While doing my daily web crawl of conservative opinion, I ran across a little nugget of bullshit courtesy of the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes. Barnes writes in his column, Al Gore Exit Stage Left:

“In any case, with the first 2004 contest in Iowa, where the Democratic rank and file are heavily isolationist, the pro-war side of the debate might have been snuffed out entirely.”

Note how Barnes uses the news of Gore’s decision not to run in 2004 to mischaracterize those opposed to war with Iraq. He calls them “isolationists”.

Now the last time I checked, most of the Democratic rank and file were not against toppling the Taliban, or bombing Milosevic into submission. They do, however, seem to be against the unprecedented action of a “pre-emptive” strike by a Western democracy against a sovereign nation.

To mischaracterize this principled opposition to war with Iraq as an “isolationist” stance is yet another example of how the right will say anything, no matter how inaccurate, to stain and misrepresent opposing ideas.