“I can’t help but feel through eyes of a combat-wounded Marine in Vietnam, if someone was shot, you tried to save his life. . . . While you were in combat, you had a sense of urgency to end the slaughter, and around here we don’t have that sense of urgency,” said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (Md.), a usually soft-spoken Republican who has urged his leaders to challenge the White House on Iraq. “To me, the administration does not act like there’s a war going on. The Congress certainly doesn’t act like there’s a war going on. If you’re raising money to keep the majority, if you’re thinking about gay marriage, if you’re doing all this other peripheral stuff, what does that say to the guy who’s about ready to drive over a land mine?”

… “How many members have in their life [experienced] putting the barrel of their gun on another man’s chest and pulling the trigger?” he asked in an interview this week. “How many members have experienced the chaos of a 3 a.m. battle, pushing your bayonet through another man’s body? How many members have wrapped themselves around a fellow soldier who just lost his legs in a land mine and you feel the last breath and he’s dead, calling in airstrikes on a village and walking through, seeing dead babies and others who are still alive, being with someone who’s been shot and you can’t move, you can’t do anything because you’re under intense fire and he dies right next to you?”

There have been reports in Iraq and Afghanistan that terrorists use the tactic of exploding a bomb and then when rescuers some in to help, a second bomb goes off to kill them.

Here’s what our ally in the war against terror did yesterday.

Tuesday’s airstrike occurred just before noon when an Israeli military aircraft fired one missile at a minibus near a busy intersection, killing two gunmen from the radical Islamic Jihad movement. Military officials said the car was transporting homemade missiles of the kind Islamic Jihad has been firing into southern Israel, a near-daily occurrence that has picked up in the past week.

Witnesses said a second missile, fired seven minutes later as a crowd gathered to help the wounded, sprayed shrapnel into the tin-roofed home of Ashraf al-Mughrabi, a 31-year-old barber, who was standing outside his front door. The blast killed him instantly, as well as his 6-year-old son, Maher, and his 13-year-old nephew, Hisham. Nisreen al-Mughrabi, Ashraf’s wife, was severely wounded.

Also killed in the explosion were three Palestinian medics who had rushed to the scene from the Mohammed al-Dura Children’s Hospital a block away after hearing the first blast. Earlier reports indicated that four medics were killed. Several remain hospitalized.

The story is buried on page A19.

Radicals Are Difficult To Disrupt, Official Says (Second Item)

U.S. counterterrorism officials say they are uncovering homegrown Islamic radicals in the United States who lack formal ties to al-Qaeda and operate independently. Those independent qualities — combined with the radicals’ ability to organize and plot on the Internet — make them particularly difficult to disrupt, retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In a hearing on the changing face of terrorism, Redd said the threat from homegrown extremism is a trend that was seen in the successful mass transit attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

Ever think of what things might be like if we just focused on Afghanistan and never embark on this “crusade”? Given the Bush administration of the war on terror, I can’t see it ever ending. Besides, how will they know we’ve won?

Hillary Clinton was booed at a gathering of liberal Democrats yesterday.. Her statement on the Iraq War was as puzzling as Kerry’s “I supported war…” statement during the ’04 campaign.

“I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”

I’m wondering what the middle ground is.

I’m not supporting a public timetable for withdrawal. I was opposed to the war before it was launched. But setting a pubic timetable ties our hands. That said, I’d give one privately to the Iraqis. They need to know we intend to get out of their sometime soon. Maybe that’s what Hillary meant. Who knows?

This is about green politicians. No, not the Green Party politicians, but the kind Shailagh Murray wrote about this morning in The Post. The story, for the most part a good one, was about the battle of a GOP incumbent who finds himself in his first real fight to stay in office since he was elected 20 years ago.

I don’t know that the Democratic opponent has never run for office, but as a retired Navy vice admiral, Joseph A. Sestak Jr. has apparently made it a race. About 10 points separate them at this early stage.

Most of the article is about the incumbent, with a few graphs about other incumbents under pressure and remarks from moderates or Republicans that indicate this could be a tight race.

But at the end of the piece he writes of the opponent, “As a politician, he’s still a little green.”

But none of what follows supports that contention:

“Speaking at the Broomall Presbyterian Village nursing home one afternoon, Sestak launched into a somewhat rambling discourse on how Weldon is out of touch with district concerns. Leaning on a woman’s walker, he lambasted the GOP-led House for ignoring big, looming problems, including health care, energy conservation and affordable college.

‘National security begins here at home,’ Sestak shouted for the benefit of the hearing impaired. ‘Our national treasure is our people.’

‘Please tell Mr. Weldon to retire,’ resident Anne Anastasiou shouted back from the crowd. ‘We’ve had enough of him.’

I wrote to the reporter and concluded with,

You may thought what he said was rambling, and I support your journalistic right — and even a duty — to say so. But that doesn’t make him “green” Bush rambles — incoherently sometimes. But he’s no green politician.

