One thing that you have to give Congresswoman Schmidt credit for is that she’s had a profound effect on the American political landscape. The problem is that the effect has been entirely to the benefit of the Democrat Party.

I remember back after the special election 2nd debate. This was at the height of the race when all the swiftboating talk was going on. It would have been so easy for her to defuse the issue simply by showing him a little bit of respect on the war. Instead she had to keep attacking Hackett, never once giving him an inch for his perspective as a vet, and thus a star was born.

Now Mark Shields reports on the new face of the Democrat Party, John Murtha, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Schmidt:

I predicted that the speech he was about give to would have the same impact on the debate over Iraq that former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite had on February 27, 1968, when he spoke of the near-certainty that “the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” President Lyndon Johnson said: “That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Murtha did not believe me.

What made it all true was the venality and stupidity of the Republicans. From the personality-challenged White House press secretary accusing him of “surrender” to the clueless, but venomous, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, unaware of his combat record, accusing Murtha of being a ” coward,” Republicans made Jack Murtha the most prominent Democrat in town.

As one astute Senate Republican aide observed to David Rogers of The Wall Street Journal, “If the House Republicans want to make Jack Murtha the face of the Democratic Party, then Republicans will really be trounced next year.“


Another very interesting perspective comes from Seymour Hersh on Wolf Blitzer’s Late Edition:

We have generals that do not like — anymore — they’re worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that’s — Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don’t know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He’s a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they’re not saying to them.

And if you’re a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved.


Schmidt picked a real winner tangling with Murtha.