Elephant Tears

When Bill Frist described the Democrat's call for a closed Senate session to discuss prewar intelligence a "slap in the face," he failed to understand that the past five years have been one long slap in the face of Democrats by Republicans, including foot-dragging on Senate oversight.

When Frist claimed that "Our leadership is going to move ahead with the nation's business" instead of looking into intelligence failures, he shattered any semblance of credulity. For five years, he and his party were responsible for a grotesque, pork-bloated deficit fiasco. They were responsible for denuding our environmental protections. They were responsible for coddling big business at the expense of common citizens and creating an impression that our government is for sale. They were responsible for the hysterical politicization of issues like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. They were responsible for our deteriorating prestige in the world. They were responsible for holding nobody in their own party accountable for broad policies leading to human rights abuses in a variety of American prisons across the world. They were responsible for ignoring or failing to investigate the gross misjudgements, errors and falsifications that led us into a costly and regrettable war. This has been their business, and Frist has been at the helm.

The Democrats may have seemed desperate, even shrill, but the lies and propaganda that have characterized the Radical Right playbook have been slowly unraveling. Fantasy-based windbags like Republican strategist Jack Burkman whined that the Libby case will be thrown out, and that nobody is more maligned than Karl Rove, but the public sees through his malarkey. Libby is going down, and Rove is now widely accepted as the dirtiest political operative in a generation.

The Republican robots also love to claim that the Democrats have no agenda, have nothing to offer, have no ideas. Sounds serious, but more malarkey. Universal healthcare, a demand-based energy policy, a commitment to the environment, fiscal responsibility. Yes, the Dems have an agenda, but they have had little success getting it to the center of discourse because the Republicans control that, too. The Republicans, it seems, even had the evil New York Times in their pocket, planting stories through Judith Miller that they later referenced to prove their points, a deceptive and dishonest circularity.

And while the Dems have been unable to force their diverse ranks to spew a narrow, focused party line as well as the GOP, the GOP have been unable to defend their policies on the merits and have thus become a party of name-calling and personal attack, which continued today, led by Frist.

So the Republicans can continue to whine like they did before they held all three branches of Government, but the public isn't buying it. And the Dems, beaten down and bullied by the phony patriot Radical Right, are finally beginning to fight back. I suspect they have been waiting, watching Bush continue to screw up almost everything he touches. With his ratings hitting rock bottom, they probably felt the time was right to attack, placing the Republicans squarely where they belong--defending their five-year record of failure.

Depite the wailing coming from Burkman, Crowley, Hannity, Coulter and other talking-point readers, next year's mid term election will likely be a grim day for the Radical Right and its failed agenda, and a good day for rest of us.