Anger To Hope


I've had a revelation which is giving me hope in these dark political times

I’ve been on sort of a self imposed news blackout for the last week and a half. I often find myself becoming nostalgic at the end of the year, looking back a bit and also looking forward. This year’s elections really left me with little hope for the immediate future though.

As I’ve been catching up on the lesser known stories about our good ‘ol government that many have missed in the coverage of the devastation in Southeast Asia I had a realization which I’ll talk about below.

First the stories that led to this revelation. I’ve excerpted their first paragraphs so that you can find them on other sites if you don’t want to deal with the NYT registration or when they go into the NYT archive and cost cash to read)

“James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.” – story by David Fitzpatrick of the New York Times

“To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.” – story by Edmund L Andrews of the New York Times

“House Republicans pushed through a significant change in the handling of ethics complaints over strong Democratic objections Tuesday as the 109th Congress convened with a burst of pomp and partisanship.” – story by Carl Hulse of the New York Times

“Last week, the Bush administration put another spin on the twisted legal reasoning behind the brutalization of prisoners at military jails, apparently in hopes of smoothing the promotion of Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel. Mr. Gonzales, who oversaw earlier memos condoning what amounts to torture and scoffed at the Geneva Conventions, is being rewarded with the job of attorney general.” – from a New York Times Editorial

“Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, delivering his 19th and most likely his last year-end report on the federal judiciary, returned on Friday to one of his longtime themes: a need to safeguard the independence of federal judges from intrusive Congressional oversight.” - From an article by Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times

Those were the stories that made something readily apparent: The Republican majority’s hubris will be their downfall in the 2006 mid-term elections. Their majority (if there really was one in this election) was slight. Very slight. The people who voted against them aren’t going to change their minds and support them given the kind of crap that they are pulling now. Given that by becoming even more partisan and right-wing they won’t add to their majority that really only gives them one direction to go. The best that they could hope for was to maintain the slim majority that they have now, but the odds are pretty low as they try and railroad a right-right-wing agenda down America’s throats.

So now I have hope. The more that Tom DeLay and the Rapture Right try to force their agenda through the congress by threatening democrats and the judiciary the more they will alienate their own constituents. They have already made it clear that they do not intend to work across party lines which will lead to an increasingly contentious congress and it will be their own fault.


Here’s to a Democrat controlled congress in 2006!

Posted: Thu - January 6, 2005 at 03:48 PM           |

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