According to Robert Novak, Rep. Murtha would do well to shut up or risk serious opposition the next election.

“Rep. John Murtha, responding Wednesday to a defamation lawsuit filed by a Marine accused of killing Iraqi civilians in 2005, mistakenly said Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich had been “charged in the incident at Haditha.” In fact, no charges have been filed against anybody.

Murtha quickly issued a new press release Wednesday deleting “charged” and describing Wuterich as leader of “the squad accused of killing two dozen civilians.” The lawsuit accused Murtha of spreading “false and malicious lies” about the sergeant in his May 19 statement which said Marines “killed a number of civilians without anybody firing at them.”

Although Murtha has carried his western Pennsylvania district by landslide margins and was unopposed in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry won it with only 51 percent. Diana Irey, a Republican county commissioner, is waging a vigorous campaign, and last week accused Murtha of “regular and willful misstatements of key facts.”

Slandering our soldiers and marines without evidence not only shows a lack of character, but it is never going to sell in the heartland. Not that it won’t stop Murtha and the rest of the Democratic Party from following the uber-left over the clift.

I’m one who believes (regardless of polls) that the Democrats are in for a big disappointment in November. Murtha is one of their stars and he’s plodding around making stupid statements and having to backtrack them later. Whether it’s Lamont’s association with the “blackface” incident, to Howard Dean’s incoherant ramblings, to Nancy Pelosi playing “Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm”, the fact is that I believe that none of it is really selling to the American people at large.

Besides, there is still a couple of months left in the Bang of a Summer, and the Grand Jury is seated.