There's nothing nastier than a cornered animal, and make no mistake, the Republicans are penned in tight. Poll after poll shows that Bush's bad karma is wearing off on the party that enabled him to drag this country through the mud of Katrina and the blood of Iraq. They can grin and pretend that they see some movement in their direction, but the truth is that the only Republicans showing any life are those who, like Schwarzenegger, are not just backing away from the neocon gospel, but embracing progressive positions.
Now, like a wounded bear caught in a trap... wait, bear is too nice for them. Too impressive. Like a ferret in a cage... um. Like snakes on a... nah, let's not even go there.
Like skunks penned under a barn, the Republicans are doing the only thing they know -- spraying stink in all directions.
For people who are always right, the Republicans sure have been wrong a lot of the time. Donald Rumsfeld's vaunted omniscience seems to have failed him on the justification for the war, and on the cost of the war, and on the length of the war, and the outcome of the war, and the aftermath of the war. Rumsfeld lives in a place so far divorced from reality that enormous increases in violence represent progress. You get the impression that every time he hears about another Iraqi family being shot down in the streets of Baghdad, Rummy walks the halls of the Pentagon whistling a happy tune. It's pointless to even speculate what color the sky might be in Rumsfeld-land. You just have to wonder if they even
have a sky.
For his boss, you can take everything that the Donald has done wrong, and compound it with being wrong about the tax cuts, being wrong about Social Security, and being so catastrophically wrong on Katrina that he managed to lose a major American city without the help of a single terrorist. After four years of saying they were getting us ready for emergencies, they screwed up even when that emergency came with a week's advance warning.
If at the start of 2001, we had perched a chicken behind the desk of the Oval Office and driven our country by allowing random pecks at an Ouija board, we would still expect the poor bird to be right at least some of the time. What the Bush team has done is really amazing -- they've managed to bat 0.000. When you think about it, their accomplishment is breathtaking. The editors at the Guinness Book of World Records have to be fretting over just how many chapters it will take to properly chronicle the consummate dreadfulness of this administration.
Since facts entering the current White House have to force their way through a nearly impervious shield of ego backed up with armor-plated disinterest, it's taken until the last few weeks for the word to get through to Bush that America is no longer enthralled with his down-home twang. Somehow, he missed the memo in which we declared that ignorance was no longer regarded as the most sought after trait for a major world leader.
Yes, Mr. President, America does not like you. We really, really don't like you.
Now that they've looked up long enough to notice that the whole nation is laughing at them, not with them -- and that most of us are too upset to laugh at all -- they've decided they have to take action. The Bush team realizes that only by moving fast do they have any chance to save their party, to start mending their broken policies, and to rescue W from a position where most historians rank him slightly below James Buchanan's cat liter.
Unfortunately for those who want to see the Republican's routed, there really is something the neocons could do to save their sizzling bacon. They could reform. They could proclaim the error of their ways, embrace real change, develop a bit of humility, and shoulder in on progressive issues. They could voice an actual policy in Iraq, instead of pretending that beating our head on a wall is commitment. They could rescind the changes in tax law that have placed an unprecedented burden on the middle class and mortgaged the future to line the pockets of the super rich. They could suggest taking immediate, bold action to ward off the climate changes that threaten to wreck our country and the world.
Fortunately for those who would rather see many Republican congressmen freed up to help Bush in his brush-cutting chores, they won't do any of this.
If Democrats have a fault, it's that when squeezed, they're too quick to compromise. If the Republican right has a fault (and yes, this is only one of their faults, but it's a big one), it's that they will never, never, never admit that they've been wrong. That's because they're not steadfast, they're not even stubborn -- they're deluded. They won't admit that they've been wrong, because they can't see it. They can't even conceive of a world in which they could be wrong.
Dragged out of their burrows and blinking against the light of day, confused by the noises that seem to be telling them that they might actually lose, the only thing the right can think to do is more of what they've been doing. You think they'll retreat from Rumsfeld's statements comparing those who've told the truth about his miserable failures to those who laid down for the Nazis? Uh uh. Like people who believe they can make a foreigner understand if they just speak English loudly, Rummy and pals will only repeat the message, adding more nastiness and a bigger smirk on each pass.
This is just the prelude to where they are going. These skunks think repetition plus meanness is the formula for success, and they have an all too compliant press to back them up. If they go unchallenged, by the end of October, Fox News will be having round tables in which Bill complains that the good name of Heinrich Himmler is being sullied by his comparison to Democrats, and Anne wonders if Pol Pot wouldn't have thought the left too extreme. By the first week of November, they'll have run out of adjectives bad enough, and just make spitting noises.
Be prepared. They're ramping up that old wheezing Wurlitzer in an attempt at a sort of clumsy linguistic jujitsu. They're going to blame us for all their mistakes. Since they are perfect, the reason Iraq is in chaos and the bottom has dropped out of the treasury has to be our failings. We didn't clap hard enough, you see. It's our fault that Tinkerbell didn't pull through.
The natural tendency when someone is lying and throwing mud so blatantly as the neocons is to try and shame them. Don't bother. If they have to make remarks about the nature of your mother's private parts to silence you, they will do it cheerfully. If they have to get out duct tape and truncheons, they'll go that even more cheerfully. Save your "at long last, Mr. Rumsfeld" speeches, I can answer the question for you: no, he really doesn't have any shame.
What these people have done to our country over the last five years is reprehensible. But make no mistake -- the period of greatest danger is just ahead. That light in their eyes is making them squint, but they're starting to make out the form of the upcoming election, and the shape looks to them like failure. They'll try everything they can think of between now and then to make sure that this future doesn't come to pass.
Bush has already shown he's willing to go beyond the law to see his will be done. Rumsfeld has already shown that he thinks the opposition is akin to the terrorists, and that a lose for his side would be a disaster for America.
In one way, the neocons are right: this election really is about assuring the future of democracy. We are going to have to fight with everything we have if we don't want to see that future snuffed out.