You Say "To-May-Toh", I Say "Chimpeachment"

It's a long way down for our favorite incompetent preznit.

Five months after President Bush was sworn in for another four years, his political authority appears to be ebbing, both within his own party, where members of Congress are increasingly if sporadically going their own way, and among Democrats, who have discovered that they pay little or no price for defying him.

In some cases, Mr. Bush is suffering mere political dings that can be patched up, like the votes by the House this past week to buck him on withholding dues to the United Nations and retaining a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act.

In others, the damage is more than cosmetic, as in the case of stem cell research, an issue on which a good portion of his party is breaking with him. In a few instances - most notably the centerpiece of his second-term agenda, his call to reshape Social Security - he is dangerously close to a fiery wreck that could have lasting consequences for his standing and for the Republican Party.

Funny how the fate of the world can turn on a few unexpected points, a couple of unanticipated side effects of things done and said here and there. Remember the crowing not even eight months ago, how the Republicans were on the brink of driving the Democrats (with a little help from them, to be sure) into forced obsolescence, or at the very least, utter irrelevance. Remember the cocky, strutting preznit, crowing about his "style" of spending the "political capital" he'd "earned".

Uh, perhaps you want to check with your political accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, if they haven't shredded the records yet.

And if you think the worm has turned with some measure of quickness here, just imagine if there was a unified Democratic party with guts and ambition, ready to capitalize on the Republican gaffes, instead of a contentious gaggle of seersucker motherfuckers whining because Howard Dean has the guts to take his fucking gloves off and put up his dukes like a fucking man. Just imagine.

It's been a long spring for the brush-clearer-in-chief, but a true opposition party, and a media that was interested in more than just whoring itself on every available street corner, could have really made it bad for him.

The cumulative effect of his difficulties in the last few months has been to pierce the sense of dominance that he sought to project after his re-election and to heighten concerns among Republicans in Congress that voters will hold them, as the party in power, responsible for failure to address the issues of most concern to the public.

"The political capital he thought he had has dwindled to very little, and he overstated how much he had to begin with," said Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University in Washington.

"Congress is like Wall Street - it operates on fear and greed," Mr. Lichtman said. "The Democrats don't fear him anymore, and they're getting greedy, because they think they can beat him. The attitude you see among Republicans in Congress is, my lifeboat first."

Yup. Rats can always be counted on to desert the proverbial sinking ship. The sooner the Republican Party completes its self-immolation in the ill-advised rhetoric and superstition of its oversized mumbo-jumbo faction, the sooner it can find some measure of absolution in casting off this lot and reclaiming its soul of truly principled conservative thought, as opposed to the current stream of brain-dead reactionary horseshit.

In the last week, Mr. Bush has responded by lashing out at Democrats, casting them as obstructionists, a strategy that carries some risk given that it seems to acknowledge an inability by Republicans to carry out a governing platform. Searching as well for a more positive message, the administration, which has always been reluctant to acknowledge that events are not unfolding precisely as planned, has embarked on a public relations campaign intended to reassure Americans that Mr. Bush is attuned to their concerns.

Expecting this cluster of pathological disassemblers to explain exactly how a minority party can be so effectively obstructionist is like expecting them to have a plan for anything that faces this nation right now. Seriously. What is their plan for Iraq? Wait it out and see what happens. Oh. Good one. What is their plan for the economy? Continue to secure oil supplies so that the oil-based economy doesn't collapse, and pray that either the housing bubble doesn't burst or the Chinese don't decide to start cashing in their T-bills.

These people do not seem to have much of a plan for anything at all, and worse yet, they enjoy spending millions of dollars trying to gin up jingoistic sentiment for all these non-plans. Look how the Social Security road show went. This was such a hopeless clusterfuck, even with pre-screened audiences and heavily-rehearsed sales pitches they couldn't sell this lemon anywhere. How goddamned pathetic is that?

The article goes on, in far too evenhanded a fashion, but you get the idea. This man is unpopular, period, and the malaise is starting to spread to his own party. Chuck Hagel and John McCain may be sharpening their teeth for the presidential campaign season, but the fact is that they are telling the truth in their apostasy, and nobody in the Republican field has said "boo" about it yet.

That should tell you all you need to know. Everyone's keeping their powder dry until the midterms, and then it's on, and it looks more and more like a Democratic turnaround, which effectively cooks Bush's goose then and there. They will make his life miserable, and the American people will probably be just fine with it.

If Americans got Clinton fatigue, after eight years of peace and prosperity, over a few blowjobs, it's likely that the more facts that finally trickle out about intel fixing and such, the more Bush fatigue will set in, even more than it already has. Who wants to sacrifice their kids to a bunch of people that can't seem to get their story straight about anything?