Why does anyone pretend to expect consistency from Democrats?

Actually, there is consistency and it is this: anything a Republican does is wrong/stupid/evil and we must publicize any evidence that supports this position, no matter how wrong/stupid/evil that evidence is.

Great strategy!

Do you have any idea if our treaties and trade agreements would even allow this arbitrary axing of the deal? I don't know anything about international trade law, don't know the answer to the question, but I haven't heard anyone ask the question yet...

Almost certainly this sort of deal is subject to government approval in a variety of ways. What they are buying are basically contracts with cities or port authorities, to manage ports.

Any such contract would include restrictions on reassignment. And I would assume DP's offer to buy P&O is also contingent on our approval.

The whole port-management business is based on keeping governments happy. They are the principal customer. Which is why I think it's extremely unlikely that DP is a front for terrorists. It's just psychologically ludricrous.

Yes, it has certainly flushed out a lot of Democrats...like Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, Geroge Pataki, Robert Ehrlich, Curt Weldon, Peter King, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Foley, Vito Fossella...

My opinion is that in this case the President is right. But what this incident really illustrates is the growing disconnect of his administration from political reality. Arrogance may work when you're riding high, but when you're a lame duck with a low approval rating, a better sense of political calculus is called for.

Nice try repubs. Real enemies? The democrats are racist? Hahaha This buffoon presideint DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT HAD HAPPENED. His utter incompetence is now on full display. The trust is gone, the cover is blown and all the repub followers are running for the hills. Its over.

Dave,

I have to wonder if the relevant political split here is between Democrats and Republicans, or between stasists and dynamists?

A lot of the squawking seems not to be about issues that are "Republican" or "Democrat", but instead are about change versus the status quo. And the fault-line between stasists and dynamists is NOT coincident with the fault-line between the Republicans and the Democrats.

m writes:

"Hahaha This buffoon presideint DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT HAD HAPPENED. His utter incompetence is now on full display."

Um, m, it's not the President's job to know everything about every thing the federal government does. No one man can do it all-- that's why he has a bureaucracy to handle the details. If there's any incompetence here, it's incompetence on the part of some politically-aware bureaucrat somewhere, who failed to "keep the boss informed".

Dave, I'm perfectly aware that many Republicans oppose this, or say that it needs more scrutiny. But they've mostly been FOR strong national security all along. So they are not being exposed as hypocrites.

It's Democrat leaders who have held (usually in slippery twisty dishonest ways so they can't be easily pinned down) that we don't really need a war on terror, that Bush is exaggerating our danger for political advantage, that Iraq had no terror connections, that we don't need Gitmo and NSA intercepts and the Patriot Act and racial profiling of Arabs.

Now they are "flushed out."

Hale, I like your point. I think a lot of recent controversies reflect widespread fear of change. And the stasists, because they don't usually follow what's going on, tend to be caught by surprise and to take a stand on something that seems symbolic. And then dynamist types scratch their heads and say, "But, stuff like this has been happening for years. Why are you freaking out now?" (The ports at either end of the Panama Canal are run by a big Chinese company partly owned by the PLA. Why no shrieks about that?)

But their are other divides being revealed. I don't like what I'm seeing in a lot of conservatives right now. Maybe that will make my next post...

Oh, and for an extra twist, the Dems protesting here seem to all get generous donations from the Longshoreman's Union!

To add another wrinkle, and answer Ethan's question, apparently the leases were given with NO restrictions on their sale. So us stopping the deal would be deprving P&O of what they paid for. Not good.

Hale has it right, I think. This is a dynamist/staticist conflict.

John, I do not expect integrity from Rush Limbaugh, so it is no surprise that even though he, too, is "perfectly aware that many Republicans oppose this" and, moreover, that the objections many Democrats are raising are exactly the same as those raised by Republicans, he nonetheless prefers to characterize it as a partisan affair.

But you didn't need to climb on his dishonest bandwagon--in fact, Hale's comment seems more in line with your opinions when you're not wearing your partisan blinkers.

As for this series of statements:

"It's Democrat leaders who have held (usually in slippery twisty dishonest ways so they can't be easily pinned down) that we don't really need a war on terror, that Bush is exaggerating our danger for political advantage, that Iraq had no terror connections, that we don't need Gitmo and NSA intercepts and the Patriot Act and racial profiling of Arabs."

Almost every one of those statements you attribute to Democrats is a twisted misstatement of the true objections of reasonable Democrats (and others), and those that are not are simply true. Several of them are, as well, projections of actions by administration officials upon their opponents.

I would suggest that you carefully consider if you might not be in danger of sacrificing your integrity to your party loyalty. You're much more convincing when you argue along the lines that Hale suggests, which are truly the more important divisions in our society today. And, as Hale points out, they are not at all congruent with party lines. You do a disservice to your cause when you argue otherwise.

Neither Rush nor I characterize this as a "partisan affair." Pointing out hypocrisy by Dems does not mean that we are saying it's a divide along party lines. We're both of us with Lieberman and against Frist here.

And your answer about dishonesty is exactly of a piece with the same dishonesty. "You can't pin me down, I'm just a reasonable little Democrat making some reasonable little objections. How dare you wrap yourself in the flag and impugn my patriotism?"

Ever since 9/12/2001 there's been a non stop drumbeat of reasonable objections to whatever vigorous measures the Administration proposes. Always with the subtext that the war is exaggerated or hyped, or that we are over-reacting, or 'creating' enemies where none existed before. Even if every one of those objections is CORRECT and TRUE---that wouldn't affect my point, which is that it is gross hypocrisy for the same people to now say "Doesn't the President know there's a war going on! How dare he let the ENEMY within the gates, to our peril!!"

And I'm not sacrificing my integrity to my party loyalty, since I'm on the opposite side of much of my party here, and because I've been an open supporter of this school of policy from the beginning. If a Democrat is elected president and continues with the policies Bush has started, he or she will have my whole-hearted support in that.

I think the stasist/dynamist argument explains a lot. But I suspect there might be an even more interesting divide if some crystal ball or Sorting Hat could separate those who thrilled to the flattening of German and Japanese and Italian cities, and those who thrilled more to our bringing freedom and democracy to those countries, and who think of our WWII enemies as potential friends groaning under cruel tyrannies...

The lefties who oppose everything Bush does, but only, mind you, only when they have a "reasonable objection," remind me of people I used to work with, whose car troubles or delayed flights always managed to add an extra day or two to their vacation or 3-day weekend.