PMC Commentary

Some really cheap advice for the Big Three

If there's anything instructive in the latest data dump from the New York Times/CBS News polls, it's that the collective Democratic mind is now concentrated more on issues than electability, while the reverse holds true for its Republican counterpart. We're speaking in terms of the broadest possible interpretation here, which often admits the broadest possible flaw, but, at any rate, that's what the numbers seem to suggest.

If true, it's a surprising turnabout. Democrats are usually fixated on the electability question, while Republicans, secure in their moral superiority, coronate early and firmly. But after two terms of the Destructor Guy, the latter are now panicking -- and signaling that they're willing to sell off a piece of their supreme orthodoxy if that means holding onto the White House.

GOPers are saying one thing, while expressing a readiness to do another. According to the Times/CBS polls, "Large majorities of Republicans in New Hampshire and Iowa said they wanted the next president to be as conservative or more conservative than President Bush." Without getting into the modern-day definitional problems of conservatism, that, in itself, is a mind-bender, leaving one wondering how any candidate could be "more conservative" than Bush, sans the public display of an armband.

But the polls also found that "two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans and one-half of Iowa Republicans said they were open to voting for candidates who did not share their view on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage." Simply put, electoral pragmatism is edging out ideology, at least for now through Nov. 2008. Anything to win -- and a lot of something will be required. They know it, and accept it.

Since roughly the post-McGovern era, however, this has been the defining characteristic of the Democratic mind, given the party's recurrent difficulties in seizing the White House. But change may be in the air. The polls are suggestive: "By contrast, 50 percent of New Hampshire Democrats said they would not be prepared to vote for a candidate who wanted to keep troops in Iraq 'longer than you would like,' even if they thought the Democrat had a good chance of victory in November."

The conclusion to be drawn, albeit gingerly: This time around, issues are somewhat more important to Democrats than electability. In short, we may be seeing the ascendancy of a progressive ideology over electoral pragmatism (which, to thoughtful progressives, is roughly one in the same). It's about time.

As well, there's some rather good evidence that this change in attitude extends beyond the Iraq war. And the change proceeds -- logically, I think -- from the disastrous domestic course laid by Bush throughout two agonizing terms.

Democrats, independents and even that peculiar slice of sensible Republicans are beginning to wonder if, perhaps, something can't be done for Americans at home. While virtually the entire presidency of George W. Bush has fixated on rehabilitating the world, America itself has been sinking. And we're feeling the sting.

To wit: "Many of the elements of bad economic times are coalescing -- rising gas prices, a devalued housing market and stagnating wages. Depending on the depth of the economic downturn..., financial worries could eclipse the war in Iraq as the driving issue in the presidential campaign."

What's more, "a CBS News poll taken in October found that health care is of equal concern to voters as is the war in Iraq. In the poll, taken in mid-October, respondents were asked what they’d like to hear the candidates for president discuss more of during the 2008 campaign. While 26 percent said the war in Iraq, 25 percent said health care."

Financial worries, the related lack of guaranteed health care, jobs and income stagnation, awareness of educational woes, etc., etc. -- all are commingling in the American mind to create the profoundly depressed sense that we're getting screwed, and someone had better start doing something about it.

Which swings us back to the original point regarding Democrats' weighing of issues vs. electability. And at the risk of beating a dead horse, since I raised this issue only last Monday, in the earliest showdown the Big Three candidates are, I think, blowing it.

"The Democratic contest is essentially tied in Iowa, among Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards..., according to The Times/CBS News Polls. None of the Democrats has a statistically significant lead in Iowa: Mrs. Clinton has the support of 25 percent of respondents, Mr. Edwards 23 percent and Mr. Obama 22 percent."

How could one break out of the small pack? Simple, or as close to simple as it gets in politics: Cut the internecine needling.

Iowans have heard it plenty, and could recite the jibes as readily as the candidates themselves. What they're eager for now are tangible solutions to our swelling mound of tangible problems. And whoever first emphasizes progressive answers over now-tedious attacks will seize a potentially powerful edge.

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George's sure envy of Pervez's playtime privileges

Wouldn't you know it? That if George had to befriend a dictator as his closest ally, he'd choose just about the goofiest s.o.b. on the planet?

If you haven't read Gen. Pervez Musharraf's interview with the New York Times, you should. If you're like me, the result will be a peculiar combination of shock and amusement: shock, that any pretender to a democracy under American auspices would belittle democratic customs with such nonchalance; amusement, that any pretender to a democracy under American auspices would belittle democratic customs with such nonchalance.

It was quite a performance, this interview was. Like his best friend George, besieged and beset by towering countervailing logic at every turn, Pervez didn't shoot for even a patina of intellectual legitimacy. He simply stared down his inquisitor and offered up the lamest of rationalizations.

After all, what does he care? He's in the twenty-first century's catbird seat -- that slickest of internal contradictions: immovable authoritarianism in the service of fluid democracy.

Pervez has learned all the right lingo, and from the master himself. Having "vigorously defended his declaration of emergency rule..., insisting that it would not interfere with the holding of free and fair elections" -- pity the sloppy thinker who imagines such a thing might -- he then defended his suppression of civil liberties because of Pakistan's "disturbed terrorist environment."

How terrorizing his own people, trashing the Constitution, removing the Supreme Court and arresting thousands of conscientious professionals is conducive to calming that environment is anybody's guess. But Pervez knows that a solid determination to stay the course is the wisest policy. When will de facto martial law end? "We need to see the environment," he said.

Besides, a textbook democratic environment can be disturbing as well, not to mention that it strains the fragile emotions of the dictatorially sensitive. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, you see, is "confrontationist" and therefore difficult to get along with, said the delicate general. "I am afraid this is producing negative vibes," he continued, presumably just before heading to his VW minibus and flashing the peace sign.

When asked about Condoleezza Rice's sorta-kinda plea that he return to the rule of law, he said, "I totally disagree with her. The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner," which, it seems, can somehow take place notwithstanding the "disturbed terrorist environment." Go figure.

