I have mixed feelings on the internal strife in the Democratic Party that is supposedly causing a notable percentage of Hillary backers to openly support John McCain for president.

[Wall Street Journal] Clinton supporters, disillusioned by their candidate’s narrow loss, have been showing up in the McCain camp, and Sen. McCain has stepped up his effort to woo more — including strategists who worked for the Democrat. One former Clinton aide is helping the Republicans identify and win over former Clinton voters. The Republican National Committee even held a “Happy Hour for Hillary” in Denver where McCain volunteers mingled with disgruntled Clinton backers.

…There were signs that even some party luminaries loyal to Sen. Clinton were less than passionately committed to the nominee-in-waiting. Several high-level Clinton fund-raisers, including former campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, plan to leave Denver before Sen. Obama delivers his anticipated acceptance speech before 75,000 people in a football stadium. Mr. McAuliffe said he was heading home for his daughter’s birthday.

The August Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll4 found just 52% of Clinton primary voters now say they plan to vote for Sen. Obama. An additional 21% say they will support Republican Sen. McCain, with the rest undecided or not planning to vote.

On the one hand, I’m thinking Republicans and the McCain camp need to not overplay their hand. If they get too brazen in their attempt to keep the Democrats split it could backfire. And, frankly, I don’t yet believe that come election day Obama is going to lose 48% of Clinton backers. Oh sure, they’re complaining now, but I just don’t see them either not showing or pulling the lever for McCain come election day.

Then, on the other hand, I worry that they do, and if they do, what does that say about the conservative character of John McCain, and what does that say of the very nature of the Republican party?

I’m a little uncomfortable that so many Democrats could be so comfortable putting a supposed conservative in office. Yes, there’s their boneheaded strategy that Hillary could run again sooner (2012 as opposed to 2016, if at all), and there’s the fact that Ronald Reagan — a former Democrat turned Republican who famously quipped that his party “left him” and not vice versa — won two landslides in part with votes from lifelong Democrats.

But even so, when I post a lenghty rant (yesterday) ridiculing the lack of science behind global warming, only to read today that my Republican party might do the same as Democrats, during its convention next week, by providing “a first-ever plank on global warming,” stating that, “While the scope and long term consequences of this warming effect are the subject of ongoing research, we believe the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today,” I just want to hurl my breakfast.

A party platform of “Hey there’s some very debatable science here, but let’s go ahead and foul up the economy anyway with a bunch of growth-retarding carbon trading policies” (the precautionary principle) shouldn’t be high on any fiscally conservative’s mind.

Couple that with McCain’s typically populist language of “taking on big oil, and drug companies” — two entities that have done more to empower the wealth and health ability of Americans than any politician has ever done — or shopping Sen. Joseph Lieberman as a potential running mate, and one has to wonder just what kind of Republican brand might take office. (I love Lieberman’s no nonsense moral clarity on foreign policy, but were he ever to become president it would take decades to undo his economic damage to fiscal conservatives, not to mention what the federal judicial appointees or Supreme Court might become).

This election doesn’t seem to be between the Republican versus Democrats, but between the Republicrats or Demoicans versus the Obamanation Socialist party.

This comes from an article regarding the trial of Salim Hamdan. The point has been argued before, but not really as an admission from a member or al Qaeda:

In advance of attacks, Mr. [Ali] Soufan [a top counterterrorism investigator] said, Mr. Hamdan would often be alerted to prepare vehicles for a rapid move, in case of an American retaliation. He added that Mr. Hamdan came to believe that Washington’s failure to launch massive retaliations after the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 Cole bombing emboldened Mr. bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader believed the U.S. would never send ground troops to pursue him in Afghanistan, Mr. Soufan said.

Thanks, Clinton administration! Bin Laden said it himself, people follow a strong horse over a weak horse. And, in the late 1990s leading up to 9-11-2001, Bin Laden clearly saw himself as the strong horse, especially because of the lack of a strong response by the US government again and again during a series of brazen attacks throughout the 1990s.

After the 2000 USS Cole bombing, key Clinton figures met to discuss a response to the attack. The meeting included Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CIA Director George Tenet, Richard Clarke, who was basically the counterterrorism czar, and Attorney General Janet Reno. Richard Clarke was the only Clinton official in that meeting who urged a strong military response. The others demanded more “proof,” which is difficult when the perpetrator incinerated himself in the attack, or fretted over our image as strongman before the Muslim community, or, in Janet Reno’s case, argued that a military response against Bin Laden’s Afghanistan camps might violate international law — as though a country has no right to bomb the training camps in another country (Afghanistan) ruled by an internationally-unrecognized autocracy (The Taliban) that produce terrorists (Bin Laden) who openly brag about attacking that country.

Indeed, in Richard Miniter’s book “Losing Bin Laden,” he related an exasperated CIA official, Michael Sheehan, asking of Clarke: “What’s it going to take to get them [the Clinton administration] to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?”

Apparently so. One can argue Bush’s incompetence prior to Gen. Petraeus (historical note — it took Abraham Lincoln eight tries with seven generals to find his savior general: Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, John Pope, McClellan again, Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant), but one cannot argue with facts. Everyone thought the US would certainly be struck again by terrorists after 9-11. Nobody would have predicted 7 years straight without it. Beyond our technological advantages finally being utilized (what the far left mistakenly terms “domestic spying”) it’s hard to argue that our strong military responses in Afghanistan and Iraq have not given al Qaeda second thought about their tactics, even as they commit brazen acts of violence against Europe, which never replies with a military response.

And so, one wonders should a President Obama take control, will the foolish over-lawyered hand-wringing on our international image, dealing with terrorism strictly as a law enforcement issue but never as an issue of national defense, etc., simply bring us back to the Clinton era, when we hamstrung our own intelligence and investigative personnel to the point that terrorists struck us at home with ease?