Reinstating the Draft Is a Ridiculous Idea

The American people need to fasten their seat belts because Democrats are taking us back to the Sixties. On cue, the Democratic leadership is once again abandoning the mainstream and lurching to the left.

For months, they ran a campaign trying to convince voters they would govern from the middle. Yet, here we are, two months before Democrats officially regain the majority in the 110th Congress, and already incoming Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charley Rangel wants to pander to the liberal base of the Democratic Party and reinstitute the military draft.

Why should anybody take Mr. Rangel’s draft talk seriously? His lack of sincerity was exposed in 2004 when even he didn’t vote for the bill he authored which would have reinstituted the military draft.  In fact, his military draft proposal was defeated 402-2 in the House of Representatives. Want further evidence Democrats are abandoning their campaign promises of moderation and instead returning to their liberal roots? Jack Murtha, Nancy Pelosi’s pick for majority leader, was one of the two who voted for the draft in 2004.

Mr. Rangel’s ridiculous rumblings have nothing to do with legitimate policy and everything to do with partisan politics motivated by the wacky wing of his ultraliberal party.

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a 25-year career Marine whose son just returned from Iraq after flying Blackhawk helicopters for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, I categorically reject Mr. Rangel’s proposal on its merits and accept it as nothing more than a headline-grabbing ploy long on rhetoric and short on substance. It is a silly diversion designed to pacify the pacifists who dominate the tattered fringe of the loony left.