But Pervez "totally disagrees" with Condi, because he can. In fact, Condi wants him to. The playful cat-and-mouse game that he and she are indulging came into focus yesterday when "the United States Embassy confirmed ... that the envoy it was sending to press General Musharraf to end emergency rule was Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte."

And lo and behold, it happened to be Mr. Negroponte that the State Department sent to Congress last week to testify "that the general was 'indispensable' as an ally in the fight against terror." That's going to be some pressing, 'eh John?

Meanwhile, back at home, in the land of genuine democratic rule and popular consent, George "vetoed a bill that would have provided $150.7 billion for education, health care, job training and other domestic programs.... At the same time, just before leaving the White House, Mr. Bush signed the Defense Department appropriations bill, which provides $459 billion for military programs."

But it was all so confrontational, so unnecessary, so untidy, this doing-the-right-thing thing. If only our elected representatives didn't insist on emitting negative vibes -- peddling education, health care and job training in such a disturbed terrorist environment. If only democracy could be preserved by righteously unfettered authoritarianism, just as some of George's playmates get to have. Geez, they get all the fun.

But, now, now, George, if all your friends wanted to jump off a bridge ...

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The democracy-stabbing subtext: The GOP, or Schumer-Feinstein?

Try as I might, I can't get the Schumer-Feinstein perfidy out of my head, its acrid taste out of my mouth, or its sickening reality out of the pit of my stomach.

I do try. Obsession is unhealthy, or so they say. Move on, they say. But then I read another reference to the senators' in-house treachery -- which, given the rapidity of modern news cycles, should already seem like ancient history -- and its gross profundity demands reentry.

The latest culprit to inflict such an ignominious reminder was Frank Rich, in his latest column. And he did so, as always, brilliantly. Using the "Pakistan mess" of crushed liberties as a framing backdrop, he noted that contemporaneously "our Senate was busy demonstrating its own civic mettle." He needed to isolate only two of its members: "Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, liberal Democrats from America’s two most highly populated blue states," who "gave the thumbs up to Michael B. Mukasey."

He then framed that sorriest of developments with penetrating accuracy: "In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug."

Yet I did differ with Rich on one of his observations. Perhaps it's only a matter of chosen emphasis, but if so, I most emphatically see "the defining down" of our democracy in a different, defining light -- in a kind of blinding, Big Bang emission, which I'll explain shortly.

Rich continued: "To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal."

He then noted this, and this is where my difference erupts: "This" -- the permanent erosion, the shocking and unacceptable -- "is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it."

Republican candidates running for dictator? A mere and recurrent subtext, it seems to me. What is a GOP presidential campaign these days without promises of limitless militarism and enabling acts? The fulfillment of those democratic death wishes lies at the core of the GOP's base, so it's what the party enthusiastically dangles.

But Rich, ever so subtly, flipped the subtext.

"What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing," he wrote, "is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on."

That, to me -- that, the liberal Schumer-Feinstein betrayal -- was the defining and most apparent moment in our democracy's permanent degradation, if permanent it be.

Historians always have a difficult time putting their fingers on such moments. When, precisely, did certain 20th-century Western democracies put their civilized roots to the stake? It's impossible to nail "it" down.

But, it further seems to me, future historians will have no such problem when it comes to identifying the decisive and explosive end to America's 21st-century democratic experience. The end came in two separate and vocal nanoseconds -- in a blistering flash of unprincipled sell-out, of frustrated surrender, of cowardly submission.

Schumer and Feinstein's insincere yea votes of confidence in a man who openly professed hostility to any democratic institution that might dare check what is now an utterly unchecked executive were but their own declarations of dispirited resignation. But they took us down, too.

Rich concluded that we're now a nation in a state of "clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon."

We can't see a restoration because we're groping in the dark -- and for my money, if you want some clarity in this mess, just reflect that the ones who turned the last lights out with glaring conspicuousness were Schumer and Feinstein, and not the usual suspects within the GOP.

Theirs was a historic perfidy. And if it holds any salvation at all, I suppose it's that it does indeed profoundly haunt so many of us.

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Primary colors of downright silliness: the Democrats' circular firing squad

Are the Democratic presidential primaries still about the vision thing, even if just a little? Or, having rolled out ever so briefly a proposed solution or two to what now amount to hemorrhaging crises both at home and abroad, have the candidates chucked the issues for good?

Saturday night they gathered in Des Moines to address a swarm of Democrats at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. This would seem a prime opportunity for each major candidate to tell the crowd -- and through extensive media coverage, the nation -- why his or her remedies are better than the other guys'. Or so one might think.

But let's take a look, from The Politico's coverage of the event, at the tangle of nothing but political attitude and practical insignificance that manifested instead. I don't blame the journalism here in availing us nothing, for there wasn't anything to avail but low-soaring rhetoric, elbowing jibes, canned one-upmanship and staged sincerity.

The want of anything resembling an actual idea was striking. To wit ...

"Neither Obama nor former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) criticized Clinton by name, but both offered indictments of her judgment and capacity to bring change....

"The senator from New York, for her part, sought to turn the party's focus away from her and onto the White House and the Republican Party....

"Both Clinton and Edwards have suggested at times that Obama lacks the desire or capacity to fight, and he has tried to address that criticism by sharpening his attacks on President George W. Bush....

"But Obama also seemed to criticize Clintonism as a mirror image of divisive Republican tactics, with a cynical focus on winning at any cost....

"And [Obama] appeared to described his main rival as a figure without clear principles....

"Obama also appeared to reference the Clinton Administration when he denounced leading by polls....

And, my personal favorite, a two-fer:

"Obama's criticism of the Clinton 1990s echoed the criticism ... that Edwards has voiced for months...."

Finally:

"Speaking before Obama, and after Edwards, Clinton tried to answer her critics:

'There are some who will say they don't know where I stand ... I stand where I have stood for 35 years -- I stand with you and with your children and with every American who needs a fighter in their corner for a better life.'"

That was the only direct line from a candidate I retained from the news coverage, but, believe me, you missed nothing in my omissions. There wasn't anything of substance to miss. And the only reason I retained Hillary's quote was to ask: Did you derive any understanding whatsoever of where she stands -- on anything -- from that?

