there was a phrase which I edited out of my letter to factcheck on account of being off topic, but it does relate to my other recent comments and also to something I noticed about Tacitus' recent
confessional about the possibility that the leaders of his party may have, as the saying goes, left
him. looks like the grownups are reluctant to let the teenagers borrow the car for a second term.
mea culpa mea maxima culpa, I find myself unable to resist the combined cheap shot this affords.
the cheap shot is below, but I am also mentioning this as a supporting data point for the hypothesis that many staunch Republicans will be happy to ditch Bush in favor of Kerry because they believe can obstruct and denigrate Kerry the way they did Clinton, prevent a midterm coattail effect, and get rid of him in one term. a Kerry presidency would prevent the derailing of the "Republican Hegemony Train" which would occur with Dean or Clark and also give the GOP a chance to evade some of the responsibility for the economic and military disasters which Bush, DeLay and friends have inserted into our path as a nation.
<cheapshot>
in my letter, the sentence about GW being innocent by law originally read "Unlike the detainees being held at Guantanamo and in military brigs, George Bush's legal status remains innocent until proven guilty." Editing that line, plus my comment to c2shiningc about battered Republicans, reminded me that when I originally read Tac's list of core Republican values which this administration has failed to embrace, I found the absence of either human rights or separation of powers both conspicuous and revealing. The closest he gets to either is an acknowledgment that BushCo embraces "secrecy as a good in itself."
I realize that this is a post about domestic politics, and we all know that neither human rights abuses nor brazen corruption could possibly happen here in the shining city on the hill. but this is someone whose support of the invasion of Iraq rests primarily on moral grounds, discussing a party hierarchy which vocally espouses liberating the oppressed by hook or by crook. I would have expected some mention of the GOP's recent human rights record in that context. perhaps a quick condemnation of lack of due process in Iraq (to say nothing of Cuba). or of party leaders' embarassingly friendly political and economic ties with such current and future blowback candidates as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan?
or (since rule of law has been a core Republican value for as long as I can remember) maybe a quick aside finally acknowledging that the GOP-led invasion of Iraq - the morality of which cannot possibly be disputed - was not actually legal? or if that's too sensitive an issue maybe a few stern words about the propriety of appropriating documents without authorization, or less than timely duck hunts?
I don't think Tac's changed his position on human rights, because the following post is indignant about Moslems murdering Christians with impunity. his views on the Constitution and rule of law have not been recently clarified, but I doubt those have changed either...
ah well... perhaps these are merely "American" core values rather than "Republican" core values, so the party can afford to shunt them aside long enough to achieve hegemony and take another look at them once that's taken care of. Tac is after all a self-professed proponent of one-party rule (GOP rule to be precise), so I guess he just figures the Dems should fight dirty if they don't want to get rolled. or perhaps he's just tired of having our country held to higher standards of liberty, democracy, and equality than all those other countries.
anyway, it must be a great relief to him to see a business-as-usual Dem making a comeback. hopefully Kerry will win NH. Kerry, already compromised on these issues, can be counted on not to make a fuss about the Surveillance, Detention and Sedition Act or the shiny new crop of Bastards Who Belong to Us®, or the UN Charter, until such time as the GOP recovers from it's awkward choice of candidates in 2000 and achieves it's rightful place as The Party...
</cheapshot>
to be a little bit fair, I can't help but think how much sweeter it would be not to worry about protecting the fabric of the Constitution during the coming economic hard times, but instead about how to head off a split in one's own (ruling) party during the upcoming general election.
Since dKos was having trouble a earlier and I had wandered off to Counterspin, I'll just take the opportunity to link to this repost which touches on the moral grounds for the invasion. oh, and scroll down to the post about Imus supporting Kerry for another data point on big media's anti-Bush/pro-Kerry drift which we can expect to see a lot more of, as well as a NH prediction which I hereby second.
