Savage Conservative Attack

Dick Durbin's disastrous and unnecessary apology and Mayor Daley's unnecessary counterattack have given the conservatives heart to attack with ugliest, most vile, slashing, evil attack they have ever mounted. It's time for Democrats - past time, really - to stand together and attack back. Conservatives like Rove must be defeated!

And yet, revenge is a dish best served cold. Rove is doing his best to spark an overheated liberal response. As Publius says:

Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people.

And it seems maybe Democrats are responding appropriately, at last. It's possible that Daley's fumble may have caused the Republicans to spring their trap prematurely, so they can't recover the moral high ground:

Democrats are demanding that White House adviser Karl Rove immediately retract and apologize for comments that liberals responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes by wanting to "prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

"The one thing New York has had since Sept. 11 is unity," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "To inject politics into this and to defame a large number of people" is outrageous, he said. "It's not what New York and America is all about."