KING OF THE BLIND (ER, SORRY, MAKE THAT "DIFFERENTLY-SIGHTED"):

Kerry wins debate by being mediocre (Bernadette Malone, 1/25/04, Manchester Union Leader)

BY VIRTUE of some humorously bad competition, John Kerry is once again the Democratic Presidential frontrunner. At Thursday nightís debate at Saint Anselm College, the droopy Boston Brahmin we once thought was washed up looked the most Presidential of any of the contenders -- thanks to the recent blunders of Howard "Meltdown" Dean and Wesley "Who Am I?" Clark.

What a difference a campaign season makes. Coming off his big win in Iowa, John Kerry is the new place for Democrats to rest their hopes for defeating George W. Bush in November. How sad for them.

Mr. Kerry is like the girl a drunk snags in a bar at closing time only to wake up the next morning and discover she's "coyote ugly". But by then the deed is done.

MORE:
Mad Dr. Dean jolts Kerry campaign to life (MARK STEYN, January 25, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

Not even Al Gore, in his bewildering array of alternative identities, managed to be both crazy and comatose in the same week. The governor seems to have come up with his own variation on the fiscally conservative/socially liberal shtick: Vote for Dean -- fiscally balanced, emotionally unbalanced.

None of the Vermonster's many enemies in the Democratic Party could have devised as exquisite a torture for Howard Dean as this last week. But, whether they've solved their party's problem is another matter. What seems to be happening on the ground in New Hampshire is this: Now that John Kerry is the sane alternative to Howard Dean, much of Wesley Clark's support has leached away to Kerry. But at the same time Dean has been so subdued and demoralized that some of his wackier support has leached away to Clark. If Kerry is the sane alternative to Dean, Clark is the crazy alternative to Kerry.

Don't take my word for it -- ask Michael Moore, the corpulent conspirazoid. He has endorsed Clark, not Dean. Message: Vote for the real crazy, not the karaoke crazy. In Thursday's debate, Peter Jennings twice gave Gen. Clark the opportunity to repudiate retrospectively Moore's characterization of the president as a ''deserter,'' as Clark had failed to do when Moore made the charge standing alongside him. Instead, Clark claimed to have no views on the matter, not to have looked into it, and said that Moore is ''not the only person who's said that.'' Clark doesn't scream: He has that weirdly intense stare. But, for as long as he's in the race, he'll do more damage to Democratic credibility than any amount of howling from Howard. He's very touchy about status: As he pointed out on CNN, he's a four-star general while Kerry was a mere lieutenant. In the ranks of the deranged, he's Field Marshal Flakey while Dean would be lucky to make corporal.

That brings us to the ''Comeback Kerry,'' as he styled himself last Monday, though even his missus, Theresa Heinz, could only force a grin at that line. In Iowa, the Ketchup Kid left Dean lying in a big pool of red sticky stuff, and establishment Dems breathed a sigh of relief. But it's hard to see why. Consciously or otherwise, Democrats seemed to be trying to neutralize the war as an issue -- the overwhelming majority is still opposed to it but in Iowa they just wanted it to go away, so they could get back to talking about their issues: health, education, mandatory bicycling helmets, etc.

That sounds fine in theory. But let's suppose it works, and the Dems nominate Kerry, whose argument is that, because he's a veteran, his plan to give Jacques Chirac a veto over American foreign policy sounds butcher than it would coming from Dennis Kucinich. Fine. But take away the war from Kerry and what's left? An old-school Massachusetts liberal. Not a mere lieutenant, but a mere lieutenant-governor. To Michael Dukakis. Kerry's record on domestic issues is well to the left of Dean's, and a much fatter target for Republicans. He's soft on drug pushers and murderers, big on tax hikes and partial-birth abortion. If I were Bush and I had to choose between running against Howard Dean's Vermont or John Kerry's Massachusetts, I know which guy I'd be rooting for.

-Abortion Vulnerabilities: The country is changing. The Dems are not. (Joel C. Rosenberg, 1/23/04, National Review)

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted last January found that 70 percent of Americans support a ban on partial-birth abortion. Younger Americans feel even more strongly that killing a baby in the process of being born is downright barbaric. A whopping 77 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 favor the ban on partial-birth abortion signed by President Bush last year. Perhaps even more interesting, 57 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists favor the ban.

Yet not a single leading Democrat running for president does.

Sen. John Kerry is rapidly emerging as the front-runner in New Hampshire. Should he win the Granite State primary next week, it's now conceivable that he could become an unstoppable force and run away with the Democratic nomination. But how would he fare in a general election against President Bush, particularly in the South?

Kerry is already perceived as a northeastern Massachusetts liberal who will have trouble selling his Ted Kennedy-endorsed "values" in the Bible Belt. The fact that Kerry has voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion five separate times certainly won't help.

On abortion, the Democrats have become the party of radical extremism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2004 8:58 AM