As a newly minted left-wing America hating dhimmi, I think one of the things that amazes me is the visceral anger of the right wing blogosphere. Last night, incredulous, I watched as Dana Milbank, Chris Matthews, and some ad exec basically decided that ‘Bush’ had won the debate over Iraq this week:
MATTHEWS: I agree with that, he didn’t know. But if he believed that this war was making America safer, wouldn’t he have said so?
DELLA FEMINA: I think that he just won people over by saying, I haven’t got an answer. Sometimes coming up with a fast answer will—there are people who are looking at him and saying, I know we should get out, the surge isn’t working. They now believe that they’re right and the surge isn’t working. There are other people saying, I’m telling you, the surge seems to be working. They believe—so he didn’t change anyone.
What they wanted was status quo. They wanted everyone to say, Well, gee, this guy is—he’s very impressive. He’s a war hero.
I think the biggest mistake that was made was the anti—the “Petraeus Betray us” that ran just before that. I mean, what a setup that was. Snow could get up and say, Gee, this is a hero. How could we treat this man this way?
***MILBANK: Well, as a tactical matter, Bush has won this round. But this actually, purely politically, makes it much more difficult for him and his party next year. This means there won’t be a massive reduction of troops before the election. This is going to be going on next summer now. So they’ve kicked the can down the road. They’ll be able to do that until March. But this is exactly what the Republicans didn’t want.
General Petraeus came to DC, offered what is essentially fact-free testimony, and admitted in a fleeting moment of candor that he, like the rest of us, doesn’t think this war is making us any safer, the Democrats are pre-emptively rolling over and playing dead, the “surge” will continue on until it is physically impossible, and if you survey the blogosphere, it is the right that is angry- about an ad in a newspaper none of them fucking read anyway.
And I just don’t get it. What the hell do they have to be angry about? Other than immigration and social security, hasn’t Bush given them everything they wanted and demanded? What, exactly, have the defeatocrats stopped? Name one thing that has been denied Bush in his prosecution of this war. One dollar that wasn’t budgeted. Even today, at the height of the Democratic opposition, and the Bush administration is adhering consistently to the doctrine of “Doing Whatever the Fuck We Want.” The troops aren’t going anywhere until we don’t have enough troops. That isn’t a Democrat forced drawdown/withdrawal, it is a shortage of troops.
And so it is for everything, tax cuts, domestic policy, torture, surveillance, judicial picks- you name it. Bush has done whatever he wants, the right has supported him the whole way, and the opposition from ‘teh left’ can charitably be called inconsequential. Christ on a crutch, it took a beating at the polls (the only ones that count) to force Bush to accept Rumsfeld’s resignation, and Gonzales stayed on until he was literally the laughingstock of the legal world, both domestic and abroad. And does anyone want to place a bet that there will be little more than token opposition to Ted Olson as the next AG? Anyone?
So again- what are they so damned angry about? I don’t get it. I used to throw around the term the “angry left” myself, but watching this administration do whatever it wants to the cheerleading of imbeciles and first rate hacks, I am surprised the left is not angrier. Bush, the worst President of my lifetime and possible the last century, turned a 51% tightly fought election into a mandate, while the Democrats can’t figure out how to remove one god damned troop from Iraq with 60+% of the public furious about the war.
Again, I don’t get it. What are they so damned mad about? If they had to put up with the crap the left is putting up with, they would be burning cars in the street. If the roles were reversed, the right wouldn’t be pooling their money for an ad in the NY Times- they would burn the god damned building down after stoning the editorial board to death. And that is putting it mildly.
And why are the Democrats so damned hopeless?