I don’t think anyone will argue that it is better than anything regurgitated by Bill Kristol, and he makes some interesting points and a compelling argument that a decisive defeat of Cheney Republicanism would have been better for the country, but this portion made me think he will fit right in with our nation’s elites:
But the argument isn’t going away. It will be with us as long as the threat of terrorism endures. And where the Bush administration’s interrogation programs are concerned, we’ve heard too much to just “look forward,” as the president would have us do. We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.
Got it? Prosecuting those who torture is “taking leave” of your senses.
I used to write stuff like that a couple years ago. I used to agree with Chris Matthews that Bush was someone you wanted to have a beer with and that Gore sighed too much in the debates. Also, at the time, I was writing about all the WMD Iraq had and how they were an existential threat, how of course the Bush administration has a plan for Iraq after the war and how shock and awe was just the bee’s knees, that of course we could stabilize Iraq with 150k troops, and I made fun of the anti-war protesters and that really, you shouldn’t blame the federal for their crappy response to Hurricane Katrina- natural disasters just happen!
The difference between me and Ross, though, is that I apparently paid attention the last eight years.
Having said all that, a marked improvement over Bill Kristol. I actually thought a couple times while reading it, instead of retching.
** Atanarjuat **
Douthat’s intro Op-Ed piece seemed to be more ironic than serious.
Very few people like Cheney, and having him on any Presidential ticket would only guarantee a blowout win for the opposition.
Ultimately, ironic or not, I agree with Douthat’s overall point. Put everything — and I mean EVERYTHING (not just what Cheney or Boehner cherrypicks) — on the table and let the chips fall where they may.
-A
geg6
Douthat is being too clever by half here. But then, I never expected him to be as mind-numbingly stupid as Kristol simply because that isn’t possible. But in my estimation, that really isn’t saying much to support a finding that Douthat is smart or that anything he says makes me think. He’s a complete idiot and all you have to do is read anything he says about women in any context to know that. But, for him, this is a relatively auspicious debut if only because he actually used the word torture in the op-ed. But the stupid can’t help but leak through, as you point out, John. You have to be insane, apparently, to believe in the rule of law.
magisterludi
Will the proxy convictions of England and Graner not slake the democratic thirst for “revenge”?
Really, shouldn’t there be calls from the Villagers for the immediate release of these poor, misunderstood patriots?
zmulls
Yeah, but at least he came out in favor of some sort of investigative process — let’s find out what happened. He hastens to add “not for prosecution!!!!!!” but he won’t want to be in the way of that rolling snowball.
Nobody *wants* prosecutions going in (at least many don’t). But as you uncover rocks and see what slime is under them, people will slowly change their minds. Anyone who has qualms about prosecuting people for what CNN tells them are “political policy differences” is not going to suddenly slap his desk and say “Oh! NOW I’m for prosecution” — that person is going to come to it slowly, over time.
A good long investigation with plenty of revelation will turn the worm.
wvng
I actually rather liked it. Particularly this:
He was saying that a Cheney run would have exposed the repuglican party for what it is, without the slightly less crazy veneer that Bush put on it. And forced the party to face the reality that no one likes them. All good.
dmsilev
From the article, about Cheney running instead of McCain,
This is exactly backwards. The base of the Republican party defines “real conservative” largely based on social issues. Tax cuts for the rich may get professional Republicans excited, but it’s abortion and The Gay and Family Values which gets the core of the GOP voting bloc.
Sarah Palin, or if you want a milder facade Mike Huckabee, is the distillation of the sort of conservatism that’s increasingly dominating the Republican party.
-dms
gbear
…but your thought was about retching.
cleek
eat me.
Cat Lady
I agree with Atanarjuat.
/gobsmacked
gnomedad
@dmsilev:
I think you’re right, and this leads me to wonder whether “the base” is really personally affected by these issues or whether carrying on about these things gives them a sense of community and significance they are unable to find elsewhere (the infamous “clinging”).
Napoleon
I have been saying this for years now, the best thing the Democrats can do from a political standpoint is go balls to the walls with prosecuting people who tortured (and specifically the higher ups).
Not that that is the reason they should. They should because it is the right thing to do.
joe from Lowell
That’s a pretty clever use of language. On top of his other sins, Bill Kristol was just such a godawful dull writer.
J.D. Rhoades
Seriously? He seriously contends that torture is a tenet of conservatism? That rumbling sound you hear is Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley spinning in their graves.
