We’ve seen a slow trickle of ship-jumping (or jump-related jibber-jabber) in recent days as a variety of GOP rats have come to understand that President George Walker Bush now stands as the biggest obstacle they face in Campaign 2008.
But Sweet Fancy Moses, this morning’s news features a couple of Rodents of Unusual Size (RoUS) swashbuckling off the Black Pearl like Captain Jack Sparrow, grabbing the President around the neck in mid-swoop and flinging him headlong under the nearest exploding hillbilly-armored Hummer in sight. (*ahem* Sorry about that bit – I’m a bit caught up in the excitement of Summer Adventure Movie Mania.)
RoUS #1: Bill O’Reilly, saying a number of really unprecedented things.
- He says the people want us out.
- He compares Iraq to Vietnam.
- He says you can’t win if the people won’t turn on the terrorists and compares our situation to Northern Ireland.
- He suggests Iraq might “wipe out Republican Party.”
- Then he throws it to Tony Snow to respond. And while he treats Snow with more respect that he does your average evil librul, for the most part O’Reilly acts like, well, a journalist. Poor Tony – he’s looking more like Scott McClellan every day, but at least Scotty didn’t have to endure bitch-slapping from Bush’s personal broadcast network.
Watch Papa Bear’s editorial first:
Then you can head over here and watch the full segment, which includes Tony Snow tap-dancing while trying to recall how he got sucked into this job in the first place.
Then, as if O’Reilly’s extended moment of lucidity isn’t enough: RoUS #2, Peggy Freakin’ Noonan, is giving free voice to the frustrations of the public – and in particular, to the formerly pro-Bush wing of that public.
I’m not referring to what used to be called Bush Derangement Syndrome. That phrase suggested that to passionately dislike the president was to be somewhat unhinged. No one thinks that anymore. I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who’d previously supported him. She said she’d had it. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.” I was startled by her vehemence only because she is, as I said,rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago: “I took the W off my car today,” it said on the subject line. It sounded like a country western song, like a great lament.
She spends a lot of time trying to understand why people don’t love Dubya no more, and in my mind dramatically over-complicates the issue. But she concludes pretty powerfully:
We hire them and fire them. President Bush was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.That’s the deal. It’s the real “grand bargain.” If you are a midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can’t take care of–the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part. You meet your part of the bargain. You work, pay your taxes, which are your financial contribution to making it all work, you become involved in local things–the boy’s ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can handle within your ken, and give the big things to the president.
And if he can’t do it, or if he can’t do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.
Americans can’t fire the president right now, so they’re waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.
I’ve been arguing since at least 2002 that Bush posed a greater threat to the Republican Party than an army of liberals and none of my conservative friends would listen.
Well, people are starting to figure it out now, aren’t they?
Categories: Politics/Law/Government, War/Security, World
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
I know this is off-point, but I do love that when Peggy needs to come up with a rhetorical example of an average American, she chooses a “midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey.”
How about a second-generation underemployed factory worker and Walmart clerk from Ohio?
To Gerald: I think she was trying to show how even people that aren’t in what she (or her supposed target audience) would call “disaffected groups” are becoming anti-Bush.
Everyone who wants to still be around washington when Bush leaves (voluntary or involuntary), need to get out ahead of this major storm and start hammering whos left in the administration like the ones above. Everyone knows that this war is lost, 34 senate seats are up for re-election in November 2007. If many of them are still behind the president the start of next year on this war, even the so called safe Senate seats will not be safe.
The last thing that the Republicans wan’t is the democrates having a supermajority in the senate along with the congress. If this happens they will be able to pass any law regardless if the President (they might loose the presidency also) vetos or not. If the republicans aren’t careful, this election might be the most famous rout in political history for the US govt. And it will take decades for the republican party to repair itself. Just how the Democrates took almost 30 years to repair there image.
I have said all along that we, the progressives/liberals/whatever, need to thank whatever each of us thanks at times like this, because if GWB and DC did not point out to the American people exactly what the “conservative cause” has ALWAYS been about, then we are either too stupid to exist, or too evil to continue.
this pure candy. I guess even the shills can finally have enough of sensationlizing garbage. Maybe O’Reilly would like to continue having a job and not get sunk in the bilge of the ship. You mean underneath all of that attack bullying he also knows how to be a journalist? Maybe one of my trelephone calls connected. I recently telephoned FOX Corporate and informed them that O’Reilly’s attack routine was not acceptable. Let me tell you, if you read a story on the internet and then telephone the party in the story, it can really freak them out. I recomment it. One abusive police dept. got really upset when I called to voice an opinion that their actions were unacceptable and they needed to clean it up. They never know exactly who they are talking you, if you are a nobody or if you work in the governor’s office, but if you are smooth and sophisticated and just call to voice an opinion, it is absolutely remarkable the result that a little real-time citizen coaching can effect.
o’reilly:He suggests Iraq might
It just goes to show that republicans are nothing if not completely self serving. When W was “ahead’, they LOVED him. They couldn’t get enough of that “charming, folksy style” of his, while it made the rest of us gag. It wasn’t until it was beginning to get VERY clear that he was losing his ass that they suddenly started turning on him, too. What a pack of wolves. How totally and completely HONORLESS.
So now, after destroying the average American’s future, dreams, and hopes, NOW they want to pile on W? Sorry, folks, no matter what you do, we WILL remember you as the cheerleaders. We WILL remember YOU telling us that we were all nuts, traitors, islamofascists, sympathizers, and every other name under the sun, all the while performing and supporting the acts OF traitors. We WILL remember you telling us how wonderful things were while we were losing our shorts.
Sorry, but I sincerely hope that the republican party NEVER “wins” another seat in this country for it’s entire existence. We do NOT need MORE traitors than the ones we are living with now. We do NOT need more election fraud, more ultra rich tax cuts, more offshoring of our jobs (and whole companies), and more governmental secrecy.
We need just the OPPOSITE of what the republican party stands for and delivers. We need LESS RICH people and more well off people. We need less poor and more working citizens. We need LESS multimillion dollar paychecks going to a few and more multi thousand ones going to MORE people. And the republican party will NEVER afford us that, it would eat into their profits.
Time for a new party that gives a damn about more than the haves and the have more’s.