Fein(fool's)gold

Russ Feingold, to the surprise of no one on the right, turns out to be fool's gold, not fine gold. With Dems diving into ditches to avoid his presidential censure motion, Feingold's been left (for the first time ever!) in the middle of the road, in the headlights, naked.

And he's clueless how to respond.

Take this quote he gave to Fox News

“I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide…too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004."

"When the president's numbers are so low?!" Do you suppose this is more about politics than national security? Maybe?

John Byrne, writing in Raw Story, has some delightful quotes from anonymous senior Dem aides:

“Feingold’s grandstanding screwed the pooch and played into Bill Frist’s hands. Thank God Dems punted this down the field. Frist was going to force Democrats to vote on a resolution Feingold had kept a big secret and he would’ve split the caucus on an issue that needed time to get the whole caucus to support."

So the caucus might have supported this dog if it had been finessed instead of Feingolded? Apparently so. Some other aides:

"Nobody’s said no on censure except Joe Lieberman as far as I know.”

“Democrats had decided that public hearings were needed on the wiretapping to educate the public before considering a censure. ... Everyone knew that was the gameplan. Feingold just wanted to hog the spotlight."

Even though the Dems know that Heartland America is with the president on NSA surveillance, they're not ready to give up the fight. Yes, they're ready to punch themselves about the head and shoulders ... if only Feingold hadn't come out of his corner so darn fast.

One aide quoted by Byrne gets it dead-on:

“Democrats have a long history of shooting themselves in the foot when the good things work and we’ve been known to do some things that end up hurting us rather than helping us.”

Just some things? By practically falling on their knees and praying for things to go badly for us in Iraq, they have turned a lot of firepower on that foot of theirs they keep shooting.

And thanks again, Russ, for making the Dems look so incredibly bad.
hat-tip: The Raw Story, memeorandum Cartoon: CartoonStock.com
Related Tags: Feingold, Censure, Dems, Democrats, NSA, Bush