Napoleon
@zmulls:
This is absolutely right. I don’t care what the polls say, after all the facts are aired the American people will he against torture by something like a 65-35% margin.
Svensker
@Cat Lady:
He’s either been podded or come out from behind his spoof persona. He’s been this way for a few weeks now. Maybe it was the asterixes.
Ash Can
@Cat Lady:
Heh. It seems the asterisks around Atanarjuat’s name indicate that he’s given up the spoof shtick and is now posting as himself.
RememberNovember
Don’t you have to prosecute before you pass judgement?
Bootlegger
Arghh, I just followed a link on another thread to Redstate, and like a child gawking at a 10-car pileup I looked to close. Now my brain is fried and full of stoopid, I will have to work hard to keep from being a moran all day.
On the other hand, the comments after Larison’s piece on torture (link below) are the kind of thinking conservatives that give me hope that the loyal opposition is still, well, loyal.
Bootlegger
@RememberNovember: That’s never stopped anyone before.
ccham44
Do bees even have knees? And if so, what’s so great about them?
used to be disgusted
@dmsilev and gnomedad:
You’ve got it right: the base cares more about social issues than Douthat is admitting in this column. And it’s a telling omission, because he agrees with them about the social issues … just not about stress positions or supply-side gospel.
But still, it’s refreshing to see a conservative columnist who is interested in distinguishing between different aspects of conservatism, instead of just smearing an even coat of oily sophistry over everything.
NonyNony
@magisterludi:
Ah, but you see, those people were sadistic monsters. Cheney and the other elites who approved of (and indeed it appears demanded that they use) the techniques used there were Patriotic Men who were just trying to Keep The Homeland Safe and are now Being Completely Unfairly Targetted by the Dirty Fucking Leftist Hippies Out For Revenge. Just like the brave Villagers themselves.
norbizness
There’s nothing more disconcerting than a David Broder/Richard Cohen outlook in a late-twentysomething. Apparently all he believes with fervor are those previously-disclosed icky social conservative things.
Apsaras
Jesus, Ross, you couldn’t shave the neckbeard for your official NYTimes columnist photo? The new face of conservatism looks grubby.
joe from Lowell
All arthropods have knees. That’s what makes them arthropods.
Dennis-SGMM
At least Douthat mentioned the name “Bush”. His idea that running Cheney would have forced a choice between Bush/Cheney Republicanism and Something Else is an interesting thought. I doubt that Cheney’s loss would have forced the party in a new direction or even occaisioned any more soul-searching than McCain’s did. The GOP is too deeply invested in today’s odious form of conservatism and they’ve decided that it cannot fail, it can only be failed.
LauraM
I don’t think it’s that simple. I think the fear of “soci alism” (did I do that right?), a hostility to any idea of active government (except where related to defense), and yes–much as I hate to admit it of a party I was once a member of–approval of “tough” measures like torture–are all a huge part of the current definition of “real conservatism” in the eyes of its hard-core base. I disagree with Douthat that it involves any disinterest in social policy, though. All of those four strains are a part of it.
They’re in conflict to a certain extent, though. The Republican party really isn’t a unified bloc. Some find the social-policy aspects more appealing, and some the anti-government aspect, and so on. This has always been the case. The difference now is that, having lost in the last couple of elections, the coalition among them is breaking down. They’re arguing about which group is more to blame.
I think part of Douthat’s column is in response to that. Certain Republican writers have been advocating jettisoning the social issues like abortion. This in itself might not be a bad idea from my point of view (Independent, would like to have two viable parties to choose from), but the advocates are usually talking about abandoning the social issues combined with a doubling-down on the economic, anti-government, and “tough-guy” aspects of Conservatism as exemplified by Cheney. In other words, they want to absolve those aspects of Conservatism of any blame in the losses, and blame it entirely on social issues. Douthat, being a social conservative, obviously wouldn’t like that.
In general, I liked the article. Basically, the idea is that if Cheney had run–or if not Cheney, some other representative of that particular strain of Conservatism–it might have been a good thing. As he said, then we could have had some of these current debates during the campaign. And it would have been made clear to some people in the Republican party that it wasn’t social issues (or at least, not just social issues) that are unpopular about Conservativism. In particular, we wouldn’t have so many people seemingly convinced that support for torture is a winning issue.
