Rick Moran, I think, has the definitive post on the news of Mother Sheehan’s retirement from the vocal anti-war movement.

Of course, the writing has been on the wall for Mother Sheehan for a while now. She hasn’t been drawing big crowds at her ‘sit-ins’ and she’s turned into someone who is beyond embarassing to associate with, even for the hardcore anti-war left, who are known for not shying away from using embarassing tactics in order to get their ‘points’ across, so for them to have abandoned her -which they have been doing for the last year or so – you know it’s gotten bad.

Cindy Sheehan allowed herself to be used by a group of users who didn’t mind shamelessly latching on to the troubled mother of a fallen soldier in order to try and gain the high ground by utilizing the Absolute Moral Authority Card, meaning that as a critic of the Bush adminstration, she was supposed to be untouchable and via extension, was supposed to make the anti-war movement untouchable. As a result, criticism of Sheehan from the right was met with contempt and anger from an ‘outraged’ left. We all remember three years ago when all we heard about in the summer of 2005 was Cindy Sheehan and her camp of hateful anti-war protestors camped out near the President’s Crawford ranch. We saw pictures galore, read stories all over the place, and for a while the news mediots screamed all-Cindy all the time. That was when she served a purpose to anti-war lefties like Michael Moore and Code Pink, and their pals in the press.

Though Mother Sheehan’s star has faded, the anti-war movement, fueled by like-minded Democrats in the House and Senate, have made themselves a force to be reckoned with and now, in effect, control the Democratic party. Cindy Sheehan might be stepping out of the limelight, but the legacy of the anti-war movement, a movement she embodied for the last three years, lives on through the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the Pelosi-led House and Reid-led Senate.

Updated to add: Meant to point out that in spite of her retirement, Sheehan and other anti-war moonbats will be in Charlotte on Friday in an effort to influence people to support an “Impeach Bush/Cheney” movement (hat tip: William Teach).