I’m just curious, what makes him “green”?

The Washington Post again comes through with an excellent Sunday Outlook section this week with its centerpiece a series of articles about the Democrats’ electoral problems. There’s no shortage of them.

The problem with Democrats is that they’re too liberal. Or not liberal enough. They talk too much (or not enough) about abortion or torture or gun control. They’re too condescending, too cosmopolitan, too secular, too wonkish, too weak. They’ve been captured by their interest groups, their contributors, their pollsters, their consultants. They’re on the wrong side of a demographic revolution. Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to have a beer with them. They should think strategically instead of tactically, or they should forget about strategy and speak from the heart. They aren’t catering to values voters, heartland voters, exurban voters. They aren’t motivating their base. They don’t have a unified national message, or they’re too worried about a unified national message. They need to do more than criticize Bush, or stop rolling over for Bush. They’re too disconnected to understand what voters want to hear, or too cowardly to say things voters don’t want to hear. They should imitate the Republican intellectual infrastructure that produces the conservative movement’s big ideas, or imitate the Republican anti-intellectual attitude that doesn’t worry about big ideas. Or they should stop imitating Republicans.

If it weren’t for the fact that our country’s future depends on progressives gaining control of our government, you’ve got to admit that this is funny. Democrats are the embodiment of all that is hapless: a cross between Michael Dukakis and the U.S. men’s soccer team.

The author of the main article, Michael Grunwald of The Post, reflects the conventional wisdom that the battle in the party is between the centrists or moderates, and the liberal or progressive wings of the party. I use labels as much as the next guy, but they’re really not useful in this debate. Perhaps because I was a political science major in college, and though that my reference is now 40+ years ago, the conventional descriptions of conservatives and liberals are my frames of reference. (For the purpose of this discussion, I will reject the American philosopher Elbert Hubbard’s description of a conservative as someone “who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.” Conservatives can take joy in knowing that he had no where to run on the Lusitania.) Conservatives liked things they way they are. They viewed change skeptically. In politics, they tended to shy away from foreign involvements. Obviously, no more. So why should the descriptions of moderates and liberals be any more valid? They’re not, except for the MSM’s need for characterization, indeed caricature. Grunwald reflects that.

Liberals want the party to be more liberal. Centrists want the party to be more centrist. And those biases tend to translate into diagnoses of the party’s ailments, and prescriptions for cures.

For example, liberal analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack left to fire up their base, instead of blindly following the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

…Predictably, centrist analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack right to reach out to swing voters.

But what does right and left mean in this context? The problem is that many well-meaning analysts, party activists and bloggers buy into the left vs. central dichotomy. Some think wanting a “third way” is a DLC excuse for selling out. Others seem to think that challenging social conservatives is political suicide. Until we get past the boxes we draw ourselves in, we can’t decry the MSM or voters from doing the same.

In their book Take It Back, James Carville and Paul Begala urge Democrats to moderate or at least play down their support for abortion, gay rights and gun control; they also tell the party’s liberal interest groups — civil rights advocates, labor unions, environmentalists — to “back off a bit.” Jeffrey Goldberg recently suggested similar strategies in a New Yorker article highlighting moderate red-state Democrats complaining about their tone-deaf, anti-gun, pro-abortion party establishment.

Meanwhile,

…[L]efties argue that Democrats should stop soft-pedaling their opposition to conservative Republicans on issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, immigration and especially the economy.

Some of these issues should be easy to deal with. If we think the GOP is using wedge issues that aren’t really important, why do Dems feel compelled to dwell on them? Gay rights, abortion, gun rights? Not to minimize them, but when compared to war and a decent living, let’s not lead with our chins. Carville and Begala rightly identify the problem: interest groups that demand their issue be front and center and their unwillingness to question the way things have always been done. No less a liberal than Ted Kennedy said it more than 20 years ago.

“We cannot and should not depend on higher tax revenues to roll in and redeem every costly program,” Kennedy said. “Those of us who care about domestic progress must do more with less.” And he added: “The mere existence of a program is no excuse for its perpetuation, whether it is a welfare plan or a weapons system.”

Democrats need new ideas and a willingness to compromise not with the GOP but with themselves. It’s the old firing squad image. (Just read the Virginia blog warfare over the Senate nomination to understand how that is perpetuated.)

There needs to be new ideas, yes, but more important, I think, is a new way of talking about principles. The opposition to the Iraq War shouldn’t be seen as “anti-war.” But instead of making the case, Dems try to have it both ways and wind up flip-flopping. The same is true of civil rights. Because folks oppose affirmative action doesn’t mean they’re racist.

At the end of the day, it’s about acknowledging the concerns of conservatives but proposing better solutions. Gays aren’t the problem with marriage, but the divorce rate and the number of children in one-parent homes suggests there is a problem with marriage. Racism is a problem, but contorted government-mandated affirmative action isn’t the answer. Economic fairness is a challenge, but taxing the rich only masks it. You needn’t be xenophobic to think there are immigration and trade policy problems.

