THESE are good times for moonbats, hard times for wingnuts. This bodes ill for Democratic prospects in 2008.

"Moonbat" is a term popularized by the Web logger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) to describe people on the extreme left. "Wingnut" is a term coined by liberals to describe those on the extreme right.

Most of us learn by the third grade the difference between addition and subtraction. But both moonbats and wingnuts think a majority can be built by driving away everyone who doesn't agree with them totally on everything.

Little better illustrates the rising influence of moonbats than the on-again, off-again efforts of Democratic leaders in Congress to hamstring the war effort in Iraq by imposing crippling conditions on the defense appropriations bill.

The Washington Post doesn't think much of the strategy: "[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi's strategy leads not to a responsible withdrawal from Iraq but to a constitutional power struggle with Mr. Bush, who has said he will veto the bill," the Post said in an editorial Tuesday. "Such a struggle would serve the interests of neither the Democrats nor the country."

The Los Angeles Times isn't thrilled with it, either: "The plan is an unruly mess: bad public policy, bad precedent and bad politics," the Times said in an editorial Monday.

These liberal newspapers are concerned because Democrats are turning an asset into a liability. A majority of Americans think it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq, and a large majority thinks the conduct of the war has been botched. If, in the fall of 2008, the war is perceived as going badly, Republicans are toast.

The only way Democrats can lose under these circumstances is if they are perceived as trying to engineer an American defeat. So why are they pursuing a course so fraught with political peril? Because the moonbats insist upon it.

Another indication of the grip the moonbats have on the throat of the Democratic Party is the decision of Democratic candidates for president to back out of a debate in Nevada in August because it was to be co-sponsored by the Fox News Channel.

Fox has more viewers than the other two cable news networks combined. The Las Vegas Review Journal said in an editorial the debate would have been a good opportunity for Democrats "to reach conservative and 'values' voters who might consider changing allegiances."

But the moonbats prefer an echo chamber to outreach. If you're not 100 percent for us, you're against us. Ms. Pelosi experienced that firsthand when she was ambushed outside her San Francisco home by protesters from Code Pink.

In an exchange captured on YouTube, Rep. David Obey (D., Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, ex-ploded at an especially thick-headed moonbat who couldn't seem to grasp that if Congress was unwilling to pass a nonbinding resolution calling for a withdrawal of troops, it was most unlikely to vote to cut off funding for the war.

There's no shortage of mean-spirited morons on the right, either. I experienced this first hand after I criticized columnist Ann Coulter for calling presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot." The kindest appellation the wingnuts used to describe me was "liberal."

But while moonbats are feeling their oats, wingnuts are crying in their beer. The leading candidates for the Republican nomination for president - former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney - are all people they despise.

Mr. Giuliani is unsatisfactory to wingnuts because he is pro-choice on abortion and backs civil unions for gays. Mr. Romney is unpalatable because his conversion to social conservatism is recent. Senator McCain always has been a social conservative, but is anathema because of the McCain-Feingold election finance law, and because he seems to enjoy sticking his finger in the eyes of conservatives.

It's perfectly all right to prefer someone else. The candidate whose views are closest to my own - Rep. Duncan Hunter of California - is a wingnut favorite. But you have to have a wingnut's grasp of reality to imagine that Mr. Hunter has a realistic chance to win the GOP nomination.

What is not all right is the viciousness with which wingnuts attack the frontrunners. They would rather have a 20 percent enemy than an 80 percent friend. But the fact that Mayor Giuliani, Senator McCain, and Governor Romney are the frontrunners indicates rank and file Republicans are giving wingnuts the attention they deserve.

First Published March 17, 2007, 9:46 a.m.