Angry Left Candidates Will Not Help the Dem Party

You may remember during the 2005 special election in Ohio there was an Iraq war vet who ran for Congress. The media did everything they could to elect the guy who was more than just a bit of a loose cannon. He lost, but the Dems declared an "almost" victory.

He's baaack! Paul Hackett is running for Senator and hoping to face Mike DeWine in the fall, but first has to win the primary. Given his approach to campaigning, and his apparent weakness on the issues, I don't think he'll be around long. Joe Klein reports in Time:

"The republican party has been hijacked by religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of other religious nuts around the world," said Paul Hackett, a recent Iraq-war combat veteran who is running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio. As you may have surmised, Hackett is a Democrat, and his statement, to the Columbus Dispatch, raised an immediate call by the Ohio G.O.P. for an apology. "I said it," Hackett replied. "I meant it. I stand by it." In fact, he has taken to repeating it at every stop along the campaign trail.

[...]

At the wings joint, he (Hackett) approached a small crowd of potential supporters with a combative abrasiveness that made Howard Dean seem like Mister Rogers. "I'm a strong Democrat from the great state of Ohio and damned proud of it," he thundered. "What does the Democratic Party stand for? Limited government. Strong national defense. Fair trade. Fiscal responsibility." Limited government? That was the fun part: "I don't want to send someone to Washington to invade my private life, control what goes on in my kid's school, get involved in the decisions made by my wife and her physician or to find out how many guns there are in Hackett's gun safe." He paused, looking for a reaction from any wussified, gun-hating Dems in the crowd. Finding none, he seemed lost. He didn't rise to his preferred state of indignation until the question period, when he was asked about Iraq. "The war is over. Bring 'em home. The war on terrorism is a war of ideas. We have a saying in the Marines: It's easy to be hard and hard to be smart."

Actually, Hackett's campaign is a vivid demonstration of that old Marine saying. His next stop was a meeting of College Democrats at the University of Toledo—earnest young people who seemed omegas to Hackett's very alpha alpha—and he got into their faces early and often. He said gun control was his big difference with Brown, but it was hard to tell: Hackett had only a vague familiarity with most of the other issues. He was stumped by illegal immigration and came up with a crude prescription: "Send 'em back if we can afford it." In the end, Hackett seemed something new under the sun: a blogger candidate—all attitude, all opinions, very little information. Sherrod Brown is not exactly a shrinking violet. He is a defiant opponent of free trade and a defender of blue-collar unionism.

The Dem party has invested a lot of their hopes and dreams for 2006 in Iraq war veterans making first-time runs for office. Hackett isn't ready for prime time, and if the other Dem candidates aren't any better than this guy (who's supposed to be the "rising star"), their approach will be a complete flop.