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So forgive me for wanting to change the channel when I hear DiFi (as she is familiarly know to her California constituents) waxing indignant over Gonzales' actions on television news. I would much prefer to hear a more consistent and believable Democratic Senator. Like Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT), for example.
Now consider the following:
* The French monarchy had Justinian law, which clearly stated: "Rex solutus est a legibus" ("The King is released from the laws"). George Bush had legal advisors John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales insisting on the concept of a "unitary executive" (basically, "the executive, especially in times of war, is absolute and must not defer to the other branches of government").
We have lost more helicopters in Iraq during the past three weeks than during any period of the war. Details are sketchy, but we've lost either six or seven helicopters in the past few weeks (sources disagree on the total number, and on how many of these were military choppers and how many were civilian contractors'). Nobody seems to be sure if this is due to: (a) new tactics by insurgents with conventional weapons (heavy machine guns); (b) insurgents getting new weapons such as shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs, or MANPADs); or (c) just a statistical anomaly.
Picture this:
[GOP POLITICIAN:] "Bloviate bloviate BLO-vi-ate, bloviate the Democrat Party position on this subject is bloviate blovi-ATE..."
Or, perhaps, the following:
[FOX NEWS "JOURNALIST":] "Spin spin SPIN. Spin SPIN spin spin Democrat Party spin spin SPIN!!!"
Now picture this response to such provocation:
[DEMOCRATIC POLITICIAN'S RESPONSE:] "Well, if you insist on referring to my party as the 'Democrat Party' then I'm going to have to use President Bush's own term 'Republic Party' to respond to that. After all, if my party's name is too hard for you to pronounce, then I'll have to follow Bush's lead and use 'Republic Party' in order to get it down to the number of syllables you seemingly are able to pronounce."
So while a few Republicans are jumping ship now on legally meaningless concurrent resolutions, by summertime it will be a full-scale rout. Republicans will have the time and distance from Bush to say, "Well, we tried the surge, but it obviously didn't work. It's time to bring the troops home." Some of them are already saying this publicly in one way or another: "If the surge isn't working by summer or fall, I won't support it any more." As time goes by this summer, more and more of them will abandon Bush, publicly.
The second choice bit is that the White House has hired a new pastry chef, William "Bill" Yosses. The punchline? He's the co-author of Desserts For Dummies -- which can now be interpreted two ways.
More...The basic facts: California experimented with an early primary by moving from their traditional June date up to March. Californians voted in March for three election cycles (including the last presidential election), and then the gnomes in Sacramento decided to change it back to June. They unanimously (Republicans and Democrats) voted to do so last year, with virtually no public debate and very little media attention. They are now facing the consequences of this decision: California will be completely irrelevant in the 2008 presidential primary. So they're tinkering with it again. The new idea is to keep the primary for statewide offices in June (which leaves a shorter campaign season for Sacramento politicians, the original reason why it was moved back to June), and have a separate presidential primary in early February every four years. Since this means two primaries, it would cost millions of extra taxpayer dollars.
Yossarian marveled at the logic involved. If you thought the plan was crazy, you were obviously sane and had to fight. If you thought the plan was a good one, you were obviously crazy and could go home, but since you thought the plan was good you'd never want to go home (which was crazy). By pointing out that the president's plan was crazy, you proved you were sane and had to fight, even though you knew the plan (crazy or not) was doomed to failure. The only people who had confidence in the plan were obviously as crazy as the president, and didn't have to fight, but did anyway.
But don't squander the opportunity. If Democrats prove they can't achieve consensus, and the whole exercise devolves into intra-party squabbles about whose plan is best, then the American people are going to (quite rightly) conclude that it was a mistake to give the Democrats control over Congress in the first place, and will vote accordingly next time around. This is a big test, and I hope the Democrats can manage to pass it with flying colors.
