THE LAST DEMOCRAT:

Richie Daley's party (Robert Novak, July 3, 2005, Townhall)

Last week's long-range confrontation between Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin was much more than a personal tiff involving two formidable Illinois Democrats who obviously are not fond of each other. It contrasted Daley's majority Democratic Party of bygone years with Durbin's minority Democratic Party of today.

When Daley in his June 21 press conference referred to Durbin's rancorous comments about the U.S. military as a "disgrace," he was only repeating in public what many old-line Democratic loyalists told me not for quotation. But Durbin's Washington party colleagues defended his comparison of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo with the bloodiest genocidal regimes in history. Durbin was forced into a grudging half-apology later on June 21 only because Daley spoke out.

Daley sees Durbin as typical of today's negative, Washington-oriented Democratic Party. [...]

Daley spoke out June 21 in no small part because his 29-year-old son, Pvt. Patrick Daley of the U.S. Army airborne infantry, was visiting at home. Although Durbin now says he did not mean to criticize the Army by comparing interrogation at Guantanamo with mass murder by Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, that was how Patrick and his father interpreted it. The mayor's son, who reported for basic training last Dec. 29, resented what the senator said. [...]

Daley seldom speaks out publicly about his party. He did in April 1995 when I visited his office. He told me then that Democrats had become the party of "Washington," "the bureaucrats" and "the special interests," and now constituted the "pro-tax party."

The reality is that Mr. Daley is far closer to George W. Bush in stylistic and political terms than to any national Democrat.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2005 12:00 AM