Ahh, those fine, upstanding Democrats, always so keenly cognizant of the time-honored principle that politics stops at the water’s edge, never letting their passion for the give and take of political debate overcome their reason and sense of duty and loyalty to their country.

Well, unless you’re war hero (Dem-style) John Kerry cuddling up to America’s enemies in Paris in the 70s, promoting their point of view during a shooting war. Or Jane Fonda posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, helping to demoralize American POWs in that same war because she, in her infinite wisdom, had decided it was “immoral.” Or Baghdad Jim McDermott, questioning the integrity of our President from the very streets of an enemy capital, and willingly propagandizing for the mad dictator we had been jousting militarily with for more than a decade and were about to remove by force. Or, as has now come to light, Ted Kennedy:

The antipathy that congressional Democrats have today toward President George W. Bush is reminiscent of their distrust of President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, a political science professor says.

“We see some of the same sentiments today, in that some Democrats see the Republican president as being a threat and the true obstacle to peace, instead of seeing our enemies as the true danger,” said Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College and the author of new book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan’s foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.

Incredible. Even taking into consideration that this is the loathsome Jabba the Senator we’re talking about here, one of the most repellent and amoral pieces of shit ever to disgrace his constituents and his country — a man whose very existence, as Wodehouse used to say, calls into question the idea of Man as Nature’s Last Word — this is…incredible.

Specifically, Kennedy proposed that Andropov make a direct appeal to the American people in a series of television interviews that would be organized in August and September of 1983, according to the letter.

“Tunney told his contacts that Kennedy was very troubled about the decline in U.S -Soviet relations under Reagan,” Kengor said. “But Kennedy attributed this decline to Reagan, not to the Soviets. In one of the most striking parts of this letter, Kennedy is said to be very impressed with Andropov and other Soviet leaders.”

In Kennedy’s view, the main reason for the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s was Reagan’s unwillingness to yield on plans to deploy middle-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, the KGB chief wrote in his letter.

“Kennedy was afraid that Reagan was leading the world into a nuclear war,” Kengor said. “He hoped to counter Reagan’s polices, and by extension hurt his re-election prospects.”

I’m speechless. I know I’ve called ‘em Treasoncrats here before, even somewhat seriously now and then and not just as a way of having a bit of rhetorical fun with them, but….damn.

Hang the raddled old traitor. High noon tomorrow wouldn’t be too soon.

Y’know, Left/liberal types have always squealed like the treasonous pigs they are anytime anyone has dared call them by their right name, and they still do. But for all the crying over overzealousness or questionable and indiscriminate methodology, the simple fact is that all those anticommunists from decades past like McCarthy and Hoover were, and remain, perfectly correct on the basic facts.

And it points up something else that I almost hate to bring up again at this point, but: some are complaining that “the Dems are worse” is not reason enough to vote Republican, and as y’all know by now I do have a great deal of sympathy with that notion. But the Dems aren’t just worse; they’re so far beyond “worse” as to make it impossible to even see “worse” from where they’re at.

Should the Dems’ being THAT much worse be reason enough to vote, if not for the Repubs, then against them?

(Via Ace; Bryan has more, including a caveat at the end)