Watching the Condi Rice confirmation hearings on television yesterday was like entering Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and emerging sometime before the election on November 2. I don’t think even Sherman would have relished this rehash of history. The histrionics and speechifying of Democratic Senators caused my breath to catch several times as I had to keep telling myself that it was January 19, 2005 not late October, 2004.

The same thought struck Hindrocket over at Powerline , just going to show that great minds think alike…the only difference being that Powerline gets around 59,000 more unique visitors a day than my modest little enterprise.

First, wasn’t it a novelty to see John Kerry in the Senate? I mean, the Senator formerly known as flip-flop has been in the news these past couple of weeks flitting like a butterfly, going from one photo-op to another trashing the President and the war-that-he-was-going-to-win-but-that-we-shouldn’t-be-fighting-because-it-was-a-mistake. Hobnobbing with the tyrants, despots, and kleptocrats all over the mid east, Kerry’s trip resembled not so much a Congressional junket as a tour of some washed up American rock star, still able to visit world leaders but unable to have his newest album crack Billboards Top 100.

I loved this article on Kerry’s trip in the SF Chronicle with the headline “Kerry cheered in Baghdad, decries Bush team’s ‘blunders’ Once criticized for war stance, he says force alone won’t win.

First and most laughably, if you click the link to the article and read it carefully you’ll be in for a surprise: Nowhere in the article does it mention that Kerry was “cheered” in Baghdad or anywhere else for that matter! The only people “cheering” at Kerry’s statements were Musab al-Zarqawi and his merry band of beheaders.

Then there’s the curious statement “Once criticized for war stance…” Jyah! As if! I haven’t heard anyone retract their criticism of Kerry’s war stance since the election. This isn’t headline writing…it’s cheerleading. All that’s missing was the link button to donate to “Kerry in “08.”

That being said, Kerry, Senator Babs, and the rest of their clueless cohorts sure put on a show for the moonbats. Here’s Hindrocket’s take:

The hearings on Dr. Rice’s confirmation centered mainly on the fact that Iraq didn’t have “large stockpiles” of unconventional weapons after all. Gosh, there’s a news flash. Unfortunately for the Dems, most Americans have figured out that 1) every intelligence agency in the world believed that Iraq had WMDs; 2) an American President who failed to act in the face of this consensus would have been irresponsible; and 3) Saddam had possessed and used WMDs in the past, and was making every effort to reconstitute those programs at the time he was deposed, so the absence of “large stockpiles” at that particular moment is not very relevant.

In any event, that battle was fought last November.

Yup.

It must be terribly frustrating to be a Democrat these days. I mean, it’s terribly frustrating to be a liberal any day what with the world constantly going to hell in a handbasket and nobody listening to your brilliant, albeit useless, analysis of why the United States is to blame for absolutely everything from global warming to the high price of mother’s breast milk. Hindrocket puts his finger on the ultimate cause of this frustration:

But the Democrats’ real problem isn’t their incoherence. It’s the fact that President Bush has four years to complete the Iraq operation. There was one, and only one, opportunity for the Democrats to capitalize on the administration’s alleged failures there, and that opportunity is now gone. My guess is that four years from now, our troops will have been withdrawn, Iraq will be a functioning democracy, various benefits of Iraq’s transformation will be visible throughout the Persian Gulf region, and most people will regard the Iraq war as a reasonably successful and probably necessary part of our long-term effort to stamp out Islamic terrorism.

At which point, of course, we’ll here no more of the refrain “wrong war, wrong time, wrong place.” We’ve already forgotten Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan? That’s the country that just held free, open, democratic elections for the first time in it’s history. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d forgotten. After all, you probably missed the story when it was first reported back on October 10. I guess when 10 million people vote for the first time in their lives as a direct result of military intervention by the United States, it’s much more important to report John Kerry’s 15th different position taken on the war in Iraq. It just wouldn’t do to credit the Bush Administration for any success whatsoever. That would smack of partisanship.

Then, to add insult and pettiness to the injurious and libelous way in which they slandered Dr. Rice’s integrity, the Democratic leadership wants to delay the Rice confirmation until after the Bush inaugural. Led by Senator Robert (what’s wrong with the hood?) Byrd, the Senate will exercise it’s constitutional duty to advise and consent…while looking like the sore losers and obstructionist lickspittles that they are:

Underscoring the Democrats’ dissatisfaction, Senator Robert Byrd, an outspoken critic of the decision to go to war, announced late in the day that he would not allow the Senate to approve Ms. Rice without a few days of consideration of her lengthy testimony, and at least a token debate on the floor. His refusal to join in the unanimous consent of all Senators for a quick vote effectively torpedoed the administration’s hopes to have her nomination approved Thursday.

“Senator Byrd and others believe that the Senate’s advice-and-consent Constitutional responsibilities are not a rubber stamp,” Mr. Byrd’s spokesman said. (NY Times: 1/20)

Funny that the Senator from Kleagleville never exercised that “Constitutional responsibility” during the Clinton administration.

Rice will be confirmed. Life will go on. And Democrats will continue to supply some glorious fodder for this and other right sites on the web.

Stay tuned.