At least I hope they’re mistaken about it being a winning issue, for the sake of my faith in my country.
I also agree that at this point, we need all the information out on the table, or at least as much of it as possible. On prosecution-well, I’m not so certain as he is that Democrats would have to be out of their senses to do that, but I do think it’s a good thing to move slowly on it. Start with getting the information, and let the prosecution question go for now.
Am I rambling?
Col. Klink
GOP rule # 437. Public officials should never be called to account for their actions unless it involves a blow job.
Skippy-san
Regarding prosecutions-you may not like it, but Douhat is right. For the Democrats to push for that is to take leave of your senses. They can’t play innocent on this and regardless of how attractive it may seem-the results are worse than moving on.
Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon because it was the best option for the country politically. Did not mean that Nixon was not guilty-it just meant the practical costs of continuing the case were too high.
Keep cheering on the prosecutions though-and watch the rest of Obama’s agenda go down in flames. It will become the albatross that could potentially destroy his Presidency.
Zandar
So lemme get this straight.
Cheney should have run not because he had any chance to win, but to make the purge of moderates sooner rather than now.
Galvanize the Wingnuttery!
Hunter Gathers
If Douthat had done nothing more that properly use his spell checker, it would be an improvement over Krystol.
He’s a douchenozzle. All the Times did was swap one shithead for another.
Typical Catholic hypocrite. Assholes like Douthat are one of the many reasons I left the Church. I’m fairly sure that the Vatican does not look too kindly on the subject of torture.
Bootlegger
@Skippy-san: So at what point are political elites held responsible before the law? It seems to me that it is always a “bad time” to have a messy investigation.
El Cid
I can only imagine the horror and vileness we would have had to endure by those who felt the Republican campaign of 2008 failed to be right wing and reactionary enough.
Napoleon
@Skippy-san:
BS – the cost of that were ski high. I think the worst abuses in the last 8 1/2 years would not have occured if Nixon was tried. Nixon getting off lead to Reagans abuses (Iran-Contra , etc.) none of which were really prosecuted and you had a lot of the same bad actors from that turn up in Dubya’s White House. The way to put an end to it is to put them in jail and refuse to confirm anyone in the future that was involved.
A PS, on top of it we now clearly have a society with two sets of rules, one for people like me and 99% of the population and one for the elites. It is time the rules are applied to them. That is not going to loose Obama support, and in fact it will be very smart politically for him to do.
Dennis-SGMM
Does anyone remember any editorialist writing “Not so that we can impeach – unless the Republican Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus,” in 1998? Thought not.
Hunter Gathers
@Skippy-san:
To compare Nixon’s crimes to Bush’s is way beyond the pale. Nixon was mearly a criminal. Bush is a fucking monster. To not hold these people accountable for what they did is to guarantee that this will happen again. The sycophants on the right have already said as much.
You are aware that Obama cannot tell Holder whom he can or cannot prosecute. It was never Obama’s decision to begin with. If evidence comes to light that Bush Administration officials clearly broke the law, then Holder has no choice but to prosecute. Or he can resign. Justice knows no ideological boundaries. The law is the law, whether you are liberal or conservative.
Evil Bender
a marked improvement over Bill Kristol
They could have replaced Kristol with Billy Bass, and this would remain true.
demimondian
John, your self-criticism about Katrina is unwarranted. You held out for waiting to judge, and perhaps attacked the Governor more than she deserved — but you certainly didn’t take a “shit happens” line about the Federal response.
RH Potfry
Cheney! Cmon, folks. It’s like eating vegetables. They look ugly and taste horrible, but they are good for you.
LauraM
Since I think I did ramble earlier, I want to try for a shorter version. I think Douthat’s article is best understood as a part of the internal debate among Conservatives over, primarily, who’s to blame for their losses, and secondarily, what’s their direction forward.
He doesn’t think social conservatives should get all the blame–and I agree with him. (Now he may also think they should get none of the blame, and there I would disagree with him, but we’re at least partially on the same page.)
But speaking of elites–within the Conservative Washington elites, there’s been some discussion about whether or how much social issues have hurt the party, but not much about whether the tendency to decry any tax increase whatsoever or any government involvement in the economy as “soci alism”, or strong support for things like expanded executive power and torture, have hurt the party. He thinks there should be. In that, I don’t think he really does fit into the elite at all.
