Moosing The Point

For the most part, I have enjoyed reading the bumpy centrist sentiments of the Bull Moose, just for a different perspective on things. I even occasionally derive some strange bemusement from his twee affectation of referring to himself in the third animal. But lately, the Moose has gotten his antlers into a knot, over the supposed problem of the activist lefties taking over the Democratic Party.

If only they would.

The Moose's latest tilt at the windmill is more than a little off-putting, not only by what it says, but by what it doesn't say.

The Moose can't help but believe that it was planned.

If Sam Alito had choreographed his confirmation hearing, he would not have orchestrated it any differently. The critical element in his scheme would have been hours and hours of Senators hectoring, bloviating, hammering, and imposing the liberal political correctness standard of People for the American Way. At one point, according to the Alito plan, one fine Senator donned Princeton haberdashery to make his point in an ever so odd way. And the wife crying certainly helped the Democratic vote in the exurbs.

And the Democrats seek to become the majority party in this country? Have they learned anything from the previous elections?

You know what was planned? The Harriet Miers head-fake. The Bushies had to have known that it would whip the in-house loons into a frenzy, so they would be "forced" to throw them the winger they crave. Preferably a winger calm in demeanor and reliable in résumé, such as one Strip Search Sammy Alito.

Note how Wittman bitches about the "hectoring", etc., of the liberal senators who are "imposing the liberal political correctness standard of People for the American Way." What, precisely, is that supposed to mean? What, pray tell, would be that "standard"? Recognizing Roe as settled law? Describing one's thoughts on granting imperial powers to the executive branch? Demanding true regulatory safety for dangerous industries, and recourse for wronged persons? What exactly is the fucking problem here?

I'm pretty disgusted at this stupid dog-and-pony show anyway. To loosely paraphrase the Frank Zappa chestnut about rock journalists, this is a bunch of assholes asking questions they know won't be answered honestly, to a person who has no intention of answering anything he doesn't have to, while the whole circus gets covered as if it actually meant something. Well, bullshit. This is about the only job where the applicant doesn't have to say what he thinks about anything, and no one seems to care.

But what's also bullshit is how Wittman again pisses and moans about the lame theatrics of Joe (D-Rogaine) Biden (who proves as always that when you try to please everyone, no one will like it), but has nothing at all to say about Tom (R-Lobotomy) Coburn's sheer lunacy. Coburn went off the fucking map, something about sodomites and prostitution and abortion (oh my!). Somehow this shithouse-rat nonsense does not register on the Moose's radar.

As the Moose has argued before, the Democratic Party should have a legal philosophy that extends beyond abortion on demand and the juris prudence of the ACLU and People for the American Way. On legal and cultural matters, the national Democrats have absolutely no appeal to the "progressive traditionalists" who used to comprise the base of the party.

He does have a point here. I've said this before -- the Democrats beat a single-note tune on Roe until everyone's fucking sick of it. They need to understand that most people are temperamentally opposed to abortion, save a true medical problem or serious birth defect. They simply put up with it as part of a larger privacy issue. I myself split the philosophical difference by opining that for those women who may find the whole thing easy, like pulling a tooth, they really shouldn't be parents anyway. (That doesn't mitigate my contempt for such people, mind you. I'm just not going to let my sheer revulsion at their actions dictate my thoughts on what decent, well-meaning people should do when they're in an untenable situation.)

Still, the real root of Roe is Griswold, and the real root of Griswold is privacy, and the role of the state in regulating private behavior. The Democrats would do themselves a huge favor by emphasizing privacy at least as much as they emphasize choice. The conservatard agenda has been quite open -- either load the Supreme Court outright to overturn Roe (and even Griswold), or at least present the "compromise" of states' rights. This is no compromise at all -- there is no compelling reason to deny women in Utah the fundamental rights that women in New York would have. Yet that is probably what is going to happen now, and Delaware voters are welcome to thank Biden and his dumb fucking cap by sending them down the road the next chance they get. Enough is enough.

But what is enough for the Moose? He never quite seems to get to that part. He's too busy whinging about those awful, awful liberal values (or lack thereof).

Sam Alito would not be the Moose's choice in a Supreme Court nominee. He is far too differential [sic] to money power. And of course, he has been evasive in his answers - that is the way the game is now played.

Well, no shit, Sherlock. Funny how Wittman, for all his sober pronunciamentos against his putative ideological brethren (or at least cousins), he just can't get around to saying exactly how Kennedy and Schumer should have approached this kabuki. They put up a vigorous opposition. They pointed to a record that Alito was happy to own up to when he was just another bureaucratic suck-up, but couldn't run away from fast enough now. Alito is simply another flunky for a worthless administration awash in flunkies. He'll fit right in. He's a lifelong enabler of useless plutocrats like the Bushes. He's a friend to corporate bastards, the sort who look at mining safety fines as merely the cost of doing bidness -- until actual humans die in the bowels of the earth, then they're oh so very sorry and pretty please don't sue us tort reform!

Whatever grandstanding Kennedy and Schumer engaged in was at least factually based. You want to talk grandstanding, look at that worthless sack of shit Coburn, that glad-handing moron Sessions. Lindsey Graham's little verbal handjob that culminated in the exquisite timing of Mrs. Strip Search Sammy running tearfully from those eeeeevil libruls. The whole thing was a put-on, and Wittman knows it. He used to work for these fuckers, after all; he knows exactly what they're capable of. Yet apparently the Democrats are just supposed to sit there and parrot the tiresome "heartland values" tropes long-owned by the Republican demagogues, and somehow make something out of them. Well, you know what, pal? The fucking heartland put Tom Coburn in the US Senate.

Besides, the Democrats tried that shit in '04. They did everything by the book except pick on fags, and that turned out to be their undoing. So what the fuck?

I agree with Wittman that Democrats need to revamp their playbook, but I disagree about the direction. The fake Repub shit isn't working anymore, hasn't been working for some time, isn't going to work, period. Regardless, one can be disdainful of the Democrats' frequently ham-fisted tactics, but one also needs to be mindful of the ratfucks they're up against, and either reserve the greater measure of contempt for Crazy Coburn and friends, or just fucking vote Republican already and have done with it.

I, for one, do not want to be part of a political movement that has no greater goal than to cynically genuflect to fickle "values voters" whose true values boil down to merely covering their own asses. Fuck that shit. Either we stand for something, or we don't. Maybe Wittman doesn't care, but I'm tired of these chumps bringing a knife to a gunfight.