Republicans

I will attempt to include a few "gracious in victory" comments in this post about the Republican party in disarray.

Lincoln Chaffee has made noises about switching parties. He's the only Republican whose defeat bothered some Democrats. If he decides to climb aboard, be nice.

Should Allen un-concede? Brad Friedman says "Make 'em prove those numbers if they can!" I quite agree. Of course, as most of you know, I suspect (based on the exit polls, and on history) that Webb's margin of victory would not be so razor-thin if the vote were recounted. Or should I say "if it were recountable?"

Ken Mehlman: The day after Bill Maher uses the words "Mehlman" and "gay" in the same sentence on national TV, Ken Mehlman quits. If he really wanted to do this country a favor, he would out himself, stay in the job, and force the party to deal with the situation. Such things, alas, are beyond our Ken.

Dick Morris. I really don't like this guy, but I can understand why he's been sucking Republican arse the way he would prefer to suck Carrie Bradshaw's Manolos. Who else would cut him a check? Who else could have turned off the laughter spigot when his trivial (albeit funny) sexual oddities became public?

Like Limbaugh, Morris seems to feel "liberated" by the Democratic victory:

...it is financial scandals that will do the greatest damage to Bush and the Republicans. Democratic committee chairmen will examine Halliburton contracts in Iraq, royalty deals for offshore oil drilling, defense procurement scandals, and resource leases in national forests and wilderness areas. They will examine the nexus between campaign contributions and favors from the trough of the executive branch.

Immunized from congressional scrutiny by a compliant Congress, the administration has been getting away with pork politics of the worst sort and the Democrats will find sufficient fodder for years of hearings and investigations.

Morris talks as though he spent the past six years alerting the public to defense procurement scandals, shady royalty deals, and executive branch bribery. We don't associate Dick Morris with Haliburton's shennanigans the way we associate Lou Dobbs with the issue of immigration or Brad Friedman with computerized voting.

I wonder how many other Republican hacks will have these Malcolm-X-after-he-leaves-Elijah-Muhammed moments -- those bursts of samsara when the realization strikes: I don't have to read from a script any longer!

The era of bad feelings: Kos Blogger mgoltsman argues against the instinct for vengeance on defeated members of the Republican party:

Second, don't forget that these Republicans were elected by somebody. Few things would give me more pleasure than seeing them treated exactly the way they deserve - in a humiliating and abusive way, and to see a good number of them get nice juicy jail terms for their most egrigious abuses. However, they are not people unto themselves but the representatives of a huge slice of America. Sure, wingnuts may have put them over the top, but they had to have substantial support among decent citizens misguided by various factors. Treating the congressional Republicans like dirt is, in large measure, treating their constituents like dirt, and that is not what we want. Much better to allow them to have a dignified voice, even if it does not amount to any power in the end. That way we avoid further alienating the decent people among their constituents.

I argue otherwise: Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

Dems should not alienate the G.O.P. constituency. (I do that, whenever I lapse into one of my riffs on rednecks, but no Democratic pol should do likewise.) The best way to entice those constituents to our side is to alienate them from the party of deceit. Ney and Cunningham need company in the Big House.

And if cleaning out the congressional stables means showing a merciless attitude toward corrupt Dems, then so be it. William Jefferson must go. We need congressfolk who are as pure as the Virgin Mary in a tub of Ivory soap.

Impeachment. Some folks say that any attempt to get rid of Bush would only hurt Democratic chances in 2008. Nonsense. The knife has entered the monster's flesh, but it has not yet penetrated to the bone. We need to sink the blade into the heart of the beast -- and then we need to twist it.

The Republican party itself will benefit from the exercise. You could sense as much from Limbaugh's now-famous admission that he feels liberated. Lots of rightists now know -- and are just dying to admit -- that Bush was never up to the job. They know that the Iraq war was a mistake, for exactly the reasons foreseen by Poppy. I think that there are many G.O.P.ers (including Limbaugh) who really couldn't give one-tenth of a damn about such wedge issues as stem cells and gay rights, and they are sick of pretending to care.

These people must sense that the best hope for conservatism is a rapid end to neoconservatism. That's why Republican senators will vote for removal if the evidence is strong.