While rank-and-file Democrats may belong to any one of six or seven powerful special interests that dominate the Democrat Party, they all have one thing in common. Unlike Republicans, few Democrats are willing or able to: a) describe what it is that their party stands for, or b) deliver a comprehensive two minute dissertation on why they, themselves, identify with the party.

Recently, while reading Ann Coulter’s new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, I put it aside temporarily to read Kathleen Willey’s new book, Target, a gripping tale of how Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in the Oval Office and the frightening campaign of intimidation that followed, making her fear for her life and ending forever her fidelity to the Democrat Party.

When Willey’s husband, an attorney, embezzled $500,000 from a client’s account and was unable to make restitution, Kathleen, a White House volunteer, went to the Oval Office to ask the president for a full time paying position. It was then that Clinton forced her against a wall and assaulted her. Ironically, as that assault was taking place, her husband was driving to a remote wooded area in King and Queen County, Virginia where he shot himself to death.

Still a loyal Democrat, Willey tried to keep the president’s behavior a secret. But there were witnesses to her smeared lipstick, her tousled hair, and her disheveled clothing as she rushed from the Oval Office. And once she confided in a friend, who later betrayed that confidence, it was no longer a secret. Needless to say, it was of particular interest to Paula Jones’s lawyers who were looking for "pattern of behavior" evidence in their sexual harassment lawsuit against the president.

Approximately two years after her husband’s death, Willey was introduced to Nate Landow, a wealthy Democrat fundraiser, friend of Bill, and chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party. Willey and Landow dated occasionally, and when she was subpoenaed to testify in the Paula Jones case the Clinton intimidation machine went on full-court press.

Landow sent a plane to pick her up and flew her to his estate on the Maryland eastern shore. Willey described their conversations, saying, "Nate advised me to try to dodge the subpoena. And he pressured me to lie in the (sworn) deposition, to just say that nothing happened…" Landow argued, "Only two people in this world really know what happened in there – you and him. You do not need to talk about this…"

It was in that moment that Willey’s disillusionment was complete.

Returning to Coulter’s book, I read a chapter in which she discussed the blatant contradictions in Democrat attitudes on a broad range of issues… contradictions that baffle conservatives and Republicans.

While Democrats claim to support our troops, they do everything in their power to undercut the president and the commanders who lead them into battle. While they claim to be the champions of the middle class they propose tax increases on the rich… which they then define to include the middle class. They pretend to be in favor of protecting our borders from foreign invasion, yet they work tirelessly to capture illegal aliens as yet another Democrat voting bloc. They pander to African Americans, decrying the fact that more than a million blacks are incarcerated in our nation’s prisons, yet they’ve supported the abortion of more than 15 million black babies (equal to 1/3 of the black population) in the years since Roe v. Wade. (As Coulter writes, "when your position on abortion is identical to the Klan’s, maybe its time to reconsider.")

For the politically astute, Democrat or Republican, there were few surprises in Kathleen Willey’s account of the inner workings of the Democrat Party and the Clinton White House. But the question that the reader confronts, a question that literally screams to be asked is, what is it about Democrats that blinds them to the seamy underbelly of their party and that allows them to look the other way when their party or its leaders engage in criminal wrongdoing?

Is it because liberals and Democrats are, at heart, dishonest? Not necessarily. The problem with liberals and Democrats… aside from their win-at-any-cost approach to politics… is that, since the early days of our republic, they have never fully bought into the basic tenets upon which our nation was founded. The terms "progressive" and "liberal" are, by direct implication, indicative of dissatisfaction with the established order… including dissatisfaction with the most basic principles of our great American experiment.

Liberals and Democrats consistently promise "change" and a "new direction" without ever describing exactly what "change" they recommend or what their "new direction" might be. It’s as if they were asking voters to go to the airport and to board airplanes indiscriminately, not knowing or caring what the ultimate destination might be. They promise only to take us someplace without ever telling us where.

Coulter’s suggestion that Democrats have no brains may be a bit harsh, but we would all be a lot better off if they would at least take a more critical look at their party and what it stands for and hold their leaders to a much higher standard of conduct.