The Fall of James Webb

From "Fields of Fire" to Democrat hack:

He is campaigning as the antiwar candidate--he has opposed Iraq since the runup, as Mr. Allen has supported it. But if Mr. Webb is only an antiwar candidate who on other issues--the social issues, taxes--cleaves to standard Democratic positions, then he's not something new, he's something old.

Mr. Webb says he is "pro-choice" on abortion, "pro-gay rights," and "pro-Second Amendment."

I don't doubt the sincerity of his views. I've never met a career military man who was a conservative on social issues. I think they tend to see questions such as abortion and marriage as essentially uninteresting, private and not subject to the movement of machines. (Connected to this, I suspect Mr. Webb will benefit to some degree by the high number of military retirees in Virginia. They're always assumed to be hawks on Iraq. From personal experience I'd say a high percentage have been dubious about the war, many from the beginning.)

To be an antiwar Democrat who's a liberal on social issues is not something new in the Democratic Party. It's the same old same old with a new biography. Or so it seems to me.

It is true that Mr. Webb has said he supports the Second Amendment, and much is being made of this. But that doesn't strike me as significant, or rather it strikes me as significant only in what it underscores: The Democratic Party has lost on the right to bear arms. They know it. It's why they don't speak of gun control anymore on the national stage. It used to be one of their primary issues. They went as far as they could in terms of control--licensing, background checks, etc.--but on what was once their obvious desire to make private gun ownership in America illegal, the Democratic Party has, in the past dozen years, quietly, almost soundlessly, caved in.

That leaves taxes. From his Web site it's not clear where Mr. Webb stands. He wants our tax system to be "fair," but in no way does he wave the anti-costly-government, antitax banner.

Mr. Webb has interesting and important things to say about the war, and we'll find out if that is the No. 1 issue in Virginia, and how Virginians come down on it, in the coming months. But in terms of domestic policy, of all other nonwar policy, he sounds to me like Nancy Pelosi with medals.

At the end of the day elections are not only about personalities, not even primarily about them, but about issues. Mr. Webb's issues seem standard-issue.

Moreover, Webb's turned his back on his sacred honor by joining in wartime the very same SOBs who stabbed our brave men in the back during the Vietnam War---folks like Jean Francoise Heinz, whose Magic Hat has apparently protected him all these years from paying the full price for his treasonous lies.

Webb knows better. When your new buddies are flag-burners, you are no longer a patriot.

Peggy Noonan may not know a lot of career military men, but I do, and Webb, previously considered one of the very greatest, is headed for disgrace. It's as though Chesty Puller married Jane Fonda.