The Republicans in the Senate were finally in a position to lift this last tattered fig leaf from the unlovely nakedness of the Democrats, and reveal the nullity beneath -- a nullity of power now, as well as principle. But at the last moment something stayed their rapacious hand. Instead, we got a May Surprise sprung on us by a "bipartisan" group of senators apparently led by the wily Republican John McCain, with Loathesome Joe Lieberman heading the ranks on the other side of the looking glass -- er, aisle.
We didn't know, at the time, the exact contours of the deal. Well, now we do, I think.
Bush gets two appointees on the Court, without any fight to speak of; the Democrats, after a bit of obligatory mewling and puking, will roll over and play dead. Bush's appointees will be unideological defenders of corporate interests -- which is what both parties want. Bush will be able to claim two "conservative" appointments, and the Democrats will be able to claim they've saved Roe v. Wade -- which, of course, Bush and Co. were looking for an excuse to leave alone anyway.
It's a thing of beauty, really, how well-oiled it all is. Months of chest-beating and hair-tearing, foot-stamping and flinging of excrement and baring of teeth and all the other old favorites from the simian threat repertoire, and then you get a McCain and Lieberman strolling arm-in-arm into the mist, like Bogart and Rains -- or no, more like Alphonse and Gaston.
Meanwhile, of course, the Nation magazine and moveon.org and their ilk are all taking the whole monkeymachia in dead earnest. With apologies to Lamont Cranston, these poor souls seem to have learned in civics class a secret power to cloud their own minds.
indeed
the fillibuster is pure donkey shit
southern in origin
now
urban by adoption
through out
a profound disfigurement
of majoritarian democracy
err little d democracy that is
Posted by: doctor frost on October 7, 2005 04:33 PM