Okay, I’ll leave y’all alone now. You’re probably sick of my wordiness by now.
demimondian
@Skippy-san: Listen, dude, anyone who still thinks that there’s any case to be made for keeping the service academies male only is not a “middle of the road” kind of guy. He’s a brainless Neanderthal who has forgotten that the Academies and the Uniformed Services serve the nation.
Sucks to have been so wrong for so long, doesn’t it?
demimondian
@RH Potfry: Cheney as vegetable — no -conscience- conscious activity, no heart, no soul.
Yeah, I think it’s a great metaphor.
RH Potfry
Oh, demimondian. He’s got heart and soul. It’s just not your flavor.
Dennis-SGMM
@LauraM:
It would be nice to think that the conservatives would engage in some introspection about their losses. They are resolutely not doing so and instead are doubling down on ideas that were moribund decades ago. They believe that the losers are to blame for losing elections: they weren’t conservative enough so they lost. Rush says it, they believe it, that settles it.
John PM
What has hurt the Republican Party is that none of their ideas actually work.
Tax cuts do not increase wealth.
Trickle down economics does not actually get money to those lower on the food chain.
Little or no regulation does not result in optimizing the free market.
Most women (and most men, let’s be honest) want to have the option to terminate a pregnancy.
Fewer and fewer people hate gays and lesbians and see no reason why they should not be allowed to marry and do all the things that heterosexual couples do.
Government in fact is not the problem; government agencies run by hacks and incompetents who have no idea what they are doing is the problem.
The idea of “limited government” is nonsensical in the modern era in a country of 300 million people where anyone can travel to any part of the globe within 24 hours.
As others have said in numerous comments and posts on this site, the true fight now is in the Democratic Party between the traditional Democrats and the Blue Dogs. Honestly, we mostly know what we need to do. The question is how we best go about doing it (e.g., health care).
The Republicans are not taking part in this debate. Rather, they are stuck trying to defend the crimes of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. They continue to try to demonize their opponents, but this is not working because a sizeable majority of Americans now know what colossal f-ck-ups the Republicans are.
I do not know what the Republican Party has to offer any more, other than supporting the fact that the President now has the power to imprison any American for any reason and torture that person to the point of insanity. And tax cuts! The ultimate cognitive dissonance for the Republican Party is that the federal government is not competent to determine how to spend “our money,” yet is perfectly competent to determine who is a “threat” and make that person disapper.
I look at my Republican Congressman and wonder what the f-ck he has been doing for the past 2+ years. I have written to him several times on the OLC memos and have not received a response or seen any public comments from him. I am going to write to him again this morning and I will let him now that I will take his continued silence as approval of all the abuses that Bush perpetrated.
Comrade Dread
Since when did conservatives embrace the national therapy/Oprah option when it comes to crime?
“No, we don’t need to actually prosecute anyone who did bad things. That’s just silly and vindictive. We just need a nice safe forum where everyone can talk about what they did and how they feel about it and have a national group hug and cry and once that happens we can all have some closure and maybe a book deal!”
Sweet Christmas…
LauraM
@Dennis-SGMM: There has been a little of that self-reflection going on. Douthat wants there to be more of it, and for it to include issues other than the social-conservative ones. He may indeed be fighting a losing battle there, but you can’t fault him for that.
Of course, the longer such people are shouted down by the others, the more of them will decide to just leave rather than keep trying.
@demimondian: As long as you stay away from social issues, he is a middle of the road kind of guy. Actually a bit to the liberal side economically, I believe. No one’s one-dimensional.
Okay, I lied. I didn’t go away. Also, I need to figure out how you get those links with people’s names.
Cat Lady
@LauraM:
Laura – click on the arrow next to the time.
jenniebee
Yeah, and whatever flavor of conservatism just tanked in the polls/elections, that’s not the “Real Conservatism.” The idea that a Cheney nomination would have led to a national debate over this kind of conservatism that would have settled the matter once and for a decade or so is laughable on its face. First off, it’s not like Cheney and his policies haven’t been around for a few years now, and second, it’s not like that particular brand of “conservatism” has ever polled well. If it’s not settled now, nothing short of razing the Heritage Foundation and salting the earth at its foundations will do the trick.
