personal reasons but also because she believed a strong antiwar voice was needed in that position, wouldn’t you a think a word or two on behalf of the future Speaker might be in order?  But, of course, there is bad blood between the two San Franciscans, Pelosi and Raimondo, isn’t there? 

Saith Raimondo:

The people voted to get us out of Iraq, and instead the Democrats will stand idly by – at best – while we get in deeper.

“The people” voted for no such thing, much as I might have liked to them to have voted for it.  For goodness’ sake, “the people” in Albuquerque re-elected Heather Wilson, arch-supporter of the war–what can we realistically expect from other parts of the country?  People who expected the new Congress to be avidly antiwar were frankly kidding themselves.  In all my diatribes against the GOP majority before the election, I do not believe I ever claimed that the Democratic leadership would be substantially better on Iraq; I did say that they would help provide some accountability and impose some more oversight on the administration, and so they may.  That is some small progress all by itself.  That was all that we could ever realistically hope for from this crowd. 

Hoyer was always the far and away favourite for Majority Leader (as the vote reflected), and Murtha’s challenge only succeeded as much as it did because of Pelosi’s gamble to back him up and use her influence to bring people over to his side.  As it was, Pelosi made Murtha’s vote tally a lot better than it would have been had he gone into this contest solo.  Instead of saying something about what that might portend for possible antiwar actions of the future Speaker, it is obviously far better to throw a fit about how Jack Murtha was denied his place in the sun.   

Where did anyone get the idea that the Democrats had won an antiwar mandate?  It was their impressive ability to say nothing concrete about any one particular view of Iraq that helped them maximise their advantage against the GOP; Democrats in Tennessee and Indiana could be pro-war but anti-Bush, while they could be reliably antiwar in Pennsylvania and New England, winning the disaffected and disgruntled everywhere.  Had they had a general, national position, they might well have done less well in Republican states and would have exposed their own position, whatever it was, to intense scrutiny.  Their vagueness and aimlessness were their strengths in a year when throwing out the GOP was the order of the day. 

They won a mandate based in disgust with administration incompetence and mishandling of the war.  Many of the moderate and conservative Democrats who helped create the new Democratic majority did not run on a Murtha-esque “redeployment” position; many ran against the administration and against withdrawal or “phased redeployment” as some call it.  Brad Ellsworth of IN-08 (who, it might be noted, ironically beat one of the only antiwar Republicans in the House), one of the more conservative of the new class of Congressmen, was one of the prominent supporters of Hoyer, because they happen to be in agreement that they believe withdrawal now would be a colossal mistake. 

I disagree with that view, but we cannot pretend that many of the new Democratic representatives were elected on some kind of Murtha-like platform that the party has now abandoned by failing to endorse the leadership bid of a man who, until a week or two ago, had not made his interest in the leadership public knowledge.  There was an obvious disconnect in having Murtha as the spokesman of the new, lean and clean majority, and the media seized on it for lack of anything else to talk about this week.   

All that being said, as annoying as some people at Antiwar can sometimes be even in my eyes, Antiwar.com is a worthy endeavour and needs support to keep running at its current levels.  I urge readers to lend Antiwar as much support as they can.  I continue to support them, and I hope that others will do likewise.