It’s hard to underestimate how buoyed Republicans have been by Petraeus’s testimony last week. They’re pleased by his reports of progress in Iraq, of course, but mainly they’re happy to see domestic political opponents on the back foot.
Allow three pieces from the Weekly Standard to illustrate the point.
Fred Barnes is giddy at the ‘air of defeat’ that surrounds Democrats after the ‘wrenching ordeal’ of listening to Petraeus testify. Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol, godfathers to the surge, meanwhile, contrast the ‘serious men’ (Petraeus and Crocker) with their ‘children at play’ in the Congress and Senate.
But they’re just playing nice. It’s left to their colleague, David Gerlernter (who had the misfortune to open a parcel from the Unabomber) to really go for the jugular. Polls be damned, he believes Democrats are on the verge of losing any right to govern:
America’s political spectrum a decade or more in the future will be defined by two parties both born of today’s GOP after a natural and painless mitosis…
Americans traditionally like their two opposing parties to differ on domestic affairs but agree on basic foreign policy–not because things are nicer that way; rather because foreign-policy arguments are good for our enemies, bad for our friends, and hugely dangerous to ourselves–especially in an age when swarms of maniac, murderous jihadists blacken the Middle East like toxic locusts.
All this reminds me of the good old days. You remember. 2003. When the mission had been accomplished…
