ARE THE DEMOCRATS TRYING to come across as wimps? First there’s the bogus brouhaha about Bolton being “abrasive” (another Moynihan? Horrors!). Now Mickey Kaus notes that Education Secretary Margaret Spelling is a regular thug:

It seems she once called somebody “unAmerican” and contacted Utah’s governor instead of its education superintendent! She even threatened to cut off federal funding if Utah flouted the law’s requirements for getting federal funding! If that’s Dillon’s idea of “bare-knuckle politics” he must have grown up in an ashram.

Call me crazy, but “the party of Tom-Daschle soft-talkers” seems like a bad branding move to me.