Keep Talking, Chuckie

Fifty-three weeks before the 2008 elections and this vile creature, the ugliest man in America, is talking some serious trash.

Bombing Iran, says Chuck Schumer, would be a big political loser for Republican candidates in 2008.

“It would change the landscape against them, big time,” Mr. Schumer, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said about a scenario in which the Bush administration launches a military attack on Iran before leaving office. “I don’t think they are likely to do it, because they are so weak—not because they are chastened—but I also think it is very likely to be a negative political for them.”

Despite all the Bush administration’s saber rattling, the 56-year-old Brooklyn native believes the president’s political footing is too weak to build the case for another war, especially when the public is “far more skeptical of that the second time around.”

In an interview in his Third Avenue offices on Oct. 29, the top Democratic political tactician in Congress expressed unwavering optimism in his party’s chances to increase its majority in the Senate, even in the case of a traumatic event like war with Iran. He evinced similar confidence about the prospect of having the ostensibly polarizing Hillary Clinton at the top of the Democratic ticket, and about his Senate candidates having to campaign against the supposedly moderate Rudy Giuliani.

“The wind is at our backs as Democrats,” he said.

Forget about protecting America's vital interests, it's all about winning elections.

The thought of a nuclear Iran doesn't seem to concern him. Conservative Supreme Court justices, however, really frighten him.

He scares easily. No wonder he's so afraid of the Islamofascists.

And what of his fellow New Yorker, Rudolph Giuliani, whose Republican primary strategy is based on the notion that he’d be the party’s best performer in a general election?

Mr. Schumer thinks he’s simply too frightening.

“The idea of a campaign that just scares people, ‘We’re going to be attacked and I am the only one that can save you,’ is a very unappealing campaign,” said Mr. Schumer.

He added, “When Rudy Giuliani says that he is going to pick [Supreme Court] justices like [John] Roberts and [Samuel] Alito, I think it is very scary and it’s going to be politically harmful to him.”

It would please me to no end to see the smug look wiped off his face and watch his party returned to permanent minority status.