I'm well aware that events such as Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners are more rally than seminar. But, it seems to me, a trifle substance here and there would go farther in swaying undecided voters and caucus goers than this now-incessant round robin of personal carping. Its unremitting quality has gotten just plain silly.

Yes, yes, yes, we all get it -- each of you possesses a "judgment," "capacity to bring change" and a "desire to fight" like we haven't seen since Abraham Lincoln or FDR, and the other guy doesn't (which, of course, leaves them all undifferentiated). We get that, and that's the expected and necessary stuff of politics. But what, specifically, do you plan to change, and how?

A hundred million voters aren't going to access your Web sites and search for answers, assuming they might find one or two. But they might be inspired by a few specifics offered on the stump -- you know, like at events that receive national coverage.

We appreciate that your opponents have no credible ideas or desirable depth on issues that matter. What are yours?

Just a thought.

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Ron Paul: merely a Barry Goldwater without the gunpowder

I don't use the word "fascinating" very often to describe political movements, but that's just what the Ron Paul phenomenon is. It's fascinating because it's a strange sort of outlier, a borderline freak show, an insurrectionary abnormality within the normally staid and stuffy Republican Party.

Paul has ignited a dedicated and mushrooming base largely, as we know, because of the Iraq war. He alone among the Republican warhawk club of presidential candidates called a spade a spade early on -- that the war was an anticonstitutional betrayal of America's interests -- and thereby stood out from the snarling pack. In doing so, he also put to shame the Democratic candidates, excepting Dennis Kucinich, who have done little but waver and waffle on the war's status quo. Hence Paul has been able to draw visceral antiwar support from both sides of the blurred ideological divide.

When both parties get themselves mired in such an intolerable state of affairs, Ron Pauls happen. It's as simple and predictable as that, but no less fascinating. Because they usually take on a common-man, log-cabin, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" kind of grassroots enthusiasm that's like a behemoth without a head. Support sprawls, and indignation and frustration rule, but usually in only one identifiable cause and direction; in this case, the Iraq war and demands for its end.

But if Paul's supporters, who are growing in numbers and financial contributions literally by the minute, were to scratch the surface of Paul's vocal frustration on their behalf, I doubt they'd like what they find. For, beyond the Iraq war issue, what Paul represents is a neo-New Rightest movement within an already reactionary political party. He takes the Republican clock -- already cranked back to the Gilded Age -- and turns it further back to the virtually non-governmental age of the early 19th century.

Paul is nothing new. He's just Barry Goldwater without the gunpowder.

For this Texas congressman, who has drawn a handsome government check for 20 years, simplicity reigns, just as it did for the Arizona senator. Government is bad, government can never be helpful, we were never so well off as we were in 1787.

The internal complexities of that era that led to, say, our bloodiest war, severe and repeated economic depressions and an unsustainable two-tiered class structure are easily overlooked, if only one would restrict oneself to a McGuffey's Reader view of American history and political philosophy.

This, Paul has done. For him, complexities begone -- and that's a seductive proposition for millions who are sick of, and confused by, the turmoil of modern, post-industrialized life. It's so simple, and comforting, to identify one enemy -- the government -- and envision a happy, carefree life with its perceived intrusions erased.

Take a look at Paul's Web site, and you'll soon see what I mean. It's chocked full of the most curious phenomena -- what you might call black-and-white ambiguities, all promising a simpler, and thereby happier, future.

Take, for instance, taxes. Paul likes lower ones, and who doesn't? How low, we can't say, because he doesn't. But he does say things like this: "Whether a tax cut reduces a single mother’s payroll taxes by $40 a month or allows a business owner to save thousands in capital gains taxes and hire more employees, that tax cut is a good thing."

Well, for that single mother it might be for a while, until she realizes her and her children's health care is now kaput, her daycare subsidies are forever gone, her kids' school will continue to crumble, the federal highway she travels to work on is unattended, the air she breathes and the water she drinks are worsening in quality, her state and local taxes are now $400 a month in a failing attempt to compensate -- and her employer is now cashing all his goodies in with no capital gains to pay.

You want 1787? Or 1887? You can have it, but you won't want it for long. I can guarantee that, because neither did the folks who lived in 1787 and 1887.

There's no doubt Paul's antiwar, anti-imperialism message is a powerfully sensible one. Go beyond it, though -- turn down the siren song of simplicity, and turn up the muted lessons of history -- and your Paulite enthusiasm, if so possessed, is sure to drift away.

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The Mental Collapse of Poor Joe Lieberman

I hope the Butterfly Net Brigade is on red alert, or readied for code blue, or in some other appropriate state of colorful preparation, because Joe Lieberman is now publicly embarrassing himself beyond all rational defense.

Thursday, Joe gave a morning talk at The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and Friday, I read it in an advanced state of stupefaction. Here was a United States Senator talking, and talking ... and talking, and sealing his diagnostic fate with every word. He had come with a dagger in his teeth, but proved only the need for a needle in the arm.

His target? Democrats. Pretty much all Democrats -- the base, the candidates, the blogospheric backgrounders and any peripheral hangers on. That in itself, God knows, is no sign of insanity, since no one excels at self-loathing like Democrats themselves. But it was the foils that Joe chose to make Democrats look ridiculous that boomeranged throughout, paradoxically making the latter's case and utterly destroying the pixilated prosecutor.

There was far too much in Joe's unhinged torrent to cover in detail here, but a few droplets should suffice for your reasoned consideration.

"Since retaking Congress in November 2006," Joe began, "the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected [sic] government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush."

Those two sentences alone reveal the eeriest of mental disconnects and verbal drool. For starters, I didn't even know the Democratic Party had a "top foreign policy priority," nor could one prove it by voters -- and if it does, the president hasn't needed to bother noticing.

Has there been anything -- anything at all? -- that Mr. Bush has had to do without because of Democratic intractability? And have Democrats not indeed "expand[ed] the size of our military"? And why, after all these years, is Joe still confusing tactics with enemy forces?

