In which Liddy Dole dons her Mary-Matalin-Nicholson-as-The-Joker Fright Mask and tightly grins her way through the Important Issues of the Day.
And we watch no less than three new talking points whelped squalling and misshapen from Ken Mehlman’s diseased womb.
Oh, be still my throbbing stamen!
Watch for them to be regurgitated from the bibble-spigot of a wingnut near you.
Talking Point The First – Democrats have a Sekrit Agenda to raise your taxes and surrender to the Terr’ists that they won’t tell you about, but We Will!
Talking Point The Second – “
Talking Point The Third – All wars have had mistakes, so STFU.
This was the pre-post-Labor Day announcement of the GOP strategery for victory in the Fall.
This is their ground game: rerunning the ’02 and ’04 but Faster, Louder and with 1000% More Hysteria. It means the next couple of months are going to be brutal, because it signals that somewhere, behind some crypt door in the Cheneybunker, the Rubberstamp Congressional Ducklings have been subjected to a Come to Jebus Meeting with a cattle prod.
They’re going All In with the Dimwit Dauphin from Crawford, his Vice President of Nottingham and Mad Dog Rummy. Doesn’t matter how badly they’ve fucked up everything they have touched. How deeply they have crippled this country. How much poison they have had to dump into the well of public discourse to hang onto power. How ecstatic Osama bin Laden is to have a human terrorist recruiting Pez Dispenser like Bush running American off of one cliff after another.
There is one way and one way ONLY that the Party of God stays in power: Fear.
Because insisting that “Hope Triumphant” is a basic, American Value is just the last and most intractable of those irritatingly upbeat and socially responsible Roosevelt New Deal propositions the Republicans so venomously despise.
And since Hope is not an Evil Gummint Program they can gut, de-fund or administrate out of existence, Republicans strain to overthrow it in the only way they can: by perfecting their identity as the Party of “Fear Itself” and making the free citizens of our republic their vassals in terror.
By becoming the breeders and proliferators of precisely the same kind of “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” that Roosevelt stood powerfully against back when the enemies really were fearful and globe-straddling.
When our very existence really was in doubt.
Roosevelt had something to say about that kind of desperate, hateful, short-sighted appeals to fear in his 1933 Inaugural Address:
"They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish."
Of course, as the Republican Party demonstrated so amply with Katrina, sometimes people perishing is the vision.
On Fox News: Sens. Charles Schumer and Elizabeth Dole. Then comes Sen. Arlen Specter
On the subject of these mysterious, “some may say” Democrats who allegedly want to appease the terrorists…
Wallace asks: Liddy, which Democrats are in favor of aid and comforting and appeasing terrorists? Soecifically. Name us some names here.
Liddy: Well there are some who oppose missile defense (Fucking missile defense!). And the Patriot Act. And domestic spying. And if you are against these things -- to any degree -- well clearly you’re on the side of the Evil Doers!
Wallace: There are even dark mutterings of a Vote of “No Confidence”. Wouldn’t such a thing send a sap the will of our troops and embolden our enemies?
Schumer: We are worse off now that we were. Iraq. North Korea. Afghanistan. Every poll says that the vast majority of Americans.
driftglass: Well since Schumer is too polite to mention it, let me add a few cloves of garlic and capers to the stew. A little zest. A little zing. A little reminder of previous formal expressions of disapproval of a President.
During a time of war.
By Republicans.
Here’s my longer post – the shorter version goes a little something like this...
REP. BOB LIVINGSTON, Speaker of the House-Designate: Do we just anticipate that the troops in the field will complete their business by Ramadan or by a time certain, or by Tuesday, or by Christmas Day, or by New Year's Day, or by two weeks into January? How do we assess when that mission is going to be complete? There's no way to know when the troops will have completed their mission. There's no way to know whether or not Saddam Hussein in his mindless self-absorption decides to lash out at American troops, at British troops, at Kuwait, at his neighbors anywhere in the Middle East. We can't anticipate what Saddam Hussein will do, and yet, we cannot refrain from advancing the people's business under this critical issue.
KWAME HOLMAN: Livingston reminded Democrats that when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, the United States had troops on the ground in Vietnam.
REP. BOB LIVINGSTON: And, yet, the Democrat Congress at the time undertook the responsibility of impeaching Richard Nixon, but he resigned.
Driftglass Translation: Clinton was nuthin' payback for Nixon, bitch!
