If wingnuts were horses...

Victor Davis Hanson is at it again. His latest wingnut wish-a-thon is titled Democrats unlikely to regain power in November or 2008.

Now I am not at all confident that events will prove him wrong here, as they have so completely in Iraq. But his reasoning is so ... well, wingnutty that I feel compelled to point out a few of his logical sleights because, as is so often the case, Vic's falsehoods today are the lockstep wingnut talking points tomorrow.

1. Vic thinks Katrina has been neutralized as an issue because

Last September, many people blamed what they viewed as a stingy federal government for the chaos after Hurricane Katrina. But now we learn individuals' fraudulent claims and spending accounted for $1.4 billion in federal largess. Too much was apparently thrown around from big government too generously, rather than too little, too slowly.

Got that? When po' folks defraud the government, that is far more politically relevant and far worse than when Halliburton and its kind defraud the government. And when Republicans screw up by spending our money poorly in a way that resurrects the "welfare queen" meme, that is somehow bad for Democrats, too.

2. Vic's Plamegate spin is in overdrive.

Karl Rove was supposedly going to be "frog-marched'' out of the White House in cuffs for a role in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. Instead, the special prosecutor recently found no evidence that he was involved in any wrongdoing.

Now I have to admit that recent developments in this case have taken much of the wind out of my sails. But if Fitzgerald has announced that there was "no evidence" Rove "was involved in any wrongdoing," that sure is news to me. Indeed, as I recall, public information made it abundantly clear that Rove outed a covert CIA agent. Last time I checked, that counted as wrongdoing. Neither Rove nor his lawyer have made this claim, but you can bet that the storm troopers will be making it at every possible opportunity.

3. Vic's rose-tinted view of Iraquagmire has not changed.

The recent killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the establishment of a complete Iraqi democratic Cabinet will not ensure a quick victory, as we see from the recent slaughter of American captive soldiers. But both events still weaken the liberal clamor that the American effort at birthing democracy is doomed in Iraq.

I suppose we could give Vic the benefit of the doubt here and assume that his editorial was submitted just after Zarqawi's death but before the rapid escalation of violence, the deeply troubling communication from our Iraq embassy, the capture, torture and execution of two young American soldiers, etc., etc.

But even if Vic gets a pass on that bit of silliness, there is simply no excuse for this:

Calling for a deadline to leave, as Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., advocate, is not so compelling when the current policy is based on training the growing Iraqi security forces so that American troops can come home as soon as possible.

Would that it were true, Vic. But nobody in the Bush junta believes or even wants that. Dubya has already said our soldiers will be there when his successor takes office in 2009. And although the House has now come out against permanent military bases there, I put little stock in that fact.

On some of the other stuff Vic talks about, it is frankly hard to argue -- the dismal records of northern liberals as Presidential candidates since 1960, for example. But when you strip away the fallacies, misstatements and absurdities, there just ain't a lot of meat justifying his lofty position as the thinking man's wingnut.