And how does Joe expect the United States to "strengthen our democracy promotion efforts" in a region we've so foolishly and undemocratically put to the sword? And have not Democrats consistently advocated the transference of quagmired troops in Iraq to the more central front of Afghanistan? And has there been one serious Democratic effort to "pull our troops out of Iraq"?

And what Iraqi "government" is Joe addressing? The one the U.S. military and diplomats can't locate? And as for the imagined goal of "hand[ing] a defeat to President Bush," or anything even resembling a defeat ... well, Joe clearly hasn't been reading the papers, or any history books, either, that just as clearly delineate sustained Democratic horror at risking another hit on national security issues.

Joe then went on to diagnose what he characterized as the underlying problem, and he did it with that typical straw-man silliness of his truly clinically certifiable hero, the president: "For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn’t pacifism or isolationism -- it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular."

Of course the guiding Democratic conviction isn't pacifism or isolationism. Never has been. But nor has it been the well-earned distrust and disdain of Republicans and Mr. Bush, as the nation's non-ideological unity in the immediate post-9/11 period so prodigiously revealed. If one can be identified at all, however, the guiding conviction among Democrats, independents and a growing number of thoughtful Republicans is, simply, global responsibility: the mature acceptance that we cannot afford, nor can we accomplish, the imposition of our way of thinking on the world.

Call it anti-imperialism, or anti-militarism, or simply the recognition that Bush's neocon fantasies have taken the United States to the very edge of self-destruction and insanity, and we just don't want it no more. Period.

Joe also trailed off on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, denouncing the "politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base" for "offering wild conspiracy theories about how it could be used to authorize the use of military force against Iran" -- which he labeled "absurd," a label any realist would empirically re-label as merely "out to lunch."

He offered other gems of delusional insight, which only the most politically paranoid among us could conjure. They're well worth reading, especially if you're in pre-med and looking to specialize in the workings of the deranged, disconnected mind.

But finally, after pouring out all the evidence of his most troubled condition, he concluded, "That is why I call myself an Independent Democrat today."

Joe, how 'bout we just call you nuts.

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The coming and sorry spectacle of Tweedle Deeism

According to The Politico, House Republicans have put their thinking caps on in "an effort ... to 're-brand' their battered party with a new agenda and a new strategy," although their caps have fallen slightly askew, delaying, sadly, the product's debut from this fall to next spring.

The chief cause of the delay is internal ideological division. Nevertheless we have been warned: another Contract with America is coming, replete with poll-tested and focus-grouped gobbledygook that party members, by and large and from district to district, will have little intention of adhering to, making them seem more like the cat-herding Democrats with every passing day.

For some insight into just how much the GOP will be selling the sizzle over the steak, this passage brings it nicely into focus:

"[House Minority Leader John] Boehner's idea had been that the GOP could lift itself off the mat by borrowing from private-sector marketing concepts.... Among those who have consulted in the effort were corporate brand experts such as Richard Costello, the man behind GE’s famous 'We Bring Good Things to Life' campaign."

Well, "We Bring Good Things to Plutocrats" immediately springs to mind, or perhaps the simpler and pithier, "We Accept Checks." But the search itself signifies something far less internally inspiring: When a political party resorts to flashy marketing campaigns over substantive acts, it is in big, big trouble, and it's probably too late. The necessity of having to seize on a defining slogan rather than merely displaying proven results is a surefire sign of hopeless disarray and ideological lethargy.

Yet Republican disarray is but the mirror image of Democrats'.

Writing of the GOP's efforts at redefinition, the Politico reports that "modern business techniques have stalled amid old-fashioned political disputes. Lawmakers who think the party needs to embrace a more moderate image on issues like health care and the environment are at odds with conservatives, who believe the way back to victory is to reclaim the GOP's traditional reputation for taking a hard line on spending."

Furthermore, "a survey polling House GOP members found many eager to 'fight' and 'attack' Democratic initiatives, while others favored a more accommodationist public image."

And there you have it: a party adrift -- one torn between vigorously reasserting its historical philosophical role, or playing the split-the-difference accomodationist part. Sound familiar?

I'm with the conservatives on this one -- meaning, most likely, the losing side -- just as I'm with the progressives who feel a similar frustration within the Democratic Party, which for too long has exercised only its accomodationist muscles.

Political parties shouldn't wait for prevailing winds to tell them where they're going. At the risk of sounding like a civics textbook, political parties are meant to stand for something -- to lead, not follow or drift along -- and standing for something, not surprisingly, carries inherent risks.

Yet both parties are developing -- and especially in this election cycle -- a fondness for risk aversion. District by district, pols from both sides will just give the homefolks whatever polls say 51 percent of the homefolks want, and to hell with party identification, party ideology and party unity.

With the 435 rank and file supported by leaderships more interested in majority status than genuine partisan positioning, it's no wonder that voters just as increasingly don't really give a damn who's running. They'll be stuck with the vapidity of blah, blah, blah with little differentiation -- and both Democrats and Republicans now seem intent on solidifying the blandness; marginalizing, out of safety concerns, their respective progressive and conservative messages.

Two separate third parties may be required before the Tweedle Dee banality is over. Each side may need an internal competitor to shift -- force -- it back to its traditional roots.

I can't imagine a more receptive year than 2008: unless it's 2012, when it'll also be inevitable.

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Dear Pat: God doesn't play dice with politics -- remember?

In any sane political contest, candidates would run from a Pat Robertson endorsement like it came lathered with an especially virulent STD.

But, we're talking Republican primary political contest, so such a scourge is nevertheless regarded by the press and received by the participatory prehensiles as "a coup."

A coup, mind you -- the shamanistic blessing of a senile televangelist who revels in fantastical spooks and demonology, and who can't even keep his spooks and demons straight.

Yesterday, for instance, while endorsing Rudy, Mr. Robertson said "the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists," although it wasn't that long ago that Robertson breathlessly declared that "activist judges" were the real and uppermost danger to the United States, "probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."

I could, of course, offer a long list of Robertson's other verbal jewels of certifiable dementia -- from his chiming agreement with Jerry Falwell's own peculiar demonologies to his open espousal, in Jesus' name, of political assassination -- but they're so well known, why bother. The man is bughouse daft, and he's made a career of advertising it.

