KENNEDY LOSES MIND, THEN LOSES FILIBUSTER VOTE

Michelle Malkin has an apt reprise of Ted Kennedy's performance in his latest exhibition of losing gracelessly.

But she and other members of the conservative commentariat have not thanked enough the aging 34-year veteran of the Senate from Massachusetts for almost single-handedly driven the Democratic Party into minority status. His decades-long string of personal indiscretions and political mistakes have made a singular contribution to the downfall and, with the loss of the last bastion of liberal obstructionism in the SCOTUS, the complete ruin of his party.

The decision to run against a sitting Democratic president in 1980 coupled with his chronic drunkenness to destroy lives and, with the election of Reagan, eventually maim an entire political party.

Kennedy's misfortunes might steel the backbone of a person of stronger character, but ever since his schooldays, Edward Moore Kennedy has demonstrated that character and integrity are not his strong suits. He paid a student to take an exam for him at Harvard, drove off a bridge and left a drowning girl in his car to die, and finally flunked his examination in front of the U.S. Senate to become the Majority Leader. His colleagues knew him better than his constituents, and the Democrats selected another leader to lead them back to the White House.

Today was symbolic of this chronic failure's fecklessness. Rather than cede gracefully to reality, Kennedy tilted at one more windmill in his wandering about the political landscape. His inability to explain to Roger Mudd in 1980 even rudimentarily why he was running against a Democratic incumbent amply demonstrated that his alcoholic habits made him damaged goods in a national election.

As paterfamilias of the Kennedy clan, his lack of discipline and ridiculous personal habits gave his brothers' children opportunities to slack off and become largely a brood of pampered failures when they did not succumb to drugs and alcohol.

But an entire generation of Democrats should remember that this is the man who damaged Jimmy Carter enough to make Ronald Reagan possible. At his interrment, his epitaph should reflect his disregard for common sense and the values that his parents failed to instill in him. Something like "If hell exists, I deserve to be there."