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Traitors one and all

December 12, 2007 - 5:14am.

Bush and the Democratic Congress have sold out America

By DOUG THOMPSON

In more than 40 years of dealing with politics as either a journalist or a political operative, I've learned one thing: Political partisans have short memories.

Each and every day brings batches of email claiming that I'm a (pick one or more):

- Left wing loony;
- Communist (yeah, they still throw that one around);
- Liberal;
- Democrat (ouch!);
- Socialist;
- Or just about any other stereotyped moniker fired off by those whose philosophy stand somewhere right of center.

Flash back 10 years to 1997. Bill Clinton is in the White House. Monica Lewinsky, blowjobs and interesting uses of cigars dominate the news and a number of stories on this web site.

A review of email from that period called me (pick one or more again):

- A right wing nutjob;
- A conservative moron;
- Republican (ouch again)
- And so on…

A lot of things have changed over the past decade but political myopia lives on. Independent thought is not allowed in a lockstep political world. You're either one of us or one of them: No middle ground allowed.

Capitol Hill Blue was born during the Clinton administration. We went after him with a zeal that many Democrats found disturbing. We also went after the Republican Congress but that pursuit got lost in the furor over our stories about the many misdeeds of the Clinton administration.

I believed then, as I do now, that Bill Clinton was a bad President. He misused the power of the office, practiced the same kind of "politics of personal destruction" that he claimed his enemies employed and brought disgrace upon the Presidency through his immoral behavior in the Oval Office.

But I also believe George W. Bush is a worse President. While I doubt he is spilling any of the First Seed on the dress of a White House intern, he is smearing feces on the U.S. Constitution and, along with his partner-in-crime Vice President Dick Cheney, destroying the very foundations that once made this country great.

America faces a long, hard road to recover the loss of justice, destruction of civil and human rights and dismantling of freedoms under the reign of terror by Bush and Cheney.

I believe both Bush and Cheney should be removed from office now - not in an election next year - and I fault the timid Democratic leadership of Congress for failing to step forward and take back the government that the criminal cabal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has stolen from the American people.

The failure of the Democratic Congress to deliver on promises made to voters in the 2006 mid-term elections makes them co-conspirators in the Bush-Cheney plot to destroy the Democratic Republic that was once a great nation called America.

In my opinion, Bush, Cheney, Pelosi, Reid and all the others are no less than traitors to the nation and should be treated as such.

Try taking that point of view and putting it into a neat pigeonhole of partisan politics.

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I'm not making this point in service of some broader aim. I'm not pointing any of this out in order to try to persuade anyone that there are no meaningful differences between the parties or that it's irrelevant who wins in 2008 (here, for instance, are the partisan vote breakdowns on the Military Commissions Act and bill to legalize warrantless eavesdropping). But it is simply undeniable that the Democratic leadership has continuously enabled and, more often, supported the defining Bush policies.

I wish none of this were true. I wish we had a genuine, vibrant opposition party. It would be indescribably beneficial if the rare, isolated and usually marginalized voices within the Democratic Party (and the even rarer and more marginalized voices in the GOP) were predominant. But they just aren't. That's just a fact that can't be ignored. The Democratic Party in Congress is largely controlled and led by those who have enabled and affirmatively supported the worst aspects of the Bush foreign policy and the most severe abuses of our country's political values.

Since the voters put them back in power, the Democrats have taken impeachment off the table, punted on the war, never figured out a way to hold Republicans accountable for filibusters and obstructionism, so legislation is in the toilet, and never managed to use oversight power to do anything more than chip away around the edges of the Bush regime—though they have written a great number of Sternly Worded Letters.

And now, top Democrats turn out to be enablers of war crimes by our lawless executive. What a surprise. Harry, Nancy, nice work.

What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?

Please, can we give Leader Nance the heave-ho? She’s a [censored], and an enabler. Everything Barney Frank isn’t. Barney Frank for Speaker!