Well, it's that time again. Time for a massive, horrible, future-threatening political crisis to loom, and for the Democrats to don their crash helmets and assume the cave position. They're giving us ample warning this time, too.
Today's lead story in the NYT tells of how the bruited nomination of recently-anointed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has the right Riven with Conflict, as Christian groups in particular reportedly consider him 'not conservative enough'. (And dear christ let's just take a moment to ponder that, as a concept.)[...]
What this is, is a(n uncharacteristically foresightful) piece of pre-cave ground preparation by the Dems.
[...]
[Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York] described the situation with Mr. Gonzales as "a real Rubicon for this president. The hard, hard right wants a true believer."See what he's done? Right there. He's paved the way for the (now more or less inevitable) nomination and confirmation of Gonzales to be claimed as a victory of the dogged Democrat resistance against the 'hard, hard right'. Gonzales is being transformed before our disbelieving eyes, from a psychotic, torture-promoting, Geneva-scoffing right-wing ideologue too extreme for the AG post, into a compromise candidate.[...]
The Repubs are mounting Classic Negotiation Offensive #1: demand twice what you want, and eventually 'settle' for exactly what you were after to begin with, thus gaining not only your objective but the appearance of tractability and compromise. That's what all this carefully-crafted PR noise is about far-right groups opposing his nomination, and it's not surprising in the least.
What does (even after all this time) surprise a little, though only really in the sheer magnitude of its depraved indifference, is how the Dems are champing at the bit to help them do it. They're gagging to do the running on this, to preemptively make Gonzales the compromise choice so they can make themselves out to be less utterly shit when they let him waltz onto the bench. They just keep pulling up the markers of relative acceptability, and planting them further and further to the right.
Yeah, in case there are any Democrats out there who haven't noticed - your party sucks. Hard.Is the charge of being “obstructive” really so hurtful to them when the things they’re obstructing are so horrible? Do they really think that being on the losing side is the same as being a loser? If the D’s had real principles to stand up for, an honorable defeat in defense of those principles would be preferable to spinning a disaster for constitutional rights as some sort of half-assed victory.[...]
This is the lead of a WaPo article by Dana Milbank [in February]: “Senate Democrats angrily denounced White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday as an advocate of prisoner torture but said they would not block his confirmation as attorney general.” Tells you everything you need to know about the D’s.
This hyere's Amaircuh. There is no opposition party like in them third world commie countries.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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