But, however fleeting, he also has flickers of rationality. Pitch his dwindling support to some purist, third-party candidate who hasn't a hope in hell of prevailing, as his conservative brethren of Dobson and Perkins have threatened?

No way.

Yet more among the flock might have retained some smidgen of respect for Robertson had he done so. For his mixture of realpolitik with God's dicta just doesn't fly with the hardest core of believers, even though the taboo of that requisite mixture has always undermined the political potential of right-wing Christianity and ensured its ultimate electoral doom.

In brief, God doesn't do compromise. Accordingly, "compromise" is nowhere to be found in truly righteous, truly conservative Christianity's lexicography.

The Big Guy doesn't take calls from the likes of a Pat Robertson to offer special dispensation on, let's say, gay rights, just so a sniveling, secular supplicant like Rudy Giuliani can thereby eke out a few more Iowa caucus votes.

No, God doesn't play politics with His celestial attitude. There is no relativity to be had, no corners to be cut, no deals to be made -- all of which are the essence, of course, of politics.

Fudge in any way, to any degree, and you've left God's plantation. It's just that simple.

And that, just as simply put, is what Robertson has done. He has declared himself a moral relativist: a broker of secular power derived from a tainted Christianity -- one, that is, that abides even a brush, however opportunistically, with gay or abortion rights.

Which, for True Believers, makes Robertson's endorsement utterly shameful. All genuine T. B.s prefer the rapture of going down in electoral flames before ever selling out -- God bless 'em.

Somewhat aside from the above, I couldn't resist conferring on you these choice lines from Mr. Giuliani himself, so unctuously made on Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network a couple months ago:

"I believe in God, I pray to God, pray to Jesus for guidance and for help. I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger and having studied theology for four years in college" -- he majored in political science, by the way -- "it’s an area that I know really, really well academically. I understand the history of religion. Man and women's relationship to God is one of the strongest, if not the strongest motivating thing in human history."

Did I detect a trifle apostasy there? "If not"?

It seems to me that if nothing else, such damnable hesitation would incline the Believerhood to be very, very skeptical of this really, really accomplished demagogue.

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Another Day, Another Notch, Another Disgrace

Disgraceful.

And that's the polite word for it. I'll refrain from using the pornographic and vulgar, leaving those to the Senate Judiciary Committee, both of which it promptly employed yesterday in stamping "endorsed" on Michael B. Mukasey's nomination as attorney general.

I also won't use the hyperbole of "heroic" to describe the eight who voted against Mukasey, since a vote against the executive-pixilated jurist was merely an exercise in common sense and an adherence to fundamental law.

Which happens to be how committee member Herb Kohl put it when he observed, "As Judge Mukasey’s answers mirror the president’s on this issue [of drowning suspects], and defy common sense, we are forced to question his independence."

Then, hardly going over the top to frame what's beyond the pale, Kohl continued: "The attorney general's loyalties must be to the Constitution, to the American people, and to the law. Too much doubt on this point is disqualifying."

Perhaps "too much doubt" would indeed have disqualified him, but it turned out that absolute certainty in Mukasey's unitary-executive, the-president-can-do-no-wrong juris(im)prudence was a plenty acceptable alternative.

In answer to the chairman's lucid plea for "an attorney general who believes and understands that there have to be limitations on executive power," as well as Ted Kennedy's supplication simply for one who would "support and defend the Constitution of the United States," all nine Republicans on the committee responded, Semper fi, to discord and degeneration.

And they did so with the most curious reasoning. Let's let ranking Republican Arlen Specter -- he's a former prosecutor, you know, which he mentions nearly as often as Rudy's "9/11" -- lay out the logic.

He first noted a triumvirate of colossal worries -- the good judge seems quite cozy with torture and clearly fails to see any boundary line for presidential power; plus Congress has stepped back from "deliberating" both.

"But," pronounced Specter, "all factors considered, I think that the balance is decisively in favor of confirming Judge Mukasey."

Say what? My thanks to Dorothy Parker as I note, or sputter in incredulity, that Specter's reasoning powers here ran the gamut from A to B.

Defining the remaining eightfold nincompoopism on the Republican side requires merely a listing of names, which speak for themselves: Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Charles E. Grassley, Orrin G. Hatch, Jon Kyl and Jeff Sessions.

Disgraceful? Well, more like typical.

The radical anomalies, of course, were Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, about whom the most positive thing I can say is that they didn't attend with paper bags over their heads.

Press reports described the two's endorsing comments as "restrained" -- a condition physically required of me as they cast their "yea" votes.

Reaching down into the depths of a logic so wretched it made Specter sound like Aristotle, Schumer and Feinstein "acknowledg[ed] the nominee’s qualifications and declar[ed]" -- brace yourself -- "that the best qualification is that Mr. Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales" -- which is like praising the promotion of Heinrich Himmler because he wasn't Ernst Röhm.

But at least we can now add Nov. 6 to FDR's cataloguing of days of infamy, which now pretty much blanket the calendar -- courtesy not some foreign foe, but the United States Congress.

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Taking a little liberty with Mario Puzo: "I hate those goddamn Republicans"

The evidential quality of merciless comeuppance continues to droppeth like the gentle rain, and today's cloudy horizon is even stormier than yesterday's. I speak, of course, of the Republican pickle, and what a pickle it seems to be.

Yesterday, citing a WaPo-ABC News poll, I noted with good cheer that "Democrats 'overwhelmingly ... want a new direction,' but three out of every four independents are right there on the sidelines with them. Not really so astounding, you say? Then try this on: so are 'half of Republicans.' Half. Or, put another way, self-loathing within the GOP is now on a par with self-satisfaction."

Today comes reinforcement, and may God bless what I pray is the lethally accurate statistical methodology of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. For its calculus shows that "only 36 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the GOP 'does an excellent or good job' of 'standing up for traditional GOP positions' on issues like reducing the size of government, cutting taxes and promoting conservative social issues."

