The Easy Way Out Platform.

Tonight at the 2005 President's Dinner, President Bush talked at length about the void of ideas from the modern Democratic Party and their resulting platform of obstructionism. He offered up this challenge to Democratic leadership:

"If leaders of the other party have innovative ideas, let's hear them. But if they have no ideas or policies except obstruction, they should step aside and let others lead."

It's not as though this were a new phenomenon. Over two years ago, in the lead-up to the liberation of Iraq I wrote a column on the total lack of solutions to the problem of Islamofascism from the war's detractors. In the interests of fairness I even interviewed a prominent local anti-war demonstrator and begged him to give me one, just one, viable solution to the liberation.

He was so confident. "Sure," he said, "that's easy," and went on to lay out a new American policy centered on the abandonment of Israel coupled with $19 billion spent on potable water for Middle Eastern nations. Buy some water and throw Israel to the wolves.

He was unable to explain how this policy would somehow change the terrorist view of America, or how leaving a non-nuclear Israel to certain genocide was a humanitarian solution. Still, that was the closest I have ever came to a viable solution to Islamofascism.

Over the course of the last decade, as the Democratic Party has gotten increasingly jaded and lazy, they have forsaken ideas for empty rhetoric. Oh, they have ideas all right. Well, one idea to be specific. It's called "the easy way out."

Social Security needs fixing? Throw money at it. Public schools becoming the joke of the free world? Throw money at them. Radical Islamists blowing up people in the thousands? Throw money their way. I could go on...

But these are not solutions. They are the absence of solutions. If the Democratic Party wishes to enjoy the support of the American people it must do better. At this time however, there seems to be no desire to do so, and indeed there seems to be little to no cognizance of the void the party has become. As a direct result, hordes of people, from union workers to minorities, are taking a closer look at the Republican Party.

While we might not agree on how we achieve our goals, we all agree that we must progress. The Democratic Party is now the anti-progress party, and perhaps it is time for the American people to help them "step aside." Or, perhaps they do have some innovative solutions rattling around in their heads that we just haven't heard yet.

If so, I'm all ears.