Twilight of the Apologists (and everything else) [spleen]

[Mechatanketra]

:rant: :rant:

Just reading an LBN item about how the Hill isn't expecting a filibuster on Alito ... and I need to vent.

Practically since I first started reading this forum, before the *reelection, before the war, before the mid-terms ... there's been a sizeable segment of people who deride any suggestion that a given politician might, might just be a burden on the party rather than an asset, and should be ousted in a primary or otherwise replaced with someone who's actually, y'know, right about stuff; the lynchpin of their arguments being, "All that matters right now is keeping the GOP from taking the Supreme Court!"

So I did some research back then (which I think I posted here, but it was a long time ago) and found that of the Bush v. Gore fivesome, every single one was either (a) approved unanimously (i.e. unopposed by any Democrats), or (b) allowed through by Democrats crossing the aisle to break their own majority -- exactly the same kind of people who are generally defended now by the "it's about the Court" argument. It occurred to me that maybe, Democratic Senators aren't the most effective line of defense against bad justices. :eyes:

Well, the big game's here. Of Bush's three nominations, he got one in, the Republicans ultimately shouted down his next choice ... and the third is, to not mince words, a goddamn monarchist. (He'll put it in fancier language, but when you have a single man with unanswerable executive power, the general word for that is "king".) I'm hearing a lot of Senators talking about how there's no reason to oppose him for a lack of qualifications ... hey, wouldn't someone who didn't understand that America doesn't have fricking kings sorta imply a lacking grasp on constitutional law?

I'd like to be able to say there's a silver lining here, that with the Big Game come and gone, that brand of apologist will have to just shut the hell up. But somehow, I don't see it happening. Republicans may have deserted the reality-based community en masse, but Democrats have their own brand of divergence from it, which seems to revolve around the belief that a punch in the face following a promise to not get punched in the face is somehow better than a punch in the face out of the blue. There might be some on the Hill who understand that the right thing to do would be to block or maybe punch back ... but there's not enough of them. And the people who don't get it have too many people protecting them who don't get that they don't get it.

So, back then, I predicted (bitterly and against my own better hopes) that when the time came, there'd be no line in the sand drawn regarding the Court; it has yet to appear. Now I'm predicting (bitterly and against my own better hopes) that if Alito isn't blocked, the Republicans will increase their holdings in Congress in 2006, and win the presidency in 2008; Bush will be remembered in 2020 as a troubled but well-meaning leader struggling against a situation of one-of-a-kind stress. After all, that's what happened with Reagan: buried with honors and tears instead of dying in jail for treason. I suspectt takes America 12 years to realize they've screwed up, and only 4 to forget how.