Problem is, these are complicated problems, and when you say that to a guy like Chris Matthews, you are derided by him and his minions in the press who can’t stand complexity.

Still, if Dems underestimate the intelligence of the American voter and offer a cautious, reactive agenda, they’ll lose to someone with the courage of their convictions. But politically, it doesn’t take much courage to call someone a bigot, an elitist or a war monger. And there’s no indication it gets you enough votes, either.

Mike Shear’s article Saturday on the Senate race based on the “Politics Hour” on the Washington Post’s radio station was disappointing in the way he let Chris Matthews’ interview of the candidates Thursday night dictate part of his coverage.

But neither Plotkin nor Fisher could match the combativeness of Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” who oversaw a mini-debate between Webb and Miller on Thursday night.

I wrote before that Matthews is a jerk. Here’s my comment on Shear’s Richmond Report blog:

I am amazed, Mike, that you included the Matthews interview in your story Saturday. No matter who one supports, journalists should be appalled at the treatment Matthews gives many of his guests. His interviewing style is designed to “get you,” not elicit information, and his techniques are journalistically unethical, in my opinion. “Do you have access to history books?” In the context of the interview, what does that mean? Matthews supported this war early on. Didn’t he have access to history books? Give me a break. And why shouldn’t Webb stay neutral in the ’08 race? Warner may have been a successful governor. That doesn’t make him presidential material.

By including Matthews’ interview in your story, you allowed him to dictate the coverage of the race. I’d prefer you rely on your own judgement as to what’s legitimate info. and fair play. Alas, maybe you did.

The more coverage legitimate reporters give to Matthews’ shout fests, the more he is egged on.

Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC, the McLaughlin Group, Dem, said on “Countdown” that Ann Coulter doesn’t really believe much of what she says. She fancies herself a comedienne, he says.

I don’t what’s worse: that she means it or thinks it’s funny. Or that O’Donnell is letting her off the hook.

This race might be interesting.

There’s a story about a Republican consultant — I don’t remember the name — who upon seeing George W. Bush give a concession speech on TV — I believe it was his congressional race in 1978 — said, “There’s a winner.” The sound wasn’t even turned up, but he liked the body language, thinking Bush’s body said confidence.

I don’t know whether I buy that body language is why people elect presidents, but certainly they way one performs on TV is important.

I make the following comments without having seen the second half of the interview. The video link at MSNBC is flawed and ends with the commercial break in the interview.

In last night’s “Hardball” debate, Harris Miller looked a little stiff. In personal appearances, I’ve thought Jim Webb was stiff. In the remaining days, there’s not much to do about TV appearances, but somebody should have trained Miller better. He needed to lower his head, turned his shoulders every so slightly and occasionally and very briefly looked downward from the camera. That being said, his performance wasn’t bad.

Webb had the advantage to be in the studio, which any politician should opt for when possible. Listening to the question and responding over an earpiece is harder than locking eyes while a person asks a question. Webb looked less stiff, though hardly at ease. He also didn’t perform badly.

Chris Matthews, however, was horrendous. Why people can’t deal with him is beyond me. His constantly interrupts in virtually every interview he does, even with his round table discussions with other journalists (though I don’t really put Matthews in that profession). There’s a way to for interviewees to deal with that effectively.

Every politician should memorize his answer for times like this. One easy way to respond to Matthews badgering is to answer a question with a question. When haranguing Webb about immigration, the first thing you say is, “Which question do you want me to answer first?” Matthews is predictable; he always interrupts. Another ahe answer for every such instance is this:

“Mr. Matthews (never Chris), I think your listeners care about this issue and want to hear a reasoned discussion. Your rudely interrupting your guests doesn’t help. I don’t think it serves listeners to hear a shouting match. So I will respect, listen to you and respond to your questions. I would appreciate your doing the same.”

On the immigration issues, he could have gone farther.

“Polls show that people understand the complexity of the immigration issue. They know we depend on immigrants for many of our goods and services. And our systems for verifying citizenship are notoriously inadequate. And your saying we should do a background check on people we might hire as to paint out homes or mow our grass just because they have an accent or are of a different color than us is bigotry in its worse form. My grandfather had a Scottish accent til the day he died, but he was a naturalized citizen. I think you owe immigrants an apology.”

I made the last part up, but if Webb had any dead relative who was a naturalized citizen, who could prove him wrong? And Matthews didn’t say color but let him correct you; he’s now on the defensive.

Turning the tables on an interviewer, when done calmly and respectfully not only puts a Chris Matthews type guy on the defensive, it gains you credibility and respect from the listeners for putting a blowhard in his place.

The downside, of course, is that you’ll never likely get invited on his show again. Which, come to think of it, is not much of a downside.