Photoshop via Stubborn Facts

They just can’t help themselves.

In case you needed to be reminded which party puts playing politics with the war above serious solutions, here’s the video of Rep. Charlie Rangel on Sunday resurrecting the draft–as a way to deter the White House and Congress from launching wars. And for those who think his motives actually have something to do with the situation on the ground in Iraq, Rangel makes clear it’s all just a gesture:

He said having a draft would not necessarily mean everyone called to duty would have to serve. Instead, “young people (would) commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it’s our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals,” with a promise of educational benefits at the end of service.

We already have a National Health Service Corps, AmeriCorps, National Civilian Community Corps, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), and Citizen Corps Councils/Fire Corps/Medical Reserve Corps.

I’m having flashbacks to the fall of 2004, when liberal activists, top Dems, and the MSM spread draft rumors in an attempt to scare young people into voting against…Republicans. MTV did it (Oct. 28, 2004):

[A] recent poll conducted by the National Annenberg Election Survey indicated that 51 percent of the young people polled said they believe that Bush, if re-elected, will re-establish the draft system (see “Despite Defeat Of Draft Bill, Issue Refuses To Die”).

In response, Bush has addressed the rumor publicly: once during the second debate, and also on the campaign trail. During a speech in Ohio on Wednesday, he quickly quashed any proposed return of the draft: “There will be no draft,” he said. “The all-volunteer army will remain an all-volunteer army.”

The candidates’ rhetoric has done little to quell concerns: According to a recent Choose or Lose survey, 45 percent of the young people polled said that the issue of the draft is one of the most important in the coming election.

Max Cleland and Howard Dean did it (Sept. 17, 2004):

Cleland and Dean tell students that Bush would conscript them and ship them to Iraq

…In a speech at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Cleland told students they might find themselves pressed into military service if Bush wins a second term.

“America will reinstate the military draft” if Bush is re-elected and continues the Iraq War, Cleland predicted, according to an account of his speech by the Colorado Springs Gazette…Former Kerry rival Howard Dean, now traveling the country to drum up support for Kerry and raise money for Democratic candidates, said last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I., “I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term, and any young person that doesn’t want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him.”

The Dean-Cleland strategy seems to be an attempt to drive up support for Kerry among college students and perhaps among some parents as well….

And John Kerry did it (Sept. 22, 2004):

Answering a question about the draft that had been posed at a forum with voters, Kerry said: “If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can’t tell you.”

Bogus draft e-mails spread across campuses. CBS and NBC ran alarmist pieces without disclosing the anti-war biases of their supposedly neutral interview subjects.

And now, after all that anti-Bush sound and fury, we have the incoming Democrat chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee proposing what all those fear-mongers claimed a GOP administration would do. Where are all the cluck-cluckers now?

Rangel’s proposal will go where it has gone every other time he has proposed it: Nowhere.

It’s a fitting symbol of what Democrat rule in Congress will be the next two years: A worthless, cynical expenditure of time and energy that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

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