Hence two out of every three GOPers are, in Dick Cheney's famous formulation, pissed off big-time. And signs of their troubled dysuria only get better from there. For instance the 36 percent figure is "a decline of 25 points since July 2004. In fact, it’s the lowest Republican rating for the GOP since Pew began tracking the issue in 2000." Contentment within is plunging, or, if one prefers the more positive angle, dissatisfaction is skyrocketing. Oh, happy days.

As well, related polling has shown that for the first time since the pre-Vietnam era "Americans now see the two parties as equally qualified to face down national security threats -- erasing the 'security advantage' Republicans have long relied on." Its testosterone level remains dangerously high, but so far the party's come-hither leers have increasingly failed to seduce.

But what I found the most eye-popping in Pew's results was this little electoral gem: As of today, in a head-to-head match-up with Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton "wins the South." To boot, in what you might view as something of a statistical redundancy, she "polls evenly with Giuliani among voters who attend church at least once a week."

Michael Dimock, the associate director of Pew's research, chimed in with the drearily true: "It’s very early in the race, and we would all be shocked if the South went for Clinton." Yes, so would we, and so would -- especially -- the South. But such a Republican-plummeting, even-Steven finding at any point during this primary season is no less than stunning as a signal of extraordinarily troubled waters for the party of good-ole-boy hyperpatriotism and church-lady devotionals.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't taken leave of my progressive senses and signed on with the "Handsprings for Hillary" club. I find her schmoozing with the right's sensibilities immensely distasteful, however politically pragmatic and electorally clever.

On the other hand, until I do indeed take leave of my senses, I remain in real-world residence. And the bottom line is that classic formulation of the lesser of two evils. Although I may never actually cast a vote for Hillary, if Hillary it be -- writing in, instead, Mr. Gore or Kucinich or Ms. Moneypenny-- I'm at least convinced another Clinton White House would swindle slightly fewer citizens and start slightly fewer buffoonish wars than a Giuliani, Romney or Thompson presidency. And that, these days, may be about as good as this country can get.

But, for me, an even deeper bottom line springs from the emotional well of "The Godfather"'s Pete Clemenza, who so philosophically and succinctly stated his warring preferences in a rather polarized fashion: "I hate those goddamn Barzinis."

Amen, Brother Pete, as for the Republicans. In the shortest of historical order they turned out the lights of this often shining nation-state of the globe, and any enemy of that enemy is, loosely, our friend ... I suppose, for I can suppose no other.

No doubt the Grand Old Party will again crank up the fear-mongering and authoritarianism-hugging and Jesus-loving flag-waving and thereby rally many of their apostates from their disillusioned stupor. 2008 will be a rollicking ride through a living hell, and no doubt the GOP's efforts will avail better than the polls now indicate.

But we can at least savor its current condition. Comeuppance, however fleeting, is a joyful thing.

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A Mutual Bloodbath on a Path Not Taken

Another day, another poll, another rock-solid finding that the American people are tired, fed up and sick to death of the Bush administration's corrupt incompetence and steadfast reactionaryism.

But the trouble extends even beyond that, although that assessment is merely implicit in the findings. We'll get to that in a minute. First, the verifiably grim and concrete.

As reporting on a newly released Washington Post-ABC News poll summarized it, the national mood is "deeply pessimistic." Nevertheless the pessimism has not yet yielded to abject despair: Americans remain "eager for a change in direction from the agenda and priorities of President Bush." Such an eagerness indicates a sustained belief in uplifting possibilities.

The scope and uniformity of these moods -- that is, at once the negative and positive -- are astounding. Naturally self-identified Democrats "overwhelmingly ... want a new direction," but three out of every four independents are right there on the sidelines with them.

Not really so astounding, you say? Then try this on: so are "half of Republicans." Half. Or, put another way, self-loathing within the GOP is now on a par with self-satisfaction.

Returning to the familiar, the poll also found that "only 36 percent of those surveyed approve of the way [Congressional Democrats] are handling their jobs," which, given the margin of error, puts Democratic pols in the same non-approval slot as the ill-tolerated president. Or, to once again put it another way, voters are as dissatisfied with the opposition to the problem as they are with the problem itself.

And that leads us to that aforementioned deeper trouble, which at first only seems to come in the form of an electoral disconnect.

With respect to the 2008 elections, "The overall landscape tilts in the direction of the Democrats, but there is evidence in the new poll ... that the coming battle for the White House is shaping up to be another hard-fought, highly negative and closely decided contest." And, given the Congressional majority's unfavorable rating, there's little reason to expect anything but the same in 34/435 races across the country. It's shaping up to be a bloody year, all the way around.

But wait, you say. That makes no sense. Voters are indeed sick to death of Bushian policies, priorities and pugilism, so with the leading GOP presidential candidates -- and so on down the line -- all regurgitating like-minded crappola, virtually any Democratic presidential candidate and the party's Congressional contestants should be thumping the bejesus out of the Grand Old Party.

Not only should the contest careen from the "closely decided," it shouldn't be a contest at all. It should, rather, be a one-sided bloodbath.

That's the should part. But there is, in fact, no electoral disconnect. Voters are likely to fall within their traditional partisan traps largely because the parties' partisan differences are so little differentiated. Voters are surveying our national carnage and proposed cures and thinking, What's the real difference between these nitwits?

And in that sense, the Democratic Party -- as a whole -- is blowing it.

Sure, there are welcome mutterings from the Democratic Congress and the party's presidential candidates about, say, changes in the nation's healthcare system. But on the two 800-pound political gorillas -- a fundamental restructuring of fiscal responsibility leading to far broader progressivism, and, of equal if not contemporary superior importance, America's behavior in and relationship to the world -- voters are hearing only vague and subtle differences of opinion and intent.

And, as the WaPo-ABC poll more than suggests, voters don't want vague and they don't want subtle right now. They know a little tweaking here and a little tweaking there won't fundamentally change our direction at home or abroad. They're screaming -- and probably literally so at pollsters -- that they want a profound and radically different course. In short, a profoundly progressive course.

Yet the Dems offer meekness.

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The Badass Karma of George & Co.

