THE LOW POST: Dead Man Coming

Lieberman himself was the most shameless: speaking on the day the British terror-plot story broke, which came just 36 hours after his loss, he said that if Lamont's Iraq plan is implemented, "it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes." Dick Cheney held a press teleconference to comment upon the Lamont election -- an incredible step for a vice president to take on the occasion of an opposition-party primary result -- and suggested that "Al Qaeda types" were encouraged by the Lamont election. And Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, quickly reacted to the Lamont win by calling the Democrats the "party of defeat and retreat."

It should be noted that both Cheney and Mehlman pointedly referred to the Lamont win as a "purge," echoing the seminal anti-Lamont editorial by the Democratic Leadership Council from two months ago which used the term eight times. They were joined in that effort last week by virtually the entire conservative punditry establishment, with everyone from Cal Thomas ("Purge by Taliban Democrats" was his clever innovation) to American Conservative Union chief Patrick Keene ("The purge that began with the McGovernite seizure of the party . . . ") to Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Clifford May ("The August Purge of Lieberman," a funny historical malapropism; May was trying to echo Soviet Russia, which had an August putsch, not a purge) to Fox's John McIntyre to a whole host of others decrying Lamont's supporters as rich, elitist, neo-commie liberals bent on softening us all up for a terrorist attack, apparently just for the pure, America-hating thrill of it.

There is something perversely exhilarating about watching the American political establishment in action, especially now, when -- with the Middle East in flames, the front pages filled with news of jarring electoral surprises, and the poll numbers of its once-brightest stars falling through the floor -- it has begun behaving like a cornered animal, lashing out incoherently at anything that comes near.