But even besides that, does anybody really think that, if everything had played out as Douthat imagines and we’d had a nice national dialog about whether or not it’s moral to waterboard Sean Hannity (jury’s out on that one), that Douthat wouldn’t be right back writing just about exactly the same column today anyway, because the conservatism that was defeated in the last election, that was just because Cheney’s personal numbers are so low, not because his ideas are unpopular, and besides, that wasn’t the “Real Conservatism” anyway – the “Real Conservatism,” according to this narrative, is what’s being practiced by that starbursty Sarah Palin up in Alaska and if only she’d been nominated, the country would have had a chance to debate its merits.
Other pundits have shifting goalposts; Douthat’s goalposts do the Electric Slide.
PeakVT
It would be nice to think that the conservatives would engage in some introspection about their losses.
Yeah, but can they? Mindless obedience and introspection tend not to go together.
I think it will take another electoral blowout to make conservatives do serious a re-evaluation.
Cat Lady
@jenniebee:
Joe Scar and Pat Buchanan discussed the 21% self-identified Republican number after talking to Shelby from AL this morning. Joe and Pat agreed that Republicans need conservatives more than conservatives need Republicans. Of course, neither one of them bothered to define those terms. As Greenwald has said ad nauseum, conservatism has been failed, and can only be failed. Conservatism is fixed as an eternal truth in space and time in all its glory for all humanity to aspire to.
JenJen
@Dennis-SGMM:
This is exactly what’s been driving me up a tree lately. Every time I bring up the previous administration in mixed company, I am greeted with a chorus of “Live in the now! Live in the now!”
You know, if Ari Fleischer, Michael Gerson, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Tom Delay would get off my f’n TV screen and go crawl back under their rocks, maybe I could “live in the now.”
HyperIon
@Cat Lady:
Atanarjuat is now example #1 for the argument against torture. The commentariat here engaged him instead of waterboarding him. And he has come around. (Actually I think he just got tired of his spoof persona.)
HyperIon
@PeakVT:
Excellent point.
I’m thinking mindless obedience will triumph over introspection.
Cat Lady
@HyperIon:
I’ve been told it’s the asterisks. If we can get the rest of the wingnuts to drop ALL CAPS, maybe they’ll listen to a well-reasoned appeal to sanity.
/moonbat
gwangung
@HyperIon:
Around here. I think he does it fine elsewhere.
Corner Stone
@John PM:
I disagree. All of their ideas work – just not for the populace.
It’s not that the Republicans are just ass-backward on ideas for the country, because they are not. Their policies clearly have a winner. It’s only after it’s damn near too late that a majority of the electorate now realizes this fact, and further, realizes that they do not belong to the subgroup “winners”.
Redhand
Why even bother reading the rest of this clown’s column after this?
Given the magnitude of Bush and Cheney’s crimes, it’s really a constitutional imperative (in the sense, “Do our laws mean anything?”) that these verbrecher be indicted and prosecuted. Otherwise, we really do become an international joke, and the rest of the world can tell the State Department to stick its annual country reports on human rights practices where the sun don’t shine.
Dennis-SGMM
@HyperIon:
Not just mindless obedience but enthusiastically wholehearted mindlessness. Look at their cartoonish budget, resolutions calling on the Democrats to rename their party, and the kowtowing to a radio buffoon. They have drunk deeply of the stupid and they like the taste.
slag
The one thing that Ross Douthat’s column utterly overlooks is the one thing that enabled the Bush Administration to get away with the damage it did: reality is not incredibly important to conservatives. Dick Cheney currently has like an 11% approval rating, and if he ran and lost, does anyone think that conservatives would be behaving any differently than they are now? Do we really think it would have led to even the remotest level of introspection on their parts? Or on the parts of the commentariat? Seriously?
The Republican Party was beaten very badly by a jr. senator from Chicago named Barack HUSSEIN Obama! And these people are still blaming their loss on the LIBRUL media and high taxes. Everyone living in the reality-based community already knows that Dick Cheney was the biggest loser in this election, so would having his name actually on the ballot have changed anything really?
Of course Douthat doesn’t blame social conservatives for their loss because Douthat is a social conservative. These people will always have an excuse for their failures, but that excuse will always ALWAYS reside outside themselves.
slag
Also, this is the same party–Ross Douthat, especially–that thought running Sarah Palin for VP was a super swell idea. Divorced from reality.
Brachiator
@wvng:
Sweet Jebus on a pogo-stick. And these pre-emptive wars would have paid for themselves?
