The administration is out in full force with the message, “It’s the media’s fault.” Apparently, the message goes, Iraq is going just swimmingly, and anyone—by which they mean, the media—who tells you different is, I guess, committing treason. Don’t believe what you see, goes the message; believe what we tell you.

Surely I can’t be the only one who finds that level of gall both frightening, and an affront on everything that makes America great?

And then, there’s the attack on Feingold and other Democrats who might want to, say, hold the president accountable for his actions. This too is unpatriotic, apparently. The new speaker of the house suggested that, since he wants to censure Bush for breaking the law, and because he had the stones to oppose the Freedom Elimination Act (let’s call the Patriot Act by what it is), Feingold must care more for the welfare of terrorists than for Americans.

Now let me see if I have this straight. If you want to impeach the president for breaking the law, its not unpatriotic if you do it in the middle of 8 years of unbridled peace and prosperity, and if the transgression was sufficiently trivial so as to not affect anyone or anything (e.g., lying under oath about getting head from an intern.) But if you want to censure—not even impeach, censure—a president for illegally spying on Americans during a mismanaged war, apparently THAT is somehow wrong.

How can the same people who gleefully impeached a sitting president of the United States for a BS transgression call it un-American when someone wants to censure the president for breaking a serious law? Or is it just plain OK to throw shit on a Democrat.

Really, you have to wonder how much longer unmitigated gall will work as a right wing political strategy. But it has worked well, and I think it will keep working until the Democrats come up with a strategy of their own. And wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh air? An actual point of fact Democratic strategy?

Labels: The politics