Hey, Demo Strategists- They're just not that into you

[RainDog]

Robert Parry, at Consortium News, looks at the failed strategy to try to lure moderate Republicans over the last year after Democrats won a majority in the legislature.

Rather than escalate their political confrontation with Bush, the Democrats opted for a course of wishful thinking and empty gestures. Most importantly, the Democrats chose not only to keep impeachment off the table, but avoided any comprehensive investigation into controversial Bush policies. ...the Democrats not only failed to mount a sustained challenge to Bush’s policies, they avoided any systematic hearings that would educate the American public about why Bush’s presidency has represented such an extraordinary threat to the Republic.

This Democratic tendency to de-value information – and a timidity toward real oversight – can be traced back to the 1980s when accommodating Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, sought to finesse, rather than confront, abuses of power by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush during the Iran-Contra Affair and related scandals. The pattern deepened in 1993 when Bill Clinton won the presidency and the Democrats still controlled Congress. At that point, they shelved investigations of Reagan-Bush crimes, including clandestine military support for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, drug-trafficking by the Nicaraguan contra rebels, and still-secret dealings with Iran.

Clinton and the Democrats judged that the hard work of getting at the truth and exacting accountability was less important than wooing some moderate Republicans into hoped-for support of Clinton’s budget, health-care and other domestic priorities. (For details on this failed strategy, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.)

Parry goes on to note the failed view that Gates would rein in Bush, when Gates was and is the consummate "yes man." Parry notes the new accomodation for an AG that would not admit that torture is torture and is being practiced by this administration. (Schumer, in a NYTimes ed. said that Mukasey would rein in (not his words, iirc) or rather repair the destroyed-by-Bush DoJ.

Parry looks at Carl Levin's incorrect history lesson as the dems caved on war spending. The FISA act. The Lieberman/Republican "Iran's Republican Guards are terrorists" war set up, ignoring Jim Webb's accurate assessment that such a resolution was a lead-in to war. Parry says the Demo leadership was "stunned" that they got 200k emails opposing their FISA cave-in and were "astonished." Does that tell you anything about how disconnected this legislature is from the American people?

Hey dems, how's that appeasement policy working out for you?

Republicans don't want to tell Democrats they're not going to work with them and Democrats don't want to hear it. (That's a twist on the blurb to that great book of existential wisdom, He's Just Not That Into You...had to look it up to make sure I got the phrase right...)

Republicans don't need date rape drugs to have their way with Democrats. The Democrats fix it for themselves for their afternoon kool-aid.