David Brooks has an excellent editorial in today's New York Times regarding the reconstruction loan. He separates the Democrats into three groups, and suggests a fourth for a man who's in a class all to himself:

First, there are the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. These Democrats voted against Paul Bremer's $87 billion plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. ... Their hatred for Bush is so dense, it's hard for them to see through it to the consequences of their vote. ...

Saddam Hussein would be jubilant in Pelosi's Iraq. He has long argued that America is a decadent country that will buckle at the first sign of trouble. If the Pelosi Democrats had won yesterday's vote, the Saddam Doctrine would be enshrined in every terrorist cave and dictator's palace around the world: kill some Americans and watch the empire buckle.

The second group would be the Evan Bayh Democrats, who would "say to them: Here's a credit card. Go buy yourself some treatment, and you can pay us back later. "

Lastly there are the Cantwell Democrats, who have honest political differences with the Bush administration but put their country's best interests ahead of scoring political points. We'd hope that this group would far outweigh the other factions, but Brooks isn't that optimistic:

Those are the three Democratic visions — the good, the bad and the ugly. Right now the Pelosi wing of the party is dominant, and the Cantwell wing is beleaguered. So this is a party teetering on the brink of full-bore liberal isolationism.

Who is going to pull it back? Probably not Wesley Clark. The Clark Democrats are actually the fourth category in the party: the ones who are too mealy-mouthed to take a stand either way.

Read the whole article. Brooks uses his most acid commentary on the Pelosi faction, of course, but the entire article is outstanding. (via Power Line)

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