Meet the Next Loser

Russ Feingold is delusional if he sincerely thinks he will be the next President of the United States.

In an interview with Bill Sammon, "Meet the Next President: Russ Feingold knows what he wants," the Wisconsin Senator exhibits noteworthy hubris.

As the only senator to have voted against the Patriot Act and the only presidential hopeful to have voted against the Iraq war, Russ Feingold is sometimes tempted to say “I told you so.”

“Yeah, but I was taught it’s impolite to do that,” the Wisconsin liberal tells The Examiner in an interview. “And it also doesn’t help you get where you want to go.”

Excuse me?

Feingold has been saying, "I told you so," every chance he gets.

I don't think I've ever seen him do a TV appearance when this Patriot Act vote isn't front and center.

By the way, I think it's "impolite" to work to undermine efforts to protect innocent Americans from the very real threats and dangers posed by ISLAMIC FASCISTS.

The White House is where Feingold wants to go. He is counting on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war to get him there.

“He is, I think, the one Democrat who can say he’s 100 percent pure,” says columnist David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register.

EXACTLY!

Feingold is the one Dem who can say he's a 100 percent pure liberal lunatic.

Indeed, Feingold has become the left’s dark horse candidate in a contest crowded with Democrats who at least initially supported the war, including senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards.

“People are prepared to live with a good candidate who says ‘I was wrong’ after the fact,” Feingold says. “But I think people would strongly prefer a candidate who had the judgment that’s right in the first place.

“They want somebody who stood up to the mistake of the Iraq war from the beginning. And I’m the only one — even on the long list — who actually voted against the Iraq war.”

Feingold has a serious problem.

He does not grasp that the War on Terror is borderless.

Our enemies are all over the globe. They are fanatics. They are ruthless. They behead people. They riot over cartoons. They call for the death of the Pope and they shoot an elderly nun in the back.

I think it's fair to question the Iraq war plan. Mistakes were made. There were miscalculations.

Guess what? THAT HAPPENS IN EVERY WAR.

Feingold refuses to admit what a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the U.S. and our interests. The man was personally funding suicide bombers!

He was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. He used weapons of mass destruction.

Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power.

If he still had power, can you honestly say that he wouldn't be actively seeking to crush the U.S.? Can you say that he wouldn't be murdering his own people?

Apparently, Feingold is so clueless that he can.

From the outset, Feingold expressed skepticism about President Bush’s arguments that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaida and had amassed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. In the years since, the stockpiles have not been found and the al-Qaida links have been disputed.

“I was the first member of the Senate to get on the floor and say, wait a minute, I don’t buy this connection to al Qaida,” Feingold recalls. “I don’t find the case on WMD, in terms of being an imminent threat, to be persuasive.

“I just had this sick feeling that people were buying into this out of fear, rather than rationality,” he adds. “I was so extremely opposed to the Iraq war — I was certain it was the wrong call.”

Uh, Russ...

That sounds like an "I told you so."

First, he's wrong about the Iraq threat, and the connections to al Qaeda.

(Read "Case Closed" by Stephen Hayes. Read his book, The Connection.)

Second, Feingold just contradicted himself. We'll have to start calling him "Slick Russie."

He's exploiting a gullible, uninformed public in a shameless attempt to achieve his personal goals, to get him where he wants to go.

In August 2005, Feingold called for U.S. troops to leave Iraq by Dec. 31, becoming the first senator to advocate a specific timetable for withdrawal. Since then, many other Democrats — including Kerry and Edwards — have embraced withdrawal timetables.

Feingold hopes his willingness to take the lead on such thorny issues will pay political dividends in 2008.

“I mean, this is about being elected president,” he says. “And in the end, being president involves judgment.”

Feingold says Clinton, the early favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, is “absolutely” too timid on the Iraq war issue. Unlike Feingold, the New Yorker voted for the war in 2002 and now opposes a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Feingold calls this “the wrong approach” and says it will make it harder for Clinton to win the Democratic primaries, which are dominated by liberal voters.

“Given some of the feelings among the grass roots of the Democratic Party, it’s certainly not a sure thing,” he says of a Clinton nomination.

I have to give Feingold credit for being a master politician.

He is playing the game well.

Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.

Personally, I think Feingold's skills are better suited to being a contestant on a reality show than to being President of the United States.

“And I don’t know if I’m going to run, but I guarantee you, I wouldn’t choose not to run because I don’t think I can defeat her. If it was one-on-one, given the issues that I’ve taken, I think I’d have a shot. It would be an upset, but I’ve been out there in many, many states and people are looking for an alternative,” he adds. “There are a lot of people out there that want to have some choices here and I think they’re willing to vote accordingly.”

BS.

That's the BIG LIE -- "I don’t know if I’m going to run."

Feingold is already running for president.

He's been actively campaigning for over a year.

...While Feingold was one of 23 senators to vote against authorization of the Iraq war in October 2002, he was the only senator — from either party — to vote against the Patriot Act in October 2001. The move, regarded by some as a career ender at the time, is now seen by liberals as a career booster.

“We clearly did need a bill that had many of the provisions of the USA Patriot Act,” Feingold recalls. “But there were several provisions in there that were just plain overreaching.

“Yet the Democratic leadership, along with the White House, said no. No changes. And I tried that night to offer amendments, but I was allowed only a few minutes in a very rushed setting. The process was shut down in a way that I thought was irresponsible and really reckless in terms of our responsibilities as a Senate.”

So Feingold decided to oppose the bill on the Senate floor.

“When I went down to the well, I didn’t know what they were going to call it,” he says. “Then I saw that it was being called the USA Patriot Act. So I gulped a bit and realized I was going to be the only one who voted no.”

It sounds like Feingold is writing the script for a TV movie.

I think he envisions himself as "Fighting Bob" La Follette.

Afterward, Feingold was shocked to receive a standing ovation at an appearance in one of Wisconsin’s most conservative counties. To this day, he receives such ovations when he is introduced at political events throughout the country.

Years after Feingold’s solitary dissent, other Democrats came to oppose the Patriot Act.

Yes, other Dems realized that it would be politically expedient to oppose the Patriot Act. It was necessary to play to the far Left fringe base, so they did.

The reality is the Patriot Act hasn't stripped me of any rights, because I'm not a terrorist and I don't talk to terrorists and I don't fund terrorists.

The law has protected me and my family and helped to keep us safe these past five years. I'm thankful for the Patriot Act.

I'd like more details on this standing ovation that Feingold received in "one of Wisconsin's most conservative counties."

What were the circumstances?

Was the appearance at one of his listening sessions that attracts his supporters, not his detractors?

The implication here is that Wisconsin conservatives support his opposition to the Patriot Act.

WRONG.

I'm going to make some very safe predictions.

--Feingold will not be elected president.

--If he assumes the vice presidential spot on the Dem ticket in 2008, he will be a detriment.

Dream on, Russ. Dream on.