On Apr 27, 2005, at 8:46 AM, Dave Land wrote:
Folks,
If Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, he'll have to hold his tongue, at least if the
Republican party goes ahead with the newly-re-christened "Constitutional Option,"
formerly known as the "Nuclear Option."
And "christened" appears to be the word, at least to hear James Dobson tell the
story: a filibuster against a Bush court appointment is apparently a "filibuster
against the faithful."
Molly Ivins tells the story better than me:
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21873/
I caught bits of that broadcast, and was ambivalent. The rhetoric used is pretty brutal, and profoundly arrogant; it pissed me off. However, I felt a strange wave of ... not hope, not relief, but something akin to both. Because the radical right-wing loonies are taking off their gloves, removing their masks and showing themselves to be the intolerant, bigoted, self-righteous asses they really are.
I think it was a tactical mistake: far too much far too soon. Moderates of any stripe are considerably more likely to galvanize against these people than they are to align with them, I think. Had they kept their attempts at string-pulling more quiet and subdued, they might have had a chance, but I think they've forgotten the lessons of the Moral Majority movement (which, as I like to say, was neither) and the backlash they experienced for trying far too hard to impose the rigorous strictures of a cultish interpretation of one religion on a nation that is, at its heart, surprisingly liberal and broad-minded.
The pendulum's arc might well have maximized this last weekend.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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