My three-year-old son loves seeing the old Peanuts specials which we sometimes rent at our local video store. My husband often watches them with him as does my daughter, but I rarely can bring myself to. Not because I don't like the Peanuts characters, or because after eleven years of motherhood I've become allergic to kiddie fare, but because I cannot stand seeing the inevitable scenes where Lucy pulls the football away at the last minute from a hapless Charlie Brown. I wince when poor Charlie Brown gets fooled again and again and never manages to figure out that Lucy is going to screw him as she always does.
Well, this afternoon, reading the description of the compromise the Republicans have come up with on Bush's torture bill, I have that same sick feeling in my gut.
Once again, Harry Reid has played Charlie Brown to John McCain's Lucy. Once again Congressional Dems have chuckled gleefully that "principled" Republicans would make their play for them, only to have the play fumbled when the football is pulled away at the last moment. Once again Democratic leadership is left sprawled on the ground, staring dazedly up the sky, looking like total losers while another important battle is lost without a fight.
Now I know there were many political calculations involved in the decision by Reid and Senate Democrats to let John McCain and Lindsay Graham take the lead on this fight. However, even if you set aside the moral or patriotic issue of whether Democratic Senators have a duty to speak out against our nation legalizing torture, I cannot believe the political stupidity of allowing Republicans to represent the moral highground on this issue.
For heaven's sake, we are 47 days from an election where the most crucial factor in our winning back one or both houses is whether we can motivate and energize Democrats to turn out in sufficient numbers. Lest you doubt that this is the case, consider this chilling quote from Gallup back in February:
Typically, this early in the election year Gallup does not ask the "likely voter" questions that are designed to identify the subset of registered voters (RV) who are most likely to vote. Still, our experience over the past two mid-term elections, in 1998 and 2002, suggests that the RV numbers tend to overstate the Democratic margin by about ten and a half percentage points.
Now, I don't know about you, but seeing Dem leaders give up without a fight on an issue this important doesn't exactly give me fire in the belly.
Neither does seeing the reluctance of many Dem leaders and incumbents to tackle Bush and the Republican Congress head-on on the issues of security, Iraq, and the War on Terror. Just because Dr. Karl Pavlov has conditioned some Dems to cower with their tails between their legs whenever the issue of security, Iraq, or the War on Terra are raised, doesn't mean those are not winning issues come November.
Which is why I hope that tomorrow I'm going to wake up and find out that Charlie Brown has finally figured out he's being gamed.
Tomorrow I hope to wake up and find out that Harry Reid and the Dems are going to filibuster Bush's terror bill.
And when Rove and the Republicans come after them because they were willing to be brave, to stand tall, to fight for what was right and to patriotically block this attack on our nation's moral heart, Harry Reid and the rest of the brave Dems who stood up with him will find they have an army of Democrats at their back ready to spit blood to win in November.
And when they try to smear us or drag us down or claim we want to let the terrorists win, we will roar back into their faces:
Have you made us safer?
Has letting Big Oil set our energy policy made us safer?
Has allowing incompetent cronies run our government made us safer?
Has spying on Americans and shredding the Constitution made us safer?
Has allowing our jobs to be sent overseas made us safer?
Has mortgaging our children's future to China made us safer?
Has giving Paris Hilton a tax cut made us safer?
Has crippling our military and draining our treasury so we can occupy Iraq made us safer?
And finally, has allowing the one man most responsible for 9/11 become an afterthought in the war on terror made us safer?
Charlie Brown, you don't have to let Lucy control your destiny forever.
Charlie Brown, meet Osama bin Laden.