If anyone dear to you still believes the Democratic Party is, among American political institutions, the standard-bearer of decency, integrity and Christian charity, do not give them a copy of Donkey Cons, the new historical work by Lynn Vincent and Robert Stacy McCain.

It might be too jarring.

First, give your friend or family member a fifth of decent scotch. Share a nip or two to establish conviviality and soften the defenses. THEN bring out the copy of Donkey Cons. If you can get them through the first two chapters, you will likely have performed a successful intervention.

Donkey Cons traces the history of the Democratic Party from its ignominious origins (founded by the scoundrel Aaron Burr - among many facts the modern Democratic leadership do not want you to know) to the present day. Witty, narrated in a lively style and meticulously footnoted, this important chronicle should be sine qua non on every political reference shelf.

For those who have suspected the Democrats are not quite as sparkly white as they make themselves out to be, this book provides the concrete historical evidence. Co-author McCain says his original proposed title was "Where the bodies are buried' (shot down by the marketing folks), and Donkey Cons provides a litany of facts and events proving once and for all there really is a Party of Weasels here in the US of A.

It's a rollicking ride over a broad historical landscape, detailing the many criminal beneficiaries of Democratic indulgence. To name a few: Billy Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Bobby Seal, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, Stewart Pearson, Joe Smith - some bad, BAD characters.

As the authors note:

The party has long courted the votes of criminals, going back at least as far as the days when "the dregs of the city" supported Tammany's Fernando Wood in New York. More than one hundred years ago, one Republican noted that "the criminal class of great cities...by the natural law of their being, find their congenial place in the Democratic Party." This has been conclusively proven by sociologists Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota and Jeff Manza of Northwestern University. Research by these two left-wing academics, who support voting rights for felons, revealed several interesting facts:

-Convicted felons would vote for Democrats by an overwhelming 68.9 percent margin.

-In the 2000 presidential election, more than 4.6 million Americans were barred from voting because of felon disenfranchisement laws...

-Had it not been for the disenfranchisement of felons, Democrats would have maintained control of the Senate continuously since 1986...

Just as they never let historical facts stand in the way of smearing Republicans as racist, Democrats don't let the Constitution stand in the way of pandering to criminals. In February 2002, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada offered an amendment to a voting rights bill that would have prevented states from disenfranchising felons. Such a measure would certainly have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but twenty-seven Democratic senators voted in favor of it, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, and Patrick Leahy. Mrs Clinton said she supported the amendment because she was opposed to "disenfranchisement of legitimate American voters."

But the really interesting story is not so much the low-lifes who have benefited from Democratic leaders: It's the low-lifes who ARE Democratic leaders.

After just a few days of digging up Democratic scoundrels, it began to appear that the main difference between the Democrats and the Gambino mob is that Democrats qualify for federal matching funds...

A sampling of the historical vignettes includes: Alcee Hastings, Corrine Brown, Barney Frank, Jim Moran, Bobby Rush, Wayne Hays, Charles Diggs Jr., Tony Coelho, Jim Traficant, Robert Torricelli, John Murtha, Alan Cranston, John Glenn, Marion Barry, a certain very recent former president and his wife and of course, Ted Kennedy.

That last fellow, in case you are not familiar with the particulars, is undoubtedly the most egregious, ironic stain on modern American politics. If you don't know the specifics of what happened at Chappaquiddick, you are in for a very big surprise. Old news can still be big news.

And the news is not just the girl who lived for nearly an hour in the submerged car, but the senator who let her die and still evokes respect from the Democratic rank and file:

The people of Massachusetts resoundingly reelected Ted Kennedy, and continued to do so, paving his way to address a national television audience from the 1988 Democratic National Convention...Kennedy attacked the Republican presidential candidate, vice president George H.W. Bush...He hammered off a list of issues, punctuating each one with an indignant rally cry: "Where was George?"

The Iran-Contra scandal?

"Where was George?"

The national deficit?

"Where was George?"

But no one at DNC headquarters seemed to grasp the irony of having "Chappaquiddick Ted," who himself went missing that dark morning in a fit of criminal negligence, bellowing "Where was George?"

But Republicans did. Within two days, they printed up T-shirts bearing the answer to the senator's question: DRY, SOBER, AND HOME WITH HIS WIFE.

Although prominent cases of Democratic misbehavior exceed those of the Republicans by about a 2-1 margin, corruption and criminality afflict both of our major parties, to be sure. The authors of Donkey Cons don't pull any punches on the GOP. Plenty of Republicans have been involved in scandals, and their crimes fall under the spotlight: John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Pat Swindall, Donald Lukens, Bob Packwood, Randall "Duke" Cunningham, among others.

The difference lies in the upshot:

What is important here is a pattern of behavior by the Democratic Party. That pattern extends beyond the fact that the best available catalogs of corrupt U.S. politicians, though admittedly incomplete, show Democrats substantially outnumbering Republicans among those convicted of serious crimes...

Scandals generally have a devastating effect on the careers of Republicans, and partisan loyalty doesn't seem to prevent Republicans from sending their fellow Republicans to jail....

Donkey Cons is a primer on the history of the Democratic Party. It provides several ammo-belts of data for disproving the Democrats' claims they are the party of sweetness and light and support for "the little guy."

But even more valuable than putting those lies to rest is the book's unveiling of "progressive" ideology. The mainstream media and the scions of modern academia play a huge role in buttressing the purveyors of liberal ideas and liberal misbehaviour. Bottom line: It's a total scam, and if most Americans had any idea what the progressives were up to it would mean the end of the legitimacy of liberalism:

In 1965, Herbert Marcuse expounded his doctrine of "progressive intolerance." Refuting traditional liberal ideas of tolerance elaborated by John Stuart Mill and others, Marcuse said that progressive values required the "suppression" of right-wing or "regressive" movements: "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left."

Democrats seem to routinely survive scandals that might have a career-ending impact for Republicans...

Democrats' belief that they are fighting against such powerful evils - and if Democratic politicians don't really believe this, their millions of loyal voters obviously do - draws them into the Marcusean conceit of "progressive tolerance." The ends justify the means. What's a little graft, a little corruption, a drowned campaign worker, or a scandal that's "just about sex" to a party doing battle against the rapacious forces of greed and oppression?

Sort of makes the New York Times a little easier to understand, does it not?

Be sure to read the Donky Cons blog, and buy this book; in fact, buy several copies. Give one to each of your friends, especially the misguided ones. After reading it, you will never again have to struggle to identify the specific instances of ethical, legal and philosophical dereliction that make the Democratic Party so easy to condemn.

Which is nice.

UPDATE: Heh.