Thank You, and Pass the Rope

Over these past few days, I've worked up quite a bit of anger over the comments of Illinois senior senator Dick Durbin's comparison of American soldiers to the Nazis, Stalinists, and Khmer Rouge. Now that I've had a chance to cool down a bit, I think that instead of castigating Durbin, we thank Durbin, Hillary, and Dean for offering us a wonderful set of tools to use over the next few elections.

I am by no means saying that we should silently accept or ignore their comments; it is imperative that we respond proportionally and factually to each, providing a crisp, clinical dissection of their fevered rhetoric de jour as it occurs, but beyond that, we should be very judicious in our outrage.

While outrage is the natural response to the asinine comments that make up the bulk of Democratic discourse these days, it should be noted that these Democrats are in their own way doing exactly what President Lincoln suggested:

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

Republicans resign over morally bankrupt behavior. Democrats campaign on it.

We simply need to allow them the rope, they are quite capable of tying the noose around their own necks. As I've mentioned in the past, you've got to love a party whose platform includes a trapdoor with a quick-release.

We can temper our comments to generate appropriate levels of outrage, enough to let the voting public know that these remarks are beyond the pale of acceptable behavior, but we must be careful not to overplay our hand. As the last several national elections have shown, the American people are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, and we merely need to stay out of their way.

The voters will do the rest.