Political combat

By Mark Alexander · Friday, November 1, 2002

The news this week was all about political combat, which is not surprising on the domestic front in the closing days of an election season characterized by the standard Democrat hyperbolic lies and deceit.

For two weeks, as if a prelude to Halloween, we have been revisiting some of the absurdities of the Carter administration. Jimmy Carter himself won the Nobel Peace Prize for making a career of pacifying dictators, only to have the North Koreans confess their violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty brokered by Carter for the Clinton administration.

And worse, Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, was "confirmed" in an ad hoc convention to replace deceased Sen. Paul Wellstone as the Democrat nominee for Minnesota's U.S. Senate seat. (This is the very same Walter Mondale who, when he declined to run for this very Senate seat in 1990, noted, "One of the requirements of a healthy party is that it renews itself. You can't keep running Walter Mondale for everything.") Under pressure from Republican challenger Norm Coleman, the 74-year-old former vice president and failed presidential nominee says he will meet Coleman in one debate prior to next Tuesday's election. "If you want substance in politics, you inevitably are driven to believe in debates," Mondale noted on the eve of his monumental loss to Reagan in 1984. We'll see if he shows up!

For his part, Mondale says, "I don't apologize for my experience, I think it's an asset." Let's review class.... Mondale was appointed as Minnesota's Attorney General, appointed to fill the Senate seat of Hubert Humphrey when "Old Long-Wind" saddled up with LBJ, and appointed to the presidential ticket of Jimmy Carter. As for experience, the last time Mondale was actually elected to office (with Carter in '76), he left the nation in "the great malaise" and at great risk -- mortgage rates at 18%, high unemployment, no gas, hostages in Iran, Soviets in Afghanistan and the Wahhabi Mujahadeen fully armed, dictators appeased around the world, Panama Canal given away...the list is endless.

In 1984, when the nation's memory was still fresh from the Carter/Mondale years, Fritz ran against Ronald Reagan. He lost in the electoral college 525-13 -- not by 13 votes, he only got 13 votes! (Yes, Miami-Dade, the electoral college was around way back then.) He won Minnesota, which is to say, Norm Coleman has his work cut out for him!

Regarding the passing of Wellstone, substance is, of course, the last thing on the minds of Democrats -- Mondale included. To wit: At a time when Democrats called campaigning woefully "inappropriate" -- the "memorial" service for Wellstone became the biggest, most divisively partisan event of the midterm elections. Wellstone's son David even uninvited Vice President Dick Cheney, ostensibly, because his security entourage would create a "circus atmosphere."

Predictably, the "memorial" turned into a three-ring circus, with ringmasters Bill Clinton and arm candy, Sen. Ms. Hillary Rodham-Clinton-Rodham, in ring one; Albert Gore in ring two; and Walter Mondale and wife Joan in ring three -- security entourages in tow. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, together with other Republicans in attendance, were summarily booed. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) offered a campaign speech in place of a eulogy, as did Wellstone's campaign manager, Rick Kahn, saying, "We are going to win this election for Paul Wellstone. We can redeem the promise of his life if you win this election for Paul Wellstone." As Kahn spoke, the cameras panned to Mondale, the nonpartisan mourners again erupting in cheers.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg aptly noted: "Sure, it makes sense that the Democratic mascot is a donkey, a stubborn beast that will not move toward progress, even when the progress is for its own good. ... Like some perverse 'Where's Waldo' drawing, wherever large groups of Democrats congregate, you know if you can find Bill Clinton in the picture they will behave like jackasses. ... That is what was so offensive about that rally: It shamelessly used Wellstone's death for partisan advantage while its organizers cynically accused their opponents of doing precisely that."

During Kahn's speech Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and his wife, as well at Sen. Lott, walked out of the service in protest. Gov. Ventura said he felt "used, violated and duped" by the politicization of the memorial service, then declared, "I think the Democrats should hang their heads in shame." We concur!

We are shocked -- SHOCKED -- to report that Demo-gogues would use tragedy -- even tragedy within their own ranks -- as political fodder. (The words "Senator Jean Carnahan" come to mind.) The fact is, such a treatment of a tragedy is not incidental, but indicative of the intrinsic character of the Left. Any time the Left can convert the spilling of innocent blood into political capital, it will. (Just last week, the Islamist sniper was prompting calls for "gun control.")

And the exploitation of tragedy isn't the only Demo rerun of the Minnesota election; Democrats are already preparing a series of legal challenges to contest the senatorial election, should Mondale lose. Following on the heels of the 2000 presidential election challenge and the substitution of Jean Carnahan for her deceased husband that year, and in this election cycle, Democrats' substitution of Frank Lautenburg for Sen. Robert Torricelli in New Jersey, contrary to state law, Democrats now seem predisposed to use the courts to determine the outcome of elections.

Of the New Jersey case friend of The Federalist Thomas Sowell says: "...[W]hether it is 'fair' to have one party be able to substitute candidates at the eleventh hour when its current candidate is behind in the polls...is a legitimate question, but whether we have a government of laws, and not of men, is a momentous question." Of course, since the Leftjudiciary observes no constitutional limits, particularly in the wake of the Clinton/Gore outlaw years, the DNC is now preparing to dispatch thousands of lawyers to polls in a dozen states with closely contested or unusually complicated races, particularly in Missouri, South Dakota, Louisiana and, of course, Minnesota, with the sole purpose of preparing court challenges to elections won by Republicans.

This now-perennial reliance on legal challenges is not without irony because, as The Federalist has noted repeatedly, this year's Senate elections are not about control of the Senate, but, ultimately, about control of the courts -- making sure that no benches of the Leftjudiciary are displaced by President George Bush's constitutional constructionist nominees, thus ensuring the Leftjudiciary can continue to be co-opted by...the Left.