Tom, you're trying to split hairs to wriggle off the hook, but it's not working. You've been called before on that artificial distinction between "the bad liberals over there" versus "the good liberals here".

The prominence dodge is based on the perennial and ludicrous Rightist belief that your politicians are above politics, but all other politicians have no principles and simply devote themselves to sabotaging Rightists. Only the other guys are partisans. Which, in turn, is based on the fundamental Rightist conceit that the world revolves around you--that only Rightists have principles and everyone else merely reacts to them. That's no doubt a comforting delusion, because it makes it easy to avoid considering any other point of view; you're in fact denying that any other point of view exists. For example:

I'm not talking about the plumber who votes Democrat because his daddy did

Right...there's nothing inherent in Democratic positions that people might believe in, they're simply ignorant and vote Democratic because daddy did. Wow...a Rightist calling a Leftist a conservative traditionalist--could that be projection?

I don't know why you're having a hard time connecting Bush's own personalization of the war with dissent directed at Bush. Because Bush hasn't separated the issue from himself by offering objective evidence, and is simply working the rhetoric of fear for all it's worth, it's impossible for dissent to not be directed at Bush personally. It has no other possible target!

many prominent (there's that word again) Europeans see Bush and his personality as the main obstacle in their supporting an offensive in Iraq.

Yes, Tom...if Bush has made it all about Bush rather than evidence people can wrap their brains around, what else is left but a subjective judgment of Bush, his personality and character, and faith in his trustworthiness? That works for his existing partisans, but it's thin gruel indeed for everyone else.

What other agenda might protesters have? It's clear that Rove is cynically trying to use the support Bush has gotten in the area of national security to advance Bush politically. The hope is that Bush's domestic agenda and his reelection in 2004 can ride the coattails of war. It's fair to say that people who feel passionately about the environment or their brand of economic justice or whatever domestic issue, have been made to feel that supporting Bush in his pursuit of war will damage other things they cherish. Again, Bush himself has brought on that kind of protest by trying to inseparably link war with his domestic agenda through himself. And like I said, that linkage is nasty, equating the national security of the United States with tax cuts targeted at the wealthy and an environmental policy designed to make over the rest of the country to resemble West Texas. He's playing hardball politics with war to try and coerce people into acquiescing to his domestic policies and a lot of people are reacting by pushing back.

None of this massive organized opposition hit the streets during EIGHT YEARS of Clinton military escapades, including military attacks on Iraq. None. Nobody has ever explained this to my satisfaction.

Now that's just plain silly, Tom. There is no analog to the present situation to be found in the Clinton Presidency.

You really pushed my buttons with that post, Tom. Maybe I overreacted, but my ire is not entirely without basis. God, I am so tired of that Rightist arrogance!

--Robert