It is the law of unintended consequences, or unexpected 180s, or grand paradoxes, or just plain karma, if you like. But whatever you choose to call it, every passing day corroborates the thesis that Bush-Cheney's nearly exclusive reliance on hard-power muscularity has doomed the United States to the status of a whimpering beggar, of a global laughingstock, of a besieged bad boy, of an overstretched and impotent giant.

If fear, as opposed to respect, was what the Machiavellian duo had in mind, they're coming up stupendously short.

China has us by the financial short ones; the Russian bear is seeing U.S.-cultivated opportunities everywhere; the Middle East speaks for itself; Latin America is toasting rabidly antiAmerican but effective demagogues; Europe is little more than puzzled by, and barely tolerant of, our bad-boy immaturity; and large swaths of Africa remain defiantly adrift in unaligned turmoil.

We are, simply put, increasingly an international joke. Still dangerous and unpredictable, of course, but more in the sense of an untrained monkey with a machine gun. The monkey, however, is about out of bullets -- and the world knows it.

The latest to embrace the joy of Bush-Cheney's imperial impotence is that sterling ally and irrepressible dictator, Generalissimo and Presidente Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Our friendship in the vast currency of military hardware has indeed kept him propped up, but that friendship was also about to bring him down. We took the world's extraordinary good will of the post-9/11 period and promptly launched a religio-ideological assault on it, and fewer Middle East populations took kindly to our rudeness than that of Pakistan's. All of which, to understate matters, has put the general at risk.

So Pervez had a choice: continue kissing the imperially befuddled who fed him and maintain the illusion of righteous democrat as actual democracy proceeded to string him up; or tell the Bushies to shove off, knowing they could do no such thing in all their splendiferous frailty.

Naturally it wasn't much of a choice. One's hanging in the public square isn't normally a dictator's preferred course.

It was the behind-the-scenes contours of Bush-Cheney's mighty powerlessness, however, that made Musharraf's actions yesterday so intriguing, and telling.

The administration frantically begged and coerced and cajoled the little dictator not to do what he did. The Bushies were everywhere in and around Islamabad, like a jilted lover, calling and dropping by to plead for one more shot at the old romance.

Closest was "Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East," reported the New York Times, who "told General Musharraf and his top generals ... on Friday that he would put [his $10 billion in] aid at risk if he seized emergency powers." The admiral's looming threat struck such terror in the heart of Musharraf, 24 hours later he seized emergency powers.

Condi was in the neighborhood, and she too had pleaded with Pervez. But after his rejection she was reduced to bawling about how "highly regrettable" the whole break-up thing was.

But not to worry, is Musharraf's attitude. He'll always have Bill and Condi and Dick and George, because he has them all by the balls.

For Musharraf's is one of those tolerable, lovably huggable nuclear-armed regimes, no matter how intolerably Musharraf acts. Whether good boy or bad, he's pretty much all we've got -- considering we've alienated everyone else.

Thus the Bush administration is "stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.... Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff and hold elections by Jan. 15."

Good luck with that.

But "hope" isn't policy. It is, rather, the pathetic manifestation of a United States as the most gossamer of paper tigers -- the once-baddest bully on the block, inexorably reduced by overexertion to sniveling impotence.

I, for one, choose to call it karma.

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Our Co-Reigning AntiChrists: Schumer and Feinstein

Somewhere within the vertical configuration of Dante's nine circles of hell, there's a mezzanine level reserved for torture-adoring Republican pols to eternally consort with their simpatico brethren of Gestapo Funktionär, KGB apparatchiks and Pinochet's tenientes.

Now under construction, word from below has it, is an annex to that subterranean hellhole, just a bit to the left and a little lower, newly and exclusively reserved for Democratic collaborators.

And Baby Jesus just punched Charlie Schumer and Dianne Feinstein's tickets.

For what transparent farce can they successfully huckster to St. Peter? The one they'll peddle to the Earthly benighted two years or five from now, when yet more evidence of America betrayed comes in the ignominious form of a Torture-Revisited document dump? The farcical plea that goes, simply and sweetly: We didn't know?

Judge Michael Mukasey sat in front of them both -- right there, right in front -- and let loose a consciousness-stream of Gonzales Think that would have warmed the icy heart of Hermann Goering. His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee bore no recognizable relationship to the U.S. Constitution, statutory law, democratic ethics or even fundamental human decency. It was, in short, yet another page of Mein Kampf explicitness, a fascist love letter to dictatorial power, authoritarian ascendancy and rule by capricious thuggery.

When would-be Attorney General Mukasey's overt smiling upon America's vulgar degeneration threw his nomination into question -- as anyone who fondly remembers any Constitutional generalities might imagine it would -- the good judge then backpedaled and obfuscated in literally unbelievable doublespeak.

Did I say that? said he of that famous lawyerly imprecision. Oh my. Those mere hundred hours of preparation must have clouded my clarity. Permit me to backtrack with this written horseshit, which students of Orwell should find just as malodorous, but admirably so.

You know it and I know it. The country knows it, the U.S. Senate knows it, the majority leader knows it and the judiciary committee chairman knows it and Michael Mukasey knows it: The next attorney general will be indistinguishable from the last.

How do we all know it? Because he said so.

Is it at all plausible that Senators Schumer and Feinstein were, in good conscience, innocently in the dark? -- the only two dunderheads among an enlightened 300 million?

Could they, perhaps, be but incurably stupid, and thereby escape the flames of righteous damnation with an extravagant plea of unmitigated gullibility?

Well, not quite, since "one Democratic aide said Schumer" -- with whom Feinstein worked in cooperation -- "gave the administration guidance about what Mukasey should include in [his] letter" of cryptofascistic intent to Senate Democrats.

These two senators held in their hands the most pregnant opportunity yet to body-block and pin the most lawless administration in the history of this declining Republic. Yet they took that opportunity and bargained it away; they sold out their country, their conscientious colleagues and their souls.

We can only hope and pray, at this forsaken point, that Schumer and Feinstein be held in political purgatory for the remainder of their now-obscene, Earthly careers. Then, with Heaven's nod, they can go straight to hell.

