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Many are putatively upset that a few dozen Democrats (Harkin, Clinton, Edwards, Schumer, etc.) voted to give Bush leverage against Hussein. Despite differences between the two parties on issues such as health care, social security, education, taxation, the environment, capital punishment, trade, gun control, abortion, and affirmative action, many come here to insist that given the IWR votes of Kerry and Edwards, we can allow Bush to appoint the next three Supreme Court justices.
While the few proponents of this few are vociferous, they are clearly mistaken.
First of all, let us examine what the Gore = Bushlite rhetoric got us in Florida. Nader grabbed 90K+ votes in Florida. If even a fraction of those had went to Gore, Bush would have lost. Does anybody seriously believe Gore would have invaded Iraq? I think not. While the Greens were not "the" cause of the Florida debacle (there were many additional factors working against us), their Democrats = Republicans rhetoric was sufficient to put Bush in the White House. If that isn't Bush-enabling, I don't know what is.
Secondly, during October 2002, Hussein wasn't letting inspectors in his country, and many voted to give the executive branch the leverage needed to address this problem. While certainly the right thing to do, one could guess at the bad consequences -- I thought it was like giving a drunk the keys to my car. Nevertheless, I can't think of many Democrats who would have pulled out the inspectors we worked so hard to get into Iraq and occupied the country for no reason. Despite moderate rhetoric during campaign seasons, Gore, Kerry, and Edwards didn't fall under this category.
So next time any of you guys sitting on the fringe (or pretending to be sitting on the fringe) want to call someone a Bush-enabler, look in the mirror. There are sharp differences on the issues between the parties, the "Bushlite" rhetoric from the far left in 2000 was dead wrong, and the "Democrats support arbitrarily conquering nations" slogans are unwarranted. I'm not taking this crap laying down.
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