gut instinct

You all know that I’m a contrarian, right? I’m not proud of it; it’s just the way I’m wired. I would call myself a skeptic rather than a contrarian, but “skeptic” is too mild and moderate for these partisan times, so I’ll happily cop to “contrarian.” I have a lot of fight in me, and I am pround of that.

Anyhow, contrarians are naturally attracted to other contrarians (thus my intellectual crush on Hitchens, evidence of which you can see scattered throughout this blog like so many mash notes). But I come here not to salute Hitchens.

Rather, I come here today to tip my hat to that sly old codger Norman Podhoretz, grandfather of the neocons, who has been around the block again and again and again. Ol’ Norman is picking up a hint of overreaching triumphalism in the Democrats, and I think he’s right:

I am not predicting that the Democrats of today will suffer the same fate as the Federalists and the Whigs did. But I do think that they are in the process of ensuring their defeat in the next presidential election.

In many respects, of course, the people of this country are very different from their forebears of 1812 and 1846. But I suspect that most of us are not all that different from them in how we view politicians who conspicuously fail to root for American troops fighting in the field, and who seem to think that they can get away with it by sticking the responsibility for the war on the sitting president of the other party.

In 1972, this deeply ingrained American attitude still had enough life in it to give Richard Nixon, unpopular though he was, an overwhelming victory against George McGovern. Unless the American leopard has changed his spots since then, the Democrats are in for a very big surprise in November 2008.

I wouldn’t say the Dems are in for a “very big surprise,” and I certainly wouldn’t discount the changes that have taken place in America since 1972. But I agree that the American leopard hasn’t lost its martial spots (contrary to the fervent wishes and desires of the current crop of dovish young ‘uns) and that Dems who think they’ve found a winning formula by calling for surrender are in for a rude awakening.