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Today is "Help Chuck Decide" Day, so that there may be a better tomorrow

In addition to misguided loyalty, the security of a rubber stamp and a love of bumbling incompetence, at least one other reason for George having wanted the hapless Alberto to linger at Justice is now immensely conspicuous: A replacement -- any replacement, no matter where he or she sat in the ideological spectrum -- could, and perhaps even would, in time, land the Decider Guys in the hoosegow.

The administration's thorny dilemma in the person of Michael Mukasey has made this delightful prospect deliciously clear.

Had the nominee testimonially smiled on the interrogation practice of waterboarding, his nomination would have been as dead as Jacob Marley, for sure. But it also would have had the unfortunate consequence -- for the administration, that is -- of advertising the administration's illegality.

Had he properly condemned it as illegal, however, he would have "open[ed] up Pandora's box," according to one national security law professor: "Such a statement from an attorney general would override existing Justice Department legal opinions and create intense pressure from human rights groups to open a criminal investigation of interrogation practices."

"You would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it," said Scott Silliman of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University. "Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that’s why [Mukasey will] never say it’s torture."

And that, of course, is why he never did, even though he knows it is. Mukasey got muscled into the same, literal protection racket that Gonzales had so happily organized.

The administration always knew its authorized interrogation practices were grossly illegal; hence it lived in dread of any change at Justice that might bring an accounting one day closer.

As former Justice official Jack Goldsmith noted in his recent book, "The Terror Presidency": "I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators, acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment, would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls."

"Criminal penalties." What a lovely, and overdue, phrase.

But for now, it's crunch time not for the administration, but the United States Senate. Specifically, Senate Democrats; more specifically, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and yet even more specifically, Democratic-member Senator Charles Schumer, who first recommended the compromised Musakey as the befuddled Gonzales' replacement.

A confirmation vote in committee is scheduled for Tuesday. Astoundingly (or not), "If Mr. Mukasey’s nomination reaches the Senate floor, moderate Democrats appear likely to join Republicans to produce a majority for confirmation."

That would be the "moderation" of confirming a continuing cover-up of some of the most despicable criminal acts ever committed by high-level officials. At Justice. In the White House. Its approving confirmation. Go figure.

But Mukasey's nomination need not reach the Senate floor, just so Senate Democrats can further debase themselves, further stain the nation's reputation, and commit yet another offense against national and international law and basic human decency.

As of this morning, it appears it all comes down to Chuck Schumer's deciding vote. And what does indeed absolutely astound is that "Mr. Schumer says he is undecided."

So let's help Chuck decide, the poor dear. His number is 202-224-6542.

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Here's a winning Democratic strategy to try for a change ... "Dear Republicans: Shove it"

Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, last week proposed what's been described as "a sweeping overhaul of the tax code" -- the one George W. Bush and his happy Congressional majority started monkeying with in 2001 and is now the nabob-caressing, deficit-ballooning envy of plutocratic slackers everywhere.

But in doing something so specific -- however much needed -- Mr. Rangel also exposed -- however indirectly -- the almost laughable timidity and easy intimidation of a progressive, representative democracy.

His bill is infinitely sensible, moderate, and even tame. It ventures not into the battlefield of class warfare. It would, however, "increase tax rates on the wealthy" -- especially those earning more than a half-million a year; "eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which is increasingly raising tax bills for many middle- and upper-income people; provide additional breaks for low- and middle-income households; and overhaul corporate taxes by reducing rates while tightening tax breaks."

Pretty mild, right? Not really so much a "sweeping overhaul" as just a few small steps inching toward fairness and equity -- something any reasonable person or responsible pol would get behind.

Naturally, lacking both the motivation for reason and a sense of responsibility, and merely with political malice aforethought, Republicans immediately "loosed a fusillade of attacks." It's what they do, and it's why we love them.

The most preprogrammed talking head in the history of American politics, the inestimable Mitt Romney, instantly condemned Mr. Rangel's proposal as the "largest [tax] increase in the history of America," while Rangel's Ways and Means Republican colleague, Jim McCrery, denounced it as "the mother of all tax hikes." Whenever any Democrat proposes so much as a hike in dog-tag licensing, one needn't wait long for some Republican somewhere to condemn it as the largest tax increase ever.

Enter one suggestion of fiscal responsibility, and the other just pops out. It's some kind of Newtonian Law.

What is unsettling, however, is how Mr. Rangel's Democratic colleagues reacted to his proposal.

To be sure, there were progressive voices on the outside, nodding in admiration and approval. Said, for instance, Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center for Budget Policy and Priorities, "His bill is both brave and well designed. The level of taxes owed by Americans under the Rangel bill is still lower than what they owed when Bush came in. The charge that it’s the biggest tax increase in history is nonsense." Well, yeah, like love and marriage going together, we'll always have Republicans and nonsense.

Yet what was the reaction from progressive voices on the inside?

You likely don't need to brace yourself, since you likely know what's coming. And sure enough, here it comes: "Democrats were lukewarm," said press reports.

They "have distanced themselves from the Rangel bill even while expressing approval of its general objectives of making the tax system more progressive, with the burden rising on those with the highest incomes." And, just to narrow the range of voices in question, when "asked if she endorsed the plan, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said simply, 'no.'"

I, as you do, fully understand Ms. Pelosi & Co.'s concerns. There's an election coming, and the opposition is looking for any opportunity to beat Democrats like a rug on the issue of taxes.

But, on the other hand, there's always an election coming. In addition, whenever Republicans can't find something real and tangible with which to beat Democrats, they just make something up. As a sideline to "loosen[ing] a fusillade of attacks," it's what they do.

Democrats have become far too accepting of the game. They commonly assume the attacks will trump reason, and rarely suggest beforehand that the inevitably attacking Republicans can simply go to hell.

The Democratic attitude should be to let the GOPers beat, or chew, the carpet all they want, while doggedly reinforcing the straightforward concept that the people -- that would be the people who put them there -- understand just as well as their elected representatives that though attacks will come, reason and responsibility are not defenseless.

Democrats should stop acting as though they are.

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