by Laryn

Sen. DeMint On Honduras Trip: Our ambassador is the only person I met there who thinks there was a ‘coup.’

For the first time in history the United States government is siding with Marxist leaders Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro and Evo Morales against the pro-democratic Honduran government of Roberto Micheletti.

The Honduran Congress and Supreme Court along with the military ousted corrupt Leftist President Manuel Zelaya from power. Zelaya tried to illegally secure himself as president for life like his friend Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Zelaya was, of course, supported by regional Marxists in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. The Honduran government appointed Roberto Micheletti president until the planned elections in November. At that time he will turn over control to the democratically elected successor. The Obama government has announced that they will not recognize the winner of the November election.

Manuel Zelaya, the ousted leftist leader of Honduras, is backed by Latin American Marxists Raul Castro, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez and American President Barack Obama.

Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya poses with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro (L) and Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez (R) during the Central American integration meeting in Managua June 29, 2009. (REUTERS/Miraflores Palace)

In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.

After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.

That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.

While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.

As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.

The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.

Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.

In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens…

The Hondurans I met agree. All everyone seemed to want was a chance to make their case, or at least an independent review of the facts.

Thanks to his administration’s bungling on Honduras, President Obama may wind up in the absurd position of opposing a free, fair and fully constitutional election in the name of defending democracy.

The State Department is now engaged in a last-minute effort to find a compromise in Honduras. If it fails, Obama will be subject to endless updates on the Vietnam trope of “destroying the village in order to save it.”

Right now, the president — who has silently accepted the results of fraud-ridden elections in Iran and Afghanistan — is on course to join hands with UN bodies, the Organization of American States and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez in refusing to recognize the results of Honduras’s Nov. 29 presidential election.

Why is a timely, independently-supervised, free and fair Honduran election so unacceptable? Because we must defend Latin America’s democracy, they’ll say.

Even the thickest Foggy Bottom heads know an oxymoron when they see it. So the State Department is working hard to dig itself out of a ditch that the Obama administration has only itself to blame for driving into.

The new plan is to drop the previous demand to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Roberto Micheletti — the speaker of parliament who has served as acting president since June — would leave the presidency by Election Day. A new caretaker president would hold the job between the election and the Jan. 26 inauguration.

The leading candidate for the interim role, a former foreign and defense minister in Zelaya’s government, Edmundo Orellana, apparently has no ambition to keep the job.

At this late stage in the game, and considering Washington’s many errors so far, this is a reasonable way out. But it will only succeed if Obama sticks to his guns — against heavy resistance from Chavez and his allies.

…

America is stuck supporting the wrong side in Latin America’s democracy divide. Chavez will accept nothing less than a full reinstatement of his Honduran ally, elections be damned. Obama and Clinton’s new formula will work only if the administration is strong enough to confront the Chavistas in Latin America and their useful-idiot allies in Washington.

If the proposed compromise doesn’t fly, Obama should demand the November election take place on time, and then clearly support its winner. Otherwise, he’ll be the butt of democracy jokes long after the Nobel committee has moved on to its next darling.

One of the frustrating aspects of the situation in Honduras is the failure of the administrations and others who support Zelaya’s return to articulate a response to the legal issues surrounding his removal. They are even hiding the legal brief on which they rely, and ignoring the legal work of the Library of Congress which found the removal legal under the Honduras Constitution.

On top of that they are pushing for a bad guy who deserved to be removed. The NY Times continues to support the bad guy and ignore the legal arguments for his removal today. You would think they would at least be curious about those legal arguments.