Have we torn our hair, beat our breasts, rent our garments, donned sackcloth and ashes, bemoaned the loss of our Constitution, thrown our arms toward heaven and cried "O Lord! O Lord! Why hast thou forsaken me?" following Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence?
Have we attacked our fellow Democrats enough by now as gutless, spineless, chicken, and "unfit to govern," even though there aren't the votes for conviction even if impeachment goes back "on the table?" and will not be for the duration of this Congress?
Well, let's look at what this does get us, and how we might make political hay of it.
Let's get one thing straight from the jump. I believe Bush and Cheney committed impeachable offenses long before Bush commuted Libby's sentence. But although I think impeachment is warranted on structural and legal grounds, I also think it is a very risky move for Democrats politically, and that for once, hard as it might be for some who read this to believe, that the Dems in Congress in Washington DC just might have a better handle on that than some schmuck on the street like me.
I support if impeachment if it happens, but I'm not losing sleep if it doesn't. We have plenty to gain from Libby regardless.
In baseball and football there is a basic strategy: You take what the opposition gives you. If the infield drops back, drop a bunt in front of the third baseman or drag one past the pitcher. If the defense goes "prevent," throw short passes over the middle or run draw plays.
Or as that great football coach Isaac Newton once told his team in the locker room at halftime: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
Our equal and opposite reaction is to make the Republican Party the party of separate and unequal justice. Bush has done most of the work for us already.
Stop and think for a minute. How do you imagine Bush's commutation of Libby is playing in the legal community? I don't mean the scholars and pundits. I don't mean the think tanks. I mean in every courtroom in the country, where hard-working cops and judges and prosecutors might have built a case to put, say, a meth cooker or a loan shark or a home invasion gang or an ID theft ring or a serial abuser behind bars, only to be told by a defense lawyer at the sentencing phase: "I want what Scooter got?"
Thank you, George Bush. Thank you a thousand times. You have trashed the entire Republican "tough on crime" schtick with one stroke of the pen.
Tough on crime for the little guy, but no jail for Scooter. No jail for their rich buddies. Let me tell you something. This will play in redneck America. This will play at the gut level, and we miss the boat entirely if we don't use it, and use it relentlessly.
Does this give us instanmt gratification? No. It is the hard way to go. It's not a "frame" or a "meme" or some other trendoid intellectual concept. Rather it is a gut-level reaction to something that is so manifestly unfair that any fool can grasp it, and a time-honored political appeal to the outs, against the ins.
In other words, this is pure populism against pure elitism. We win by being populist.
We don't wave a magic wand and get rid of Bush and Cheney this way. But who said life is fair? This is what we have, and woe to us if we do not wield it with a vengeance.
I say we make the Republicans the "party of Scooter Libby" at every opportunity, at every level of government, in our workplaces, at the barber shops and in the beauty parlors, in the checkout lines, at family gatherings, and especially to the cab drivers and bartenders.
If we can't find a way to use Scooter Libby against any Republican in any race anywhere in this country, then shame on us. We have it in our power to make "No jail for Scooter" the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" of the "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" of this election cycle.
Now let's go and do it. Those are the cards we have been dealt, and me, I double down.