Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. And each week I inexplicably end up waiting till the subsequent Monday to post the nominations and the winners. Not this time: Sunday!

My own post dealt with how influential public diplomacy expert Marc Lynch advised the Obama administration to pick a fight with Israel, saw that strategy backfire as the Palestinians hardened their demands and fractured, and is now accusing Israel of "intransigence" in every other post he writes. He's a little bit bitter and it's getting kind of unseemly, though there's probably room for sympathy - the foreign policy left's recommendations have been exposed as naivete-soaked delusions, and that can't be fun. Right Truth's post on the ongoing Middle East-wide disasters triggered by State Department diplomacy and foreign policy pseudo-sophistication is to the point.

The Glittering Eye's post on health care probes a question that comes up again and again for foreign policy hawks: putting aside that the left can be relied on to appease our enemies and endanger our allies - see Bookworm Room's post - why is it that they're also so consistently useless and ideological even on domestic affairs? The word "meltdown" makes a couple of appearances.

But at least the GOP seems to have approximated something like a spine on health care. The rest of their stunts have put them at war with their own base, a situation that Rhymes With Right unpacks nicely. Not that the conservative grassroots are without their own potential problems, something The Provocateur lays out.

All of which is really a shame, because - per the Colossus Of Rhodey - the left is becoming unhinged to the point of open racism again. Usually they save that for election season. Ditto for the fangs they're showing about double-loyalty towards the Jewish State - complete with witch hunters who totally fail to implicate Israel but imply the opposite. See Joshuapundit on that last bit. Apparently the left is still addicted to the scapegoating rush they discovered during the campaign. It must feel really good.

References and related coverage after the jump...