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Antiwar candidate Hackett driven out of politics by Dem leaders
New York Times EFL & LRR*

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.
We're more likely to have a civil war within the Dhimmicratic party than we are in southern Iraq. And it's much more likely to be a quagmire.
Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of the party machine Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.

Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong yet ultimately futile Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his potty mouth scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.

But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress. "This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving
That, kids, is a dirty trick!
and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me." . . .

This is the real battle for the soul of the Democratic Party: the old-line left-of-center, but not fanatically so, party machine against the upstart, fanatical, terminal BDS moonbat fringe led by DU, Kos, and Soros. In 2004, the machine candidate (Kerry) smacked down the fringe guy (Dean), and the fringe dutifully fell in line behind the haughty, French-looking etc. out of a shared sense of Bush-hatred. In 2005, the moonbats took control of the party chairmanship and much of the fundraising. Now, we see the machine pushing back, shoving people like Hackett out of the way, and not even being subtle about it. It's interesting to see the rage emerging on some of the comment threads at DU and Kos--in particular, moonbat-in-chief Markos "screw 'em" Zuniga sided with the machine to screw Hackett, to the dismay of many of his syncophants.

*If you don't have an NYT logon, use mine:
name: nytisfishwrap
password: dowdsucks
Posted by: Mike 2006-02-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=142640