And given some of the questions about John McCain’s health and durability, I can’t imagine anyone voting for Bad-Heart Cheney. Any vote for Cheney would really have been a vote for his running mate.
And this is the best the NY Times can come up with?
Comrade Dread
I think the problem more with the current Republican Party is that they have divorced practicality from ideology and scorn analysis and introspection.
Well, tax cuts can increase immediate wealth by freeing up money for other uses. It also eliminates some of the dead weight loss associated with taxation. And yes, it can (emphasis on ‘can’) spur more investment or savings. However, as far as government revenues go, there is a point, that I believe we have long since passed, when future tax cuts reduce overall revenue.
Also, when you continue to increase the government’s budget and spending and decrease the revenue flowing into it, you are not making the necessary trade offs to support this ‘wealth creation’. You are simply trading one form of taxation with a more inefficient form (i.e. inflation) that hides the true costs of government from the people and stops us all from having a much needed debate about what exactly we want from our government and whether or not those limited priorities that we should focus on would include stealth fighters or universal health coverage or an expanded safety net.
Republicans refuse to do the necessary thinking on this end, because, in my opinion, they are not really serious about reforming the government or making a realistic assessment of our priorities. They want to have their cake (tax cuts) and eat it too (spend over a trillion dollars on war toys.)
It does to a certain point, in that general overall improving economic conditions make everyone’s lives better, but the overly simplistic trickle down rhetoric Republicans have lazily used since Reagan’s era ignores other factors, such as: stagnant real wages, rising health care costs that would eat larger and larger percentage of any trickle down money the middle class gets, and the simple fact that the rich guy getting the tax cut might just opt to not reinvest his money into a business or might not opt to reinvest his money within the local US economy.
Again, I think the problem is more of a lack of honest debate and thought. Regulations can be good or bad. They can be quite bad when they unfairly favor larger corporate interests at the expense of smaller competitors and price others out of the market entirely as some regulations do now. Regulations can be exceedingly good when they police the worst instincts of man: fraud, unthinking greed, etc. Republicans need to ditch the unthinking anti-government rhetoric and focus on finding and eliminating regulations that are generally harmful to small businesses while promoting the good kind of regulation that would stop things like the derivatives bubble.
This is more problematic. If you believe that a human fetus is a person (and I do), it is impossible to consider an alternative other than banning abortion.
You could, however, be slightly more in line with America if you allowed health and rape exemptions, medically necessary exemptions, and spend more time promoting use of and access to birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies to begin with.
Another case where their ideology failed them.
Had they spent the time acknowledging that the current laws were insufficient to offer gays and lesbian long term couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples and actively promoted changing the law to give all registered couples the same rights and responsibilities, while promoting detailed protections for religious exemptions, they could have avoided the gay marriage issue altogether.
Instead they fought an all or nothing battle, and they are losing.
It largely depends upon what exactly you are talking about. I think it would be better to say that government is not always a problem. In fact, it can be beneficial. But that would require getting into complex debates about what the role of government should be in society and about whether or not a proposed solution/law/regulation would be harmful or beneficial to society and whether or not it falls into line with the Constitution’s role for the national government.
I don’t think it’s nonsensical. I just don’t think it will ever happen, and I don’t think it would be the panacea that Republican ideologues do. In fact, I would predict that if 50% of the government budget and services were cut, you would simply see a dispersal of those Federal functions down to a state level. Except some states that are tax takers would have to cut services or raise their state taxes to maintain them.
Ultimately, this might be a good thing, but it would be a radical shift in how the system works now, and you would have to make a more persuasive case than simply shouting “Federalism!” and “Tea Party!” Which I don’t think the Republican party is capable of making right now, even setting aside the fact that Republicans have shown absolutely no inclination to actually reduce the size of the Federal government when they had the best chance of doing so.
AnneLaurie
“We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.”
As long as ‘we’ promise not to get all snarky about that “rule of law” and “criminal code” nit-picking, Ross Douchehat wouldn’t mind looking at more Abu Graib pictures. At least he can feel secure they won’t involve much in the way of filthy, terrifying ladybits…
Comrade Luke
I stopped at the headline. Cheney for President?
John, I’m really amazed that given all the stuff you listed that you went along with, it was Terry Schaivo of all things that put you over the edge. It seems like that’s small potatoes compared to everything else, yet for some reason that was your breaking point.
Oh well, I’m sure you feel proud at having blazed the trail for Arlen Specter :)