truthbus: GOP sleepwalking?

GOP sleepwalking? No. This is the way they govern.

by Kagro X

Harold Meyerson's piece in the WaPo this morning got me thinking. On the "front page" of the Post's web site, Meyerson's column is billed under the headline, "The GOP, Asleep at the Wheel." But when you click through to the column itself, it's titled, "The Republican Mystery."

Nothing mysterious about that, of course. Maybe he changed the title after finishing the piece and thinking better of it. Or maybe the "title" on the main page was never really his title, but something the web editor came up with. Who knows? Doesn't really matter a whole lot, I guess. But it got me thinking.

Meyerson starts off with an observation that has been made before, often by the commenters right here at Daily Kos, but it's a strong one:

The truly astonishing thing about the latest scandals besetting the Bush administration is that they stem from actions the administration took after the November elections, when Democratic control of Congress was a fait accompli.

Meyerson cites the U.S. Attorneys scandal, of course. And the newly-emerging scandal at the General Services Administration, too. He continues:

During last year's congressional campaigns, Republicans spent a good deal of time and money predicting that if the Democrats won, Congress would become one big partisan fishing expedition led by zealots such as Henry Waxman. The Republicans' message didn't really impress the public, and apparently it didn't reach the president and his underlings, either. Since the election, they have continued merrily along with their mission to politicize every governmental function and agency as if their allies still controlled Congress, as if the election hadn't happened.

In the end, Meyerson offers four possible explanations ("partial explanations," in his words) for this Republican intransigence: 1) they're hoping to be rescued by a non-Bush, non-"insider" candidate in 2008 who will make everyone forget Bush's corruption; 2) they're blocking Democratic initiatives and burying us in oversight work, then planning to run against us as "do nothings"; 3) FOX News has made them stupid, and; 4) they just can't help themselves.

Indeed, this is how Meyerson expresses #4:

And the fourth, pertaining specifically to the inability of the administration to stop politicizing government, is that good government is just not in their DNA. Bush and Rove are no more inclined to create a government based on such impartial values as law and science than they are to set up collective farms.

Number four, of course, comes closest to being the most complete explanation. Consider what we already know about the Republican theory of governance:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Now consider what we know about how Democrats said they would be approaching their majority status and oversight prerogative: 1) that it's all about "subpoena power," and; 2) that impeachment is "off the table."

Where does that leave us? Well, if you were still entertaining any notions of bringing the country together and working in a bipartisan fashion to restore... ugh, I can't even say it! You know it's not happening. What's the "administration" really doing here? Are they really "asleep at the wheel?" That's a little too benign a metaphor to cover something like this, don't you think?

If lame-duck Presidents are to achieve anything, they often have to look for ways to go around Congress, especially when it is in the hands of the other party. Clinton used Executive Orders and his bully pulpit to encourage school uniforms, impose ergonomic rules on employers and prevent mining, logging and development on 60 million acres of public land. White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush may take the same bypass around Capitol Hill. "He told all of us, 'Put on your track shoes. We're going to run to the finish,'" Snow said. "He's going to be aggressive on a lot of fronts. He's been calling all his Cabinet secretaries and telling them, 'You tell me administratively everything you can do between now and the end of the presidency. I want to see your to-do list and how you expect to do it.' We're going to try to be as ambitious and bold as we can possibly be."

In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."

It is, without a doubt, the intention of this "administration" to ignore anything and everything that gets in their way: voters, laws, subpoenas, everything. They have told us as much point blank. They have told us they will defy troop withdrawal legislation. They have told us they will defy Congressional subpoenas. And we stand poised to let them run out the clock doing it.

So as much as I appreciate the sentiment from Meyerson and others in the traditional media who are waking up to the fact that this "administration" doesn't appear to be paying attention to the fact that Americans have had enough of their corruption, the plain truth is that this isn't "sleepwalking," as Meyerson cutely phrases it in the close of his piece.

This. Is. How. Republicans. "Govern."

Elect another one -- especially if we neglect to lay down the law with this one -- and you're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.