Deconstructing Stupid

This kind of shit really pisses me off. Enough that I went searching through the archives there, looking back over David Ignatius’ constant bemoaning of partisan politics when they were being played most effectively by Republicans. I couldn’t find anything! Imagine that!

All of this began when the Republicans decided to impeach a President for lying about a blow-job “because we can” as Newt Gingrich explained at the time. That began the era of truly ugly, partisan power politics that Ignatius so bemoans. Nixon may have started it with the racial coding of his campaign and the dirty tricks of his administration, but it has reached its gross and ugly fruition in this Bush Administration. Never in the history of this country has one party so abused the power under its control to achieve its agenda, both at the Executive level through power-corrupted cabinet officials and through its legislative leadership and behavior. And when the American people finally woke up and elected a Democratic majority in 2002, suddenly a supermajority of 60 became necessary to get anything done, because issues from small to large became subject to filibuster. This was a breathtaking change in how our government had ever functioned up until that time and we accept it now as a given standard.

This is what the Republicans have done to our government.

But in the face of the continuing Rovian bile that substitutes for reason in Republican campaigns, Democrats shouldn’t fight back?

The “Get Even” bunch?! You’ve got to be kidding me! The Democratic leadership of this last Congress could easily have drawn up Articles of Impeachment against this President, and even the least informed citizen could have helped to write the list of crimes. Yet stupidly, IMHO, they believed themselves faced with the choice of actually pushing forward some legislation that would benefit real people, or spend their two years trying to hold the Bush administration accountable.

So spare me the post-partisan lullabye. The Republicans continue to demonstrate every day that the only ball they know how to play is hardball.

Game on.

h/t to Glenzilla, who picks it up as part of a larger theme.