Growing tired of hearing that The New Republic is an extreme liberal publication (mostly described as such by those who likely have never read it), I submit the following:

DEAN IDIOCY WATCH

The idea of Tom DeLay expressing righteous indignation over anything these days is preposterous. But there was DeLay, or rather his spokesperson, ripping into Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean this week for Dean’s comments about the embattled House majority leader: “Leading a party with no ideas, no solutions, and no agenda, Howard Dean’s latest antics, which previously earned him a rebuke from his own party, shows the sad state the Democrats have sunk to.” People can quibble over whether the Democrats have no ideas, no solutions, and no agenda; but there is, alas, no denying DeLay’s point about the idiocy of the Democratic Party’s titular head.

The antics to which DeLay’s flack was responding occurred on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” Host Tim Russert had asked the DNC chair whether he was slandering DeLay when, in a speech to a Democratic group a few weeks earlier, he said: “I think Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence down there courtesy of the Texas taxpayers.” Rather than concede that he might have gotten a bit ahead of himself, Dean dug in. “I don’t think I’m prejudging him,” Dean replied before ticking off all of DeLay’s various transgressions and noting that the representative is under investigation by a Texas district attorney for violating campaign finance laws. “Now, the question is,” Dean continued, “where is this going to end up? I think there’s a reasonable chance that this may end up in jail.”

Maybe. But it’s hardly the DNC chair’s place to be making predictions about what a judge and a jury might decide—especially since DeLay hasn’t actually been indicted!

I'll await someone sending me something similar from National Review and the like.