The Vietnam War still lingers in the consciousness of most Democrats...

They still remember George McGovern and are convinced that it was the anti-war stance of our Party in 1972 that led to one of the biggest landslides in history for the Republicans. They remember how Reagan used the Iran hostage crisis under Carter to paint him as weak and indecisive. Democrats are still traumatized by those elections after all these years.

So when a so-called Republican invades another country illegally and destabilizes a large part of the world, Democrats still cannot help but think of Vietnam. They cannot escape their consciousness. (This is not to be confused with conscienceness, else they would all be against the war) So the Party remains divided over issues of war and peace.

Having always been anti-war (still have my McCarthy button from '68), I've never understood the mindset that war is ok and that the US has to be the biggest baddest country on the block.

Just my impression.

Besides the fact of the Watergate revelations (McGovern was the weakest Democratic candidate, so Nixon ratfucked the others to get that face-off), McGovern slit his own throat with the Eagleton mess. It was impossible to convince the nation that a putz who couldn't even pick a vice presidential candidate ought to be dog catcher.

Hell, even Nixon was portraying himself publicly as anti-war...he had a secret plan to end it and blamed the whole mess on the Democrats (although he'd been veep when Eisenhower got us into it). His visit to China in early 1972 was supposed to be focused on getting China's help in ending it.

"So the Party remains divided over issues of war and peace. "
So does the country. There's no simplistic answer.

The Republicans are more united on the war than are the Democrats, at least in the Congress and Senate?

But then few of them seem to be concerned with anything other than how to milk it for political gain.

It's also necessary to be united if you just make shit up and try to pass it off as reality, as Republicans do so often. They have to hang together...which is why they're running scared now.

Rick Santorum in particular has been having the very devil of a time trying to figure out what to do in Pennsylvania...and has decended into absurdity. Within the past few months alone, he claimed he's always been opposed to the war, claimed that there as nothing wrong with pre-war intelligence, claimed the war was going well and that the problem was presentation, voted to require benchmarks from the Administration, and then announced that the required benchmarks were meaningless.

Currently he's actually got an appeal on his website for returning veterans to e-mail him stories he can exploit.

It impossible to be more united than the Republicans are.

Reasons for war evaporate-IT WAS STILL RIGHT TO GO
Result of NO planning literally blowing up in our faces- IT WAS STILL RIGHT TO GO
Billions wasted your own political mantra of balance budgets and less government is throw out the window-IT WAS STILL RIGHT TO GO
About to erupt into full blown civil war-IT WAS STILL RIGHT TO GO
Resource rich home to terrorists about to be established through a democratic process-IT WAS STILL RIGHT TO GO

That's pretty damned united.

and Republicans were isolationists?

Is that a proper history of what happened?

I think there was a general view along the lines that Repubs were isolationsists. But,in '72, it was Nixon against McGovern. Nixon claiming that we were turning the fight over to the South Vietnamese, and McGovern calling for withdrawal from Vietnam.