General Zero: Ricardo Sanchez To Run For Senate...As A Democrat?

It's hard to believe there can be any more fresh examples of the Left's "Oceana Has Never Been At War With East Asia" dynamic in dealing with the Iraq War, but this actually made me laugh: General Ricardo Sanchez is planning to run for Senate in Texas...as a Democrat. As the last time Sanchez was on the mind of your typical progressive was during the Abu Ghraib scandal, this is quite a turn-around:

Democrats appear to have recruited retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to run for the U.S. Senate in Texas, setting the stage for the party to field a well-known candidate in the 2012 race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat, confirmed that Democratic Senate campaign chief Patty Murray, D-Wash., was referring to Sanchez on Thursday when she said Democrats were close to announcing a candidate in Texas.

Sanchez, reached by phone at his San Antonio home, asked where the reports of a Senate run came from and then said, "I can neither confirm nor deny."

Sanchez, the former top military commander in Iraq who was left under a cloud from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, would not discuss the Senate race. But he did respond to questions about his career and political philosophy.

"I would describe myself as during my military career as supporting the president and the Constitution," Sanchez said. "After the military, I decided that socially, I'm a progressive, a fiscal conservative and a strong supporter, obviously, of national defense."

Sanchez, a Rio Grande City native, said he was shaped by his upbringing. "It's my views and my history, having grown up in South Texas, depending on social programs and assistance, that America has a responsibility to its people," he said.

The idea, of course, is that the only way you could hope to elect a Democrat in Texas is if you can distract voters with Sanchez's shiny medals. Guess that can work for nitwit Dems, but I don't see your typical pro-military voter being impressed with Sanchez. Granted the Abu Ghraib scandal was overblown, but that wasn't the only thing that went wrong during Sanchez's years in Iraq. The fact is that Sanchez, along with his successor George Casey, presided over a near-defeat in Iraq. There were a lot of factors at work in Iraq, not least was the political back-stabbing back on the home front, but Sanchez's weak willed leadership, and inability to get a handle on the insurgency, was a major factor in turning the tide against the US after our victorious three-week ground war.

And, Sanchez remains clueless, saying he's "socially progressive and fiscally conservative." Sorry, but those two pronouncements are mutually exclusive. Politically inspired social progress is the most expensive thing in the world and a certain budget buster, something every adult should know by now. There's no such thing as a penny pinching progressive. Sanchez would be little more than a mindless sixtieth vote for cloture for the next bit of "comprehensive" reform. I wouldn't vote for the man as a Republican, never mind as a Democrat.