Going after Webb

       
By Brian Kirwin
Published June 18th, 2008  

When the Wall Street Journal shines a light on you, you’re in the running for Vice President. Now, will the national Democrats rally around someone who isn’t a sniveling anti-military wuss? Despite nominating 9 southerners and 11 veterans since 1976, they “were all men who had been on the liberal side of the Vietnam-era culture wars. Not Jim Webb.”

The WSJ asks if national Dems will rally around Webb in three areas (Vietnam, Women, and Affirmative Action) or will it start a fight with itself.

He shows no mercy to those who seemed overly friendly to North Vietnam. Asked at one point if he might want to meet Jane Fonda, Sen. Webb said, “I wouldn’t go across the street to watch her slit her wrist.” His contempt was not reserved for Hollywood radicals. Then-Congressman Christopher Dodd (now a senior Democratic colleague of Sen. Webb’s in the Senate) “typified the hopeless naiveté of his peers” who assailed the South Vietnamese government and idealized the North. John Kerry, he wrote, “deserves condemnation” for leading Vietnam Veterans Against the War because he “portrayed their fellow veterans as unwilling soldiers, morally debased and haunted by their service.’’

Not exactly the way to win states like oh, say, Pennsylvania.

It is in that context that Sen. Webb then wrote the words that have gotten him trouble most: “And I have never met a woman, including the dozens of female midshipmen I encountered during my recent semester as a professor at the Naval Academy, whom I would trust to provide those men with combat leadership.”

Not exactly the way to win Hillary supporters.

Now, thanks to affirmative action in college admissions and hiring, “the less successful white cultures have fallen further behind as a veneer of minorities have joined the elites.” Notably, during the primaries, the Virginia senator ascribed Sen. Obama’s weak performance in the Appalachian region not as the result of racism but as whites’ justifiable disgust over the excesses of affirmative action.

How can the left elevate Webb while criticizing Geraldine Ferraro?

Will the Democrats allow Webb to join the national ticket and risk “re-opening old wounds” for a shot at the White House?

Comments

3 Responses to “Going after Webb”

  1. ChaseNo Gravatar on June 18th, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    I love that picture. Obama looks like he’s restraining Webb from going after a guy in a bar fight.

    Easy, big guy. I can talk my way out of this.

  2. ChaseNo Gravatar on June 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm

    On second thought, maybe that photo is a better metaphor than I thought.

    Webb, it would seem, is more aggressive militarily than Obama.

    Perhaps, in the photo, Webb is saying, “Let’s go get those guys!”

    And Obama is holding him back, saying, “Hold on, I can charm them out of their explosive vests. They just haven’t met me yet.”

  3. Jeremy HintonNo Gravatar on June 19th, 2008 at 12:06 am

    I kinda like that imagery… and i personally would not like to see Webb on the ticket, he’s better purposed where he is. I’d like to see a simple, unassuming, technocrat. No fire, no dazzle, just a solid record. I’m still hoping for Bredesen, though i’d say its a long shot at this point.

Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!