There is no line this President has not crossed – nor will not cross…
More great commentary yesterday from Keith Olbermann…
There is no line this President has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party, in power.
He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced — or laughably transparent.
Senator John Kerry called him out Monday.
He did it two years too late.
He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000 — just as millions of us, have been too cordial ever since.
Exactly right. We’ve been in a knife fight ever since the republicans took, let’s be honest here…Seized, power in 2000, for the fate of the American experiment in democracy. Perhaps some of us saw more clearly then others what was coming, your gay and lesbian neighbors especially, since we’ve been fighting the radicals on the right, both religious and secular, for decades now. But as Bush tore up one institutional check on his power after another, over and over again treating the constitution as a mere suggestion, if not a dirty joke, it should have become obvious what we were dealing with. These are not your grandfather’s republicans. I’ve heard them referred to as feral republicans. But really…they’re fascists. For some of us, the time for being cordial ended long ago. For the rest of America, it ended in November 2000.
There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
Just ask your gay and lesbian neighbors. Not all that long ago Bush was saying he had no objection to civil unions for same sex couples. But it’s election time again, and now he’s waving the New Jersey supreme court ruling, which did not mandate same sex marriage, as a boogyman to rally the base, because the only way his party can win elections is to make Americans hate each other.
Why do they do it? Simple. United we stand…divided we fall. It really is all about that. When Pat Buchanan said to Nixon, "If we tear the country in half, we can pick up the bigger half," he wasn’t talking about the bigger half of a democracy. The right wingers want to govern…they want to rule…they have no interest whatever in letting the people govern themselves. Because then their power is less. Because then they’re merely citizens like the rest of us. It really is all about that. We are going to loose this democracy if more of us, and in particular the other political parties, are not willing to confront republicans as bluntly and as forcefully as necessary, and name what it is that they have become, and where they are relentlessly dragging this country. Garrison Keillor was only partly right…they are not merely republicans first, and Americans second. They are only republicans. It is not democrats and liberals they oppose. They oppose democracy itself. The stand solidly against the bedrock this nation was founded upon: liberty and justice for all. To them it is a dirty joke. That needs to be said now. No more cordiality.
