omorka | More Schadenfreude

Stolen from

moontyger: No Sex, Please, We're Republicans. It's a bit out of date - written in August 2004, back when we could hope that the nightmare was ending soon. More importantly, it was written when Ashcroft was the attorney general, when the fundie wing of the Republican party was clearly ascendant.

Yeah, I said was. Not implying that they're not ascendant now, of course. But while they probably are, they're not clearly so anymore.

Is it wrong of me to be secretly gleeful that, just because Dubya nominated a girl with no assurances to his party other than "trust me," during the same week that the Hammer fell, the cracks in the House of the Elephant have suddenly started widening?

The fundies are realizing that the Big Money and NeoCon branches of the Bush White House is selling them out in favor of their own financial and foreign policy interests, and the socially moderate part of the Big Money wing of the party is starting to get sick of the fundies. Why, the Big Money wing has some gays, uppity women, kinksters, and non-Christians in it, itself! (And how do all the Jewish members of the NeoCon circle justify their alliance with the fundies, I wonder?) The uncomfortable coalition that P. J. O'Rourke used to complain about back in '88 was made of plywood and bad stucco to begin with, and it's showing its age.

We're even seeing the Rove/Libby allegations back in the public eye, thanks to Judith Miller's making a public spectacle of her journalistic principles. (Speaking of Novak. Oooh, watch him squirm!) So much of the Republicans' success has been based on their hardball strategists - Atwater, then Rove. If they lose the Brain (not all that likely, but I can hope, can't I?), their next few campaign seasons are going to be much less painful. Losing the DeLay money machine won't help that, either; neither will losing the Bush family name at the head of the ticket (barring Jeb deciding to run, of course, although the grumbling about nepotism and "royal families" will be mighty high if he does - as it would, rightly, if Hillary ends up at the top of her ticket).

Now, if only we can keep them from applying their usual plaster until a year from now . . . here's the the possible return to Reality-Based policy!