Now note here where Republican and veteran Duncan Hunter leads off the windbaggery by arguing that it is an insult to the troops NOT to proceed with impeachment...…
REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, (R) California: You know, there's one term, I think, that is common to both this House and to our military, and that term is duty. We refer to it often, and it's clear now that our uniformed people are carrying out their duty in difficult circumstances to defend the liberties and the security of this country. They're doing that so that we can perform our duty. And our duty is to carry out the Constitution.
…
Rep. Marge Roukema (R-N.J.):
And we all share in the emotional trauma getting back to our subject of this constitutional crisis in which we are ensnared. But this cup cannot pass us by, we can't avoid it, we took an oath of office, Mr. Speaker, to uphold the Constitution under our democratic system of government, separation of powers, and checks and balances.
And we must fulfill that oath and send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial. …
…
Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.):
How can we expect a Boy Scout to honor his oath if elected officials don't honor theirs? How can we expect a business executive to honor a promise when the chief executive abandons his or hers?
…
Rep. Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) asks “What about the Children!”:
How did this great nation of the 1990s come to be? It all happened Mr. Speaker, because freedom works. . . . But freedom, Mr. Speaker, freedom depends upon something. The rule of law. And that's why this solemn occasion is so important. For today we are here to defend the rule of law. According to the evidence presented by our fine Judiciary Committee, the president of the United States has committed serious transgressions.
[Not impeaching President Clinton during a time of war] … would belie our ideal that we have equal justice under the law. That would weaken the rule of law and leave our children and grandchildren with a very poor legacy…
Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.) allows as how, sure we could not impeaching President Clinton during a time of war, but…
…there would be a high cost if we followed that course of action. Something would be lost. Respect for the law would be subverted, and the foundation of our Constitution would be eroded.
…
Well sure. Because if anything has hallmarked the last six-years of Republican Rule it has certainly been their almost obsessive fealty to honor, democratic ideals and the rule of law.Rep. Bob Ingliss (R-S.C.) finishes off the chorus by making it clear that his Mighty Love for the Constitution is the democratic wood that keeps his pup-tent upright and his Founding Fathers Freak Flag flying:
I think is important to point out here is that we have a constitutional obligation, a constitutional obligation to act. And there are lots of folks who would counsel, Listen, let's just move along. It's sort of the Clinton so-what defense. So what? I committed perjury. So what? I broke the law. Let's just move along. I believe we've got a constitutional obligation to act.
If you were asleep during the 90s, trust me: the GOP rhetoric just went on and on and on like that. Mile after mile. Adjective after Adjective. Sanctimony after Sanctimony. They built themselves a Mount Sinai of hyperbole and hatred from which they hurled Special Prosecutorial lightening and thundered judgment about the imperatives of feeding a President -- any President -- through the woodchipper for any infraction no matter how small, and trivia like War and Peace be damned.
Of course they did not mean a single word of it.
Any of it.
As the last decade has indisputably proven to all but the mentally dead and morally decapitated, in the Age of Dubya you can either be a good Republicans, or a good American, but you cannot be both.
Liddy continues: War is Hell and no War is executed perfectly.
Wallace: GOP Controls everything. And yet in the last few years you have failed to act on your own Top Four Issues. So whuzzup with that?
Liddy: Dems would not come forward and compromise.
Wallace: But you have the fucking Majority. And you couldn’t even pass something out of committee, where you get to have anything you damned well please, ala mode, with a slice of pie!
Liddy: But I want to talk about these other things. Looky! Shiny objects!
Wallace: Answer my fucking question you hagged out bint!
Liddy: It’s the Democrats. They’re evil, I tell’s ya. We are POWERLESS! They…they…they have rays and beams and Majyks that they work on us in the dark of night…
Wallace: Chuck, why you wanna block oil drilling in ANWR. Why you no wanna talk about Social Security?
Schumer: Nobody wanted to privatize Social Security. Liddy’s insane. They have fucked everything they have ever touched. Why are you even listening to these clowns anymore?
They do it for the reason anyone works at Fox: Thirty pieces of silver and job security.
Liddy: The Democrats have no ideas. They have a Sekrit Agenda. If they win they will unfold their real agenda. It’s High Taxes. Evil Judges. Hatin’ on the Dear Leader.
Under the pressure of having to gin up and maintain so much manufactured outrage while keeping her Stepford Smile nailed to her face, Liddy’s cheek-implants exploded at that moment.
She was hurridly wheeled away and replaced by Arlen Specter, walking a trained seal and juggling three – Count ‘em Three !! – big red rubber balls.
End of Part 1.
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