THE DOWNSIDE OF WINNING – AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  Max Boot writes a very perceptive piece about some of the losers Tuesday.  They were some of the finest people in the Democratic Party, the national defense Democrats.

Most of them came from swing districts, and so were particularly vulnerable to the GOP tide.  They represented the now-fading patriotic tradition of the Democratic Party.  Ike Skelton, one of those who lost Tuesday, actually represented Harry Truman's home town.  I'm sorry to see them go.  We want good people in both parties, and what's left, increasingly, in the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy are the "anti-war" (read anti-defense) leftists, mostly from the coastal fringes.  Max Boot:

I Share the general joy among conservatives regarding the outcome of this week's elections -- but I'm sorry to see the departure of some centrist Democrats who wound up losing.

I'm thinking, in particular, of such congressmen as Ike Skelton of Missouri, John Spratt of South Carolina and Gene Taylor of Mississippi.

All were longtime members of the House Armed Services Committee: Skelton is the outgoing chairman, Spratt the second-ranking Democrat, Taylor a subcommittee chairman. They're part of a dwindling band of centrist, strong-on-defense Democrats -- a tradition stretching back to the days of Sens. Stuart Symington and Scoop Jackson.

Symington and Jackson - great men.  I "nominated" Stuart Symington for president at our high school's mock Democratic convention in 1956.  My mentor, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, wanted Symington to get the nomination in 1960, over Jack Kennedy.

Scoop Jackson of Washington was the Democratic Party's "Mr. National Defense."  He also served as the party's national chairman.  What a comedown from Jackson to Patti Murray, who actually had some praise for Osama bin Laden's dedication after 9-11.

Jackson was a giant of a senator.  Yet, when he tried to run for president in 1976, he was all but ignored.  The party passed him by in favor of that great statesman, Jimmah Carter. 

The willingness of such men to cross the aisle, combined with the similar tendency among Republican leaders such as Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, gave US foreign policy a reliably bipartisan, hard-line tilt in the Cold War's first two decades.

Those days are long gone. Today, alas, the Democrats are led by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The fact that so many Blue Dog Democrats have been knocked off is good news for the short term -- but it will have parlous future consequences. When Democrats someday succeed in taking back the House, their leaders on defense and foreign-policy issues are likely to be considerably to the left of today's crop.

Boot points out that, with the defeat of the decent Russ Feingold, the second-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee will be...Barbara Boxer.

How times have changed. 

November 5, 2010