Things look very good for us now. Just won three special elections in strongly Republican districts. They are freaking out, by all accounts. McCain is triangulating away from their base: suddenly he is an environmentalist. And he just set a 2013 timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, a position for which he kneecapped Romney in Florida. All we have to do is to make a video of the old maverick McCain arguing against the new McCain in Panic.
Can things get any better in terms of improving our chances? Yes. Bush interjects himself into the campaign with a hamfisted comparison of Obama to Nazi appeasers of yore. Our cup runneth over. Only thing I wish is that all this was happening in October, not May. You want your opponents over-confident and happy, not running scared, six months in advance. You want your own troops worried and ready to fight the fight of their life now. Still, there may not be much the Republicans do to improve their lot between now and November. So let us savor this moment.
On to the latest idiocy of our fearless leader. In modern American politics, anytime someone brings up a comparison to Hitler, they are on the defensive. A Hitler analogy is the last refuge of scoundrels. If you ever get the urge to compare any living dictator-however odious- to Hitler, stop. It cheapens the suffering of millions to compare the events of that era to anything happening now.
And it brings with it hidden dangers. Guess who was a Nazi collaborator (I assume that is worse than appeaser) back in the day? Prescott Bush, W.'s Grandfather. It does not say anything about W. Anymore than the fact that his father G.H.W. Bush fought valiantly in WW II. But if we are to go by the guilt by association games that the Republcians are playing against Obama, we would be asking W. to renounce and reject his family.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Aid and comfort to the enemy. Trading with the Enemies Act. Them's scary words. When did W. reject his grandfather's money? The money that was made through business deals with the Nazis? Is that the money that put him through Andover,Yale and Harvard?
I am not suggesting that Bush was a Nazi sympathizer. Or that W. is not patriotic. Just that those who live in glass houses..you get my drift.
On to the substance of the matter, such as it is. Mr. Bush, talking to your enemy is not appeasement. It is giving in to your enemy that is appeasement. Obama comes from the hard-knuckle Chicago school of politics. We can assume that he is pretty good at negotiating with his opponents. That is what gives him the confidence that he can take on a negotiation. Not having done a honest days work in his life until you became President, Mr. Bush, you would not know anything about a negotiation. Have you ever so much as bought a used car on your own ever in your pampered life? Or did Laura Bush do all the talking for you? Maybe your Daddy bought you a sports car so you never had to haggle for anything.
But the real stupidity of Bush's speech was that he injected himself into the campaign at all. This is every Democratic strategists dream: a President with 27% approval rating goes to a foreign country and uses its Parliament as a podium to attack an American Presidential candidate.
McCain has no choice but to go along, but he has got to be cringing. Reminds me of another ally that cringed way from Bush:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That expression on her face is priceless. Just how creepy is he.
The only thing we can hope is that Bush keeps this up. Someone needs to invite Dumbya to give a major foreign policy address in October. And lob a softball question that he cannot resist:
Mr. President, do you believe that voting for the Democrats will kill all of us?
Because that is what they are trying to say.
Vote for us or you die.
To be fair, it worked in 2002 and 2004. But not when 80% of the country wants a change. Not when two thirds of the can't wait for Bush to get out. Not when the economy is in the toilet. When gas costs more than twice what it cost when the Republicans took over every branch Government in 2000.
Are we safer than we were eight years ago?
asks the Obama campaign in reply to Bush's tirade. If most Americans think the economic price we are paying for the war is worth the safety Bush has brought us, McCain will win. But if most of us agree that the Republicans have brought us neither economic nor National security, we will win.
That sucking sound you are hearing is Republican Congressional candidate running for the exit. The last guy Cheney campaigned for lost by eight points in a heavily Republican district. Let us hope he brings the same charm and wit to the Presidential campaign.
