Via Andrew Sullivan, Powerline’s John Hinderaker is throwing around an absurd metaphor:

Why Doesn’t the Administration Fight Back?

I don’t understand it, and neither does Bill Kristol. The Democrats are mounting the most scurrilous political campaign that has been seen in American politics since the Civil War. The administration can easily win the argument over Iraq, but instead it has abandoned the field to the enemy. Why? Kristol wonders, “[D]o they enjoy being punching bags at the White House?”

It’s as good a theory as any I’ve seen. Turning the other cheek may be good theology, but President Bush owes the country a far more aggressive response to the Democratic Party’s perfidy. Bush is letting down the country badly by failing to respond to the Democrats’ charges.

So apparently, Democratic criticism of the war in Iraq is more scurrilous than, say, the defenses of segregation offered by Strom Thurmond or George Wallace:

THURMOND: I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

WALLACE: It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call for freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.