I guess when you live inside one of these…

You don’t dare move.

Once upon a time, Republican’s were known to have consciences. Even the most conservative among them would rise up from time to time over matters of principle.

Consider this statement from Representative Lawrence Hogan, a Republican from Maryland, from over thirty years ago, as the Watergate scandal was coming to a head:

“The thing that's so appalling to me is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't, in righteous indignation, rise up and say, "Get out of here, you're in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the presidency of the United States." But my President didn't do that. He sat there and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Consider that statement made by an agonized man when he was confronted with evidence that the leader of his Party had lied to the country, while you read this from the Sunday Times:

The Sunday Times - Britain

May 29, 2005

RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war
MICHAEL SMITH

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal.
…

The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting — the same document that revealed the prime minister’s agreement during a summit with President George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime change — laid out the American war plans.

They opted on August 5 for a “hybrid plan” in which a continuous air offensive and special forces operations would begin while the main ground force built up in Kuwait ready for a full-scale invasion.

The Ministry of Defence figures, provided in response to a question from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, show that despite the lack of an Iraqi reaction, the air war began anyway in September with a 100-plane raid.

The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only “entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems”.

George Bush had pretty clearly decided to go to war against Iraq about five minutes after “Fat Tony” Scalia anointed him President in 2001. Probably even earlier than that. Probably the day his Daddy was humiliated by Bill Clinton, GW said to himself, “Some day when I’m all grows up, if I can stay sober long enough, I’mna git that Saddam fella. Show him and Daddy and them fucking Liberals who the Big Man is.”

Now add the substance of the “Downing Street Memo” to the scale.

Go back and add the ignored warnings of a pending terrorist attack.

Add in the lies told by “Curveball”.

The lies told before Congress.

The lies told in front of the UN.

The lies in the State of the Union Address.

The lies during the Presidential Debates.

The lies about torture and murder and “extraordinary rendition.”

There’s one helluva long list of lies to choose from -- just pick a half dozen of your favorites.

So to the many Moderate Republicans who are angling for their tiny places in history – for the elementary school cafeterias and highway on-ramps that they hope will one day be named for them – I would ask in all seriousness just how in the Hell do you think history will judge you?

At this point, you know the Administration was and is lying to you.
You know that our children are dying for those lies and the treasure-house of respect and honor that two centuries of successive Administration have carefully stored up is now being pissed away into the sands of Iraq.
You know that liars and thugs are being appointed to vital, high-profile jobs.
You know the courts are being packed with ultra right wing lunatics.

You are the same people and belong to the same Party that was more than happy to spend tens of millions of dollars going after Clinton on the whiff of a hint of a suggestion of something untoward, and you were quite willing to sit at that fishing hole and lob dynamite into it for seven long years until you knocked something loose.

In light of that, what I don’t quite understand is how you’re going to explain to posterity how you refused to bother to even investigate any of this. How you’re going to sell “I never knew” and “I never bothered to find out” to the history books as anything other that rank cowardice and towering hypocrisy once the multiple, interlocking Bush Ponsi Schemes fall apart, given how much evidence of wrongdoing is right there in front of you.