Oh Damn! Will this bad news never stop!

The Republican frontrunner, Rudy, is running on the platform of “more Bush than Bush” and according to the latest WSJ/NBC poll a whopping 74% say they want the next president to take a “different approach than Bush.”

Holy crap, that’s some really good news for Rudy who's adopted all his policies – he’s a shoe in.

Why don’t we just skip the election, give Benito his balcony, and go right to mocking the Clintons. That’d save us a whole lot of time.

And I’d bet that would be a very popular idea among the vast 21% that think the country is “on the right track.”

Sour grapes anyone?

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/08/454997.aspx

So why didn't they filibuster, the way Senate Republicans have on virtually every measure this year which they wanted to defeat?~GG

Sadly, I think Kevin Drum summed up the thinking of the Democrats who have acknowledged that Bush can never nominate anyone who openly declared waterboarding illegal so, they said, “it’s not like we could have done any better.”

I don’t think Drum is excusing what the Democrats did, just trying to understand what just happened. The other reason put forward (after the Democrats have implicitly accepted another defeat) is that “we really do need someone running the Justice Department.”

And this comparison is where I think Drum gets it just right:

“We've got an attorney general who acts like a refugee from a communist reeducation camp, dutifully reciting party-line nonsense dictated by his superiors…”

The Soviet comparison is apt because the GOP has adopted the values of the “evil empire” as their own and “torture” is the new litmus test for being a loyal “apparatchik” of the Republican Party. Drum:

‘These days, you can forget that old-style GOP rhetoric about "values," "human dignity" and the "culture of life." Because the GOP has a new litmus test for its nominees: Will you or will you not protect U.S. officials who order the torture of prisoners?

The trajectory of this debate has been depressing beyond words. As recently as a year or two ago, conservatives seemed at least occasionally defensive about the whole thing, mostly limiting their defense of torture to ticking time bomb scenarios and the like. It wasn't pretty, but it was at least a tacit admission that torture was shameful enough to be considered only in extremis.

But no more. The party that used to take Darkness at Noon as practically an ur-text about the evils of communism is now home to a snarling pack of presidential candidates who fall all over themselves to defend torture and abusive interrogation as a routine practice. How did we get here?”

Oh, we know how we got here, Glenn (and others) have been documenting it regularly. It’s just that a lot of people are unwilling to admit just how far, and fast, we’ve fallen.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_11/012470.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_11/012463.php

Just to follow up on RMP's point, which is correct. In his article, “The sad decline of Michael Mukasey” Sidney Blumenthal sums up what really happened. In order to even be nominated, Mukasey gave up his power to David Addington and Dick Cheney.

"Mukasey is not a free agent. He had been strictly briefed and in his testimony was following orders. He has avoided calling waterboarding torture because that is consistent with the administration's position and past practice. Mukasey's refusal to disavow waterboarding reveals his acceptance of his assignment to a secondary role as attorney general, an inferior agent, not a constitutional officer, to certain political appointees in the White House....

He has already ceded the essence of his power even before assuming it. His vaunted integrity and independence have been crushed, short work for Addington."

Our new Attorney General is David Addington. He is the one pulling the strings on what Mukasey does or doesn’t do.

the media helpfully explained not that Republicans were obstructing via filibuster, but rather that, in the Senate, there is a general "60-vote requirement" for everything.~GG

Just to elaborate on Glenn’s “helpfully explained” sarcasm, it should be noted that when the Republicans were in power in Congress, the media used the “f-word” all the time: filibuster.

That word was used in a negative sense – that the Democrats were “obstructing” Congress from doing its job.

But once the Democrats took power it was like an edict had been issued from on high that henceforth the “f-word” must not be used to describe what the Republicans do.

Shaliagh Murry of the WP does not use that word -- the “new” Pravda-esque slogan is the “60-vote requirement” which conveniently doesn’t have any negative connotations for the Republicans. It appears neutral.

That certainly wasn’t the case with the “f-word” used against Democrats who were repeatedly warned that using it would “hurt them” and the public would turn against them for using it. They would be in “big trouble” if they dared to use the filibuster. At that time, no one said anything about a “60-vote requirement.”

Well, if using the filibuster would turn the public against those using it, then the last thing the Republicans want you to see is this chart put together by McClatchy. It shows that that the filibuster has never been used more than it is being used right now by the GOP.

“60-vote requirement” my ass.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/18218.html