When a con man starts believing his own con, he's doomed. Karl Rove knows that when you call lowering pollution standards the "Clear Skies Act" it's a con. He knows when you Swiftboat a decorated warrior it's a con. He knows you can talk about supporting the troops while sending them into harm's way with insufficient arms and training and get away with it as long as you talk loud enough. And on and on and con and con. I don't think Rove has ever lost sight of what he's doing. But the Republican rank and file actually drank the KoolAid. They believed that if Fearless Leader said he was cleaning up the skies, no matter what the fine print said, then that's what he was doing and that's what Jesus would do, too, innit? Bush, Jesus, Bush, Jesus, Bush=Jesus.

Now, they're coming down off the KoolAid trip they were on, the hallucinations are evaporating and that old sense of disappointment upon returning to the real world is setting in. If only Karl had taken them aside early on and told them the facts of life...

and that's a view (of Rockwell) you will find among libertarians at Cato.

I am often moved to cheer after reading one of your columns. I have scoffed at my San Francisco liberal friends’ complaint, "so many adjectives" when they explain that while you are right and almost universally so, they just don't like the extra adjectives you use.

Within their complaint I think is a gem. Upper class liberals are as ensconced in the power structure as beltway pundits. They are courtiers in waiting. Their apathy enables the conservatives to continue.

Thank you kindly.

One can derive a small satisfaction that the Reaganite counter-revolutionaries finally have been rejected instead of eternally excusing themselves by "what if's".

Plus I can say it's something that occurred to me as soon as Republicans had all 3 branches under Bush Jr. -- yes they could pursue their agenda, but it really was a bunch of loony crap, these things aren't just opinions and harmful policies really will have observable nasty effects, and after some cataclysmic degree of harm wrought on the nation and globe, that crappiness could no longer be hidden or promised away.

WT

Couldn't agree more. The Dems are simply the less evil choice. A work in progress....

That pretty much sums up the state of the experiment started over 200 years ago. Next century, if we haven't removed the systemic structural impediments to third and fourth party participation, our descendants may be voting for Republicans who sound like Clinton or Howard Dean or Wes Clark today.

All I'm trying to do is prevent liberalism do the same thing. As the BushCo barge continues to disintegrate, there will be opportunities for alliances to form that would have seemed impossible 3 years ago. Especially with the Corporate media still reliably in the administrations pocket, I don't think it pays to demand ideological purity from anyone who's going to vote your way.

He's (Shooter24-OOO) is not as enjoyable as IntrovertGirl.

I'm way behind, but I did find a moment to respond to I-Lady on the yesterday's old post. Shooter is a plucked hen who scratches in the dump-neocon's skunk scat. Apologist for murder and LIE are looking for a wood-nickle, or, a kernal of yellow corn in a cameo flop for his thievery employer.

What a 'skunk' scat scratcher. He is in my back yard scratching via turkey dung at the present moment.

Scat is flying everywhere...

...Ain't some possums like raccoons or a squirrel, searchers for a morsel to chew in Scat Skunk? Scathe!

What a representative web-foot-troll and neocon shyster!

I'm tame and cranky-wild at the present moment. I go hoe. Maybe I'll be a bit kinder later?

I am practicing loving-kindness and revering simple truth. No apologies...

One cannot say -- and I never have said -- that there are no conservatives who dissented from the Bush worldview, but their numbers are so tiny as to be irrelevant. That is because this movement's belief in its ostensible political principles is plainly illusory, just a crass political prop. And they simply do not believe in the basic constitutional values which have defined the country since its inception, nor do they believe in the rule of law (hence the virtual consensus that convicted felon Lewis Libby should be pardoned). What else do they need to embrace in order to eliminate all doubts about that?

--G. Greenwald

If we were all going to be truthful here -- and that would be a first when speaking in the political spectrum -- the current sitting Democrats are just as craven; just as power-mad, as the Republicans you castigate in this post. The liberals on this site, in the Warroom in particular, love to count the dead in Iraq and ask when it is all going to stop. Yet, when the liberals in office have a chance to stop it, they calculate that they would rather have the issue for the next election cycle than save a thousand or so American lives (and who knows how many Iraqi lives) in Iraq. So they pay lip-service to the mandate that got them elected, then immediately capitulate before the Commander Guy has a chance to come to his senses.

The Libby trial is and has always been first and foremost a partisan football. Republicans and Democrats simply changed roles and made the exact same arguments as their opponents did in the run-up to the Clinton impeachment:

"He isn't accused of committing a crime, he is accused of lying about something that wasn't a crime to begin with. This is a partisan persecution!"

"Crime or not, we'll never know because he lied. Lying under oath is a crime in and of itself. It is an offense to the system and must be punished!"

I recognize these arguments. Who made them? It depends on which scandal you're talking about. In some cases, one person probably made both of these arguments - one during the Clinton scandal and one during the Libby trial. Which one depends purely on which side of the aisle the speaker is sitting.

Stop pretending that Democrats are the party of the Rule of Law and Republicans are the party of Lawless Despots. Each side makes its best argument based, not on what is true or right, but on what will serve them and keep them in power for the longest period of time. Righteous indignation is fun to ape for the camera. I just wish any of them actually believed a word that they said.