XPost: alt.fan.barbra.streisand, alt.fan.j-garofalo, alt.fan.julia-roberts   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: __@____.___   
      
   "Prof. Leland Milton Goldblatt , PhD. Gop wants Starve kids and Old people!"   
    wrote in message   
   news:1131832502.393277.21550@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...   
   > This was written by my friend Andrew Foster Altschul, a fairly   
   > successful fiction writer (which is to say he publishes and has a novel   
   > coming out) and lecturer at Stanford. He doesn't have a password to   
   > post here so I'm posting his rant for him. He writes excellent rants.   
   > -se   
   >   
   > Erratum   
   >   
   > I was wrong.   
   >   
   >   
   > It happens, from time to time, even to the political Nostradami, the   
   > greatest minds of our generation. And if we will claim glory when our   
   > predictions come true, then we must admit it when they are horribly,   
   > grotesquely wrong.   
   >   
   > Wednesday night at a cocktail party at the home of Julie Orringer and   
   > Ryan Harty, I held forth to Stephen Elliott and Peter Orner, as well as   
   > a small gaggle of my credulous and admiring graduate students, that I   
   > thought things were about to change. It was a defining moment for   
   > George W. Bush, the fulcrum of his presidency, I said. Even a baboon   
   > could not fail to notice that he was on the verge of permanent   
   > disgrace, the historians were sharpening their pencils to write of his   
   > failed presidency and its terrible cost: for American prestige and   
   > respect, for the U.S. economy, for lives lost in the Middle East.   
   > Perhaps most important, from his perspective, the "permanent Republican   
   > majority" is in jeopardy, the 1994 revolution's appeal, such as it was,   
   > lies in the tatters of New Orleans, Virginia's bellwether has rung   
   > loudly, the Terminator and the Exterminator have been terminated and   
   > exterminated. The Scooter Libby affair is a cancer that has given us   
   > the band-aid spectacle of White House "ethics classes"; the vow to   
   > "restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office" has become a punch line.   
   > As a second-term president, I said, Bush would be thinking about his   
   > legacy. It was time, I opined, to make some changes. It was time, I   
   > said, pleased with my metaphor, for Nixon to go to China.   
   >   
   > The President considers himself a fundamentally decent man, I said.   
   > Unlike Dick Cheney, who wants only to see himself as right and   
   > powerful, George Bush wants to see himself as decent. He could not   
   > ignore recent events, I said, reaching for the shrimp cocktail. They   
   > were humbling, chastening - or at least they made it clear that a tone   
   > of humility and chastity would be necessary in order to restore trust   
   > in his administration. After a long, thoughtful sip of cabernet, I said   
   > humility and chastity dictated some housecleaning. It dictated a move   
   > to the center, an engagement with the parts of the electorate he has   
   > sneered at. Bush does not want to be remembered merely for cutting   
   > taxes and licking the boots of bigots and Bible warriors, I said,   
   > eyeing a truffle. He himself is not truly a bigot, nor a Bible warrior,   
   > and the time when it was expedient to pose as one has obviously passed.   
   >   
   > I made other predictions which, in retrospect, are too embarrassing to   
   > reveal - though I still stand by them.   
   >   
   > "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated   
   > the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to   
   > war," said Bush in his Veterans Day speech, raising higher an audacity   
   > bar that he and Cheney have already elevated to Himalayan heights. "The   
   > stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national   
   > interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,"   
   > he said, reverting to the rhetoric of the pre-war marketing campaign   
   > and the post-Mission Accomplished backfill: If you oppose the war, you   
   > are a traitor; if you disagree with its architects, you are against the   
   > national interest. You might as well be shooting at our troops   
   > yourself.   
   >   
   > "We will never back down. We will never give in. We will never accept   
   > anything less than complete victory," he said, the day after three   
   > hotels in Jordan were bombed by al-Qaeda in Iraq, just weeks after we   
   > passed 2,000 American casualties in this vainglorious escapade. Only   
   > cowards and Democrats could question his omniscience, his goodness, his   
   > will - and never mind that moderate Republicans are speaking out   
   > against the war, demanding an exit strategy, abandoning ship on issues   
   > of torture and presidential prerogative. Even Rick Santorum doesn't   
   > want Bush around. And when a bottom-feeder like Rick Santorum won't   
   > return your calls, it's really time to check your deodorant.   
   >   
   > Meanwhile, Karl Rove took an I-didn't-get-indicted victory lap before   
   > the Federalist Society, where he beat up Federal judges, lamented the   
   > treatment of Harriet Miers (apparently forgetting it was the   
   > Federalists and Brownbacks who sank her), and impugned the patriotism   
   > of Democratic Senators Schumer, Durbin, Leahy, and Kennedy. (This, the   
   > day after Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney took applause following a   
   > reference to Kennedy as part of a "KKK, the Kennedy Kerry Klan.")   
   > Seeing as Rove most likely isn't allowed to urinate without permission   
   > these days, it's pretty clear that this was a calculated effort, a   
   > one-two punch, Butch and Sundance charging into a hail of pansy-assed   
   > liberal gunfire to prove once again: It doesn't matter if you're right   
   > or honest or successful, as long as you never stop calling other people   
   > dirty names.   
   >   
   > "Karl Rove has... come into the cross-hairs of criticism from the   
   > liberal establishment here in Washington," said David McIntosh,   
   > co-chairman of the Federalist Society. "When the establishment can't   
   > defeat the power of one's ideas, they crank up the engine of personal   
   > attack in order to distract the leaders." McIntosh seems to have   
   > forgotten that it was a Republican prosecutor, assigned by a Republican   
   > Justice Department, who investigated Rove and indicted a Republican   
   > Chief of Staff for his conversations with a hawkish journalist and the   
   > resulting column by a prominent Republican troglodyte. Inconvenient   
   > though it may be to Republican delusions, the truth is that Democrats   
   > were on the sidelines of this one. But why should the truth get in the   
   > way of the marketing campaign? Why examine your own weaknesses and   
   > errors when you can smear people instead and change the subject?   
   > Self-examination makes for bad PR.   
   >   
   > Clearly, there will be no turn toward the center. There will be no   
   > contrition, no reaching out, no soul searching. There will be no road   
   > to Damascus, no trip to China. Bush and Rove are going to try to shoot   
   > their way out of this, resorting to precisely the scummy smear tactics   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)