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Edited on Fri May-21-04 10:18 AM by calimary
No, I'm not going to go so far as to invite a "bi-partisan" forum. You can bet money that it would swifty degenerate into a free-for-all once the Tom DeLay wannabes got going (and they'd come out of the woodwork in droves - look at the many alert buttons we have to click on, just as is!
But a poster elsewhere on DU who mentioned "divide and conquer" - well, THAT is another story. You watch 'em for awhile, and soon enough you can tell who's a republican versus a republi-CON. I'm thinking Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snow, Lincoln Chafee, there's a few of them. POSSIBLY now also South Carolina's Lindsey Graham. I read something recently that named four GOP senators who were uncharacteristically concerned about getting to the bottom of Torturegate - he was one, along with Richard Lugar of Indiana, and incredibly, Pat "the sycophant" Roberts of Kansas, Virginia's John Warner (!) and - of all people, ORRIN holier-than-thou HATCH of Utah! And I NEVER thought I'd see the day when he'd be stepping up to the plate against ANYTHING this cabal did. But, there you have it.
So what these are, really, are larger chinks in the armor. They're a finger-hold where we can wedge in the tip of a very small chisel, and start grinding. You find the openings where you can get 'em, and get to work. It was REPUBLICANS who went to Nixon and finally got him to give up the ghost about Watergate, which eventually got his ass out of there. It's probably gonna have to be the same thing here. THESE are the folks you call. Few of us have time to search out each republi-CON and look in depth at their voting record. Just go with what you've got so far.
You call 'em up. Get their staffers. Attempt to remain civil and as non-combative as possible, but make your point. I've done so, successfully, posing as just another concerned American (which, IN FACT, I TRULY AM - no subterfuge here, when you boil it down). You voice your concern about where this headlong foolhardiness - that starts, YES, at the top - where the tone for all of this is set. You voice your concern not in a "you guys are such jerks" mode but in a "good heavens, this is becoming truly dreadful for all of us" way.
I have found, when approaching some of the slightly more reasonable ones, that this works rather nicely. You get your message through in a way in which they HAVE TO at least acknowledge it. Some of them, in Hagel's office in particular, I've noticed this, are seriously wavering. I could tell with a couple of people I spoke to that there was reluctant agreement with everything I said.
What else is on our side that helps this along: the fact that we are very close to reaching the critical mass point, if indeed we haven't already arrived there. The "enough is enough" ethic is starting to make itself felt with sirens and air horns. I mean, we just have had a cascade of crap from these people ever since they "took" office, all of which was ignored or swept under the rug or excused under the simpering "but we have to support Our President/you're a traitor-unpatriotic-Saddam lover-Osama sympathizer, with-us-or-against-us" baloney, but that's just been kicked to hell by what's happened lately. The prisoner torture scandal compounded by the Berg beheading has just been too much. PLUS, it began with photos NOT of the torture but of all those American coffins coming home - that the White House and Pentagon tried so hard to hide. ALL OF THAT, ALL OF IT, just got wrapped up into the same big bad package and the smell it emitted, collectively, has just become too much. The whole thing is now viewed as rather sordid and awful and nothing we as Americans are proud to have our name attached to, and it's tipped everything over. However you try to isolate or dissect ANY aspect of this, you still lose. The whole horrendous business over there is just all lumped together and looks and smells like shit. It's shit that's gotten smeared all over us as Americans, because NONE OF IT had to happen. NONE. And that is becoming more glaringly obvious by the day, as our "objectives" become visibly more impossible. And the people who've tried to dismiss the torture part as mere frat hazings look as ridiculous as the storms of derision currently raining down on their heads prove them to be.
It's just all a mess. Consider, merely, how many times you've heard that word, "mess," or that phrase "what a mess," or "made a big mess," has been used to sum this up. And consider where it's now coming from. Like practically EVERYBODY around you, more people in the media, and these occasional republicans who are realizing it's not a good thing for them to be tied to this. Specially since every reference to the word "mess," or "made a mess" comes surgically attached to the name "bush."
The times ARE changing. These are just the first ones to realize it and to try to scramble out away from it. There will be more. But meantime, THEY are a good place to start. Pick your waverer, or your slowly awakening fighter moving toward the edge of the enemy camp, and get to work. Gently but firmly. Wedge them away. Sweetly and softly help them wipe the sleep from their eyes. Offer them support and assistance. Then THEY will do the rest.
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