What a Difference a Day Makes Edition

"It was a thumpin'."
-- George W. Bush on Nov. 8, 2006, noticing the bleeding obvious: Against the odds, the Dems had broken the GOP's kneecaps and won a majority in the House and the Senate.

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
-- H.L. Mencken. [Mencken is right, but this is that tenth time when he's wrong.]

The Era of Rove's Neocon Republicans is Over and the Country's in Clover as Visions of Sugarplum Fairies (from Pelosi's Frisco, Natch) Dance in My Head

November 9, 2006 -- Yesterday, as I returned to consciousness from my recurring nightmare of Dick Cheney with horns and a pitchfork popping up on the computers at the Casa de Tatty as an annoying Microsoft Word Assistant -- "Let me show you how to save this file -- oops, it's deleted, har, har, har!" -- I felt like the Robert Hays character from "Airplane!"

Yup, I would have been motivated to ask the guy next to me at the bar, if I'd been in a bar, to "pinch me" as I perused the news Wednesday: Dems win the House with more than twice the number they needed for a majority. Incredible! Indiana incumbent Reps. Chris 'Count' Chocola, Mike Sodrel and John Hostettler, Bush Republican family-values types from a Red-on-Red State, had fallen to the Dems. Amazing! Dem Nick Lampson picked up Tom DeLay's crimson Congressional seat in Texas, and Mark Foley's GOP district in Florida went Blue. Miraculous! Republican jackass Rep. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and 12-term CT Rep. Nancy Johnson will have to find honest work as they both lost to sub-par Dem candidates. Wow! Even old GOP warhorse Rep. Jim Leach in Iowa succumbed to Dave Loebsack. a Democrat unknown with no money and no help from the DCCC, a college professor who'd never even run for office before. Fantastic! Three unindicted neocon co-conspirators and enablers -- Sens. Jim Talent, Mike DeWine and Satan's Imp Rick Santorum -- went down in flames early. Wonderful! Dem governors now control a majority of statehouses! Fabulous! Supposedly Bush didn't listen to his Dick for once and forced Don 'Bumsfeld' to quit! Awesome! And the electoral grip of Rove's kooky far-right Christian fanatics is finally broken! Un-freaking-real!

And the good news just kept on coming; by the time the AP confirmed Jon Tester's US senate win over incumbent Conrad 'Montgomery' Burns in Montana and Jim Webb's over Sen. Macaca Boy Allen in Virginia, I had run out of superlatives and exclamation points! (Except that last one.) Even the victories of Musclehead Schwarzenegger, Shifty Corker and Droopy Lieberman couldn't dampen my giddiness! I would have thrown on the dress whites and disco danced, if I had any dress whites and I didn't deplore disco music as a crime against humanity.

Think of it: In spite of no-paper-trail voting machines, GOP voter suppression tactics, despicable 'robocalling,' some of the nastiest RNC ads ever seen, and Rove's so-called 'genius,' a giant Blue tsunami had washed over the nation, rinsing away the far-right red stain of Bush Republicanism. (Side note: One of the Tattlesnake's vast circle of two friends claims Karl's Korps tried to steal the election, but the Dem turnout was so overwhelming they couldn't keep track of it all; appropriately, they lost by incompetence in the end.)

Even the Little King himself had to grudgingly acknowledge in a speech Wednesday that few were left to follow him in his long march off a short pier; now he was going to have to play nice with the Dems and let Daddy's friend Jim "I Stole Florida for Bush" Baker provide him with a face-saving 'cut and run' trapdoor for his debacle in Iraq.

For once, the Tattlesnake felt sorry for the Bush Boy, in the same way you'd feel pity even for a hated enemy who had been beaten to a bloody pulp; in a lifelong Oedipal fight with his father, he's proven to be a bigger failure as president than Poppy ever was as everything he's touched has turned to lead. One-term President Daddy has an aircraft carrier with his name on the stern; if two-term Dubya ever gets a US Navy ship named in his honor, it'll no doubt be a garbage scow.

In retrospect, George Junior might regret than Kerry didn't win in 2004; if he had, Bush and the neocons could have lived off the idea that if he'd only served a second term, he could have solved the world's problems, sustaining the notion that neocon nuttery would work and kept that faith alive. Now, it's all been exposed as an irredeemable disaster, a discredited ideology rendered as dead as slavery by Bush's incompetence and the results of November 7th.

Karl Rove boasted to an NPR reporter before the election that he possessed "THE MATH" that proved the GOP would retain their sway in Congress. That math must have come from the same drawer as 'THE PLAN' for Iraq, 'THE PLAN' to privatize Social Security, 'THE PLAN' to bail out New Orleans, 'THE PLAN' to save the economy, and 'THE PLAN' to make Bush a president that mattered with an eternal neoconservative Republican majority billowing his sails. Then reality happened Tuesday.

Karl Rove is finished as a force in politics, as is the fundamentalist Christian GOP voting bloc he helped create and manipulate. For the next two years Rove's invention will sit uncomfortably in the Oval Office as he and his administration are held accountable for six years of egregious deception, massive corruption and mind-numbing incompetence. I wouldn't be surprised if Rove resigns next; his potency is drained and his continued presence in the White House is only an embarrassing reminder of utter failure.

Future GOP candidates will take note of what happened on this election day in November and run to the center; the term 'conservative' itself will acquire the taint previously imposed on 'liberal' as the right-wing media attack machine withers in importance and the big media companies deal with the reality of an energized and progressive American public; even such neocon standard-bearers as Rush Limbaugh and Richard Perle have already begun moderating their cant and rewriting their history.

With a majority in both chambers of Congress, Dems will now decide which bills and judges come up for a vote and, if they keep their promises, we won't see any more of our laws written by lobbyists and ethical standards will be imposed. Saddled with a widely unpopular president and a lifeless neocon agenda, those Republicans interested in political self-preservation will side with the Dem majority on such issues as national health care, an increased minimum wage, educational funding for the poor and middle class, stopping future dumb Bush wars, and cancelling government giveaways to the wealthy and multi-national corporations. Maybe they'll even get around to repealing those Constitution-killing Patriot and Military Commission Acts, set fair national standards for verifying the vote count and voter eligibility, and insure that US citizens are detained legally and spied on only with a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge. At least real Congressional oversight should back Bush off his worst authoritarian tendencies.

It will be satisfying and ironic to see the Dem TV ads of 2008 slamming GOP opponents for voting against health care, constitutional rights or Pell grants, and having those ads impact the election.

There is a 12-year cycle in US politics which Rove should have anticipated, were he not blinded by his own ego: The neoconservatives take office, as Reagan did in 1980, promising lower taxes, smaller government, increased defense spending, and that they won't cut entitlement programs popular with the public. This unworkable scam is kept afloat for a while by expanding the deficit until the economy suffers and the public gets sick of the inevitable corruption brought on by tax breaks and other special favors for Republican-friendly corporations, defense contractors and campaign contributors. Then the Dems are voted in to clean up the GOP mess. During that period, the Republicans go on the attack against 'tax and spend Democrat liberals,' blaming them for all the problems the GOP set in motion in the first place, making the same empty neoconservative promises, pumping up their 'moral values,' and then the conservatives take power and the cycle starts all over again, as it did with Bush Junior.

But cycles, especially those unhealthy for a free constitutional democracy, can be broken; let's hope that Tuesday's election finally broke this one for good.

Incidentally, H.L. Mencken also wrote another timely sentiment I agree with:

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
-- H.L. Mencken