Cut throats and compromisers

In his regular column in the Boston Globe, dated 7-13-04, Brian McGrory wrote the following:

I'll confess I didn't mind seeing Bush win the Presidency in 2000. I expected him to lead Washington the way he did Austin, which was in a civil, bipartisan manner, free of the rancor and trash talking that characterized Tom Delay and Trent Lott's capital.


Poor Brian, he really is a naive yap when you get right down to it.
It is not that Brian is a conservative per se, it is just he really believed that warm fuzzy moderate bullshit that Bush spouted on the campaign trail back four years ago.
This is Karl Rove's "talk centrist, govern as a reactionary" formula, so far it has been a success, especially at pulling the wool over the eyes of silly mealy-mouth fools like Brian McGrory.
La Famiglia Arbusto's de facto motto down through the years seems to be "winning ugly is better than losing every time". This is something we should all keep in mind when it comes time for Jeb to take up the overseership of Plantation USA.
You'd think McGrory would remember something like that...but no.
In the past four years Bush has helped put into the U.S. Senate loathsome bastards like Saxby Chambliss who happily questioned the patriotism of Max Cleland and Attorney General John Ashcroft an sort of Oliver Cromwell type with a pleasant tenor voice.
None of these ass holes are centrists in any sense of the word....Chambliss or that fag basher Mitt Romney would run every moderate within reach through a wood chipper if it meant more power and prerogatives for them and their like.
Meanwhile down in Oklahoma, Rep. Tom Coburn is running for the GOP's senate nomination on a promise to execute all "abortion doctors". Is there any doubt that if he secures the nomination this barbarian and his plans for doctor-genocide will be sharing a platform with President Bush this fall???
And anyway Bush didn't "win" anything like an election, he won a lawsuit with the help of his father's trusted henchmen and a few fanatical Supreme Court Justices.
Far from exercising a restraining influence on Delay and his ilk, President Bush has been actively recruiting more power worshipping reactionary bastards to come to DC and take up their malevolent work.
Are these the men who will govern in "a civil bipartisan manner free of rancor and trash talking..."?

There is a problem of perception here, and then a problem of unconscious ideology.
When Brian McGrory looks at President Bush, he sees a nice well meaning "centrist" and "authentic" regular guy.
The rest of us, who judge the President on his acts and his increasingly irrational intentions see a narrow minded ideologue and a fanatic...simpleminded rather that authentic and a Commander in Chief who believes in the end, that people must be made to fit ideas.
Why, Brian perceives the President so, is an interesting question.
I think he has completely internalized the notion that movement conservatism is a creed of strength and honesty.
This is McGrory's own belief,unconscious perhaps, but the equation that conservative=strength is a vivid factor in his writing.
Allied to that, is Brian's weird notion (one that he shares with literally thousands of pundits and public thinkers) that "bipartisanship" should somehow drive political debate...that compromise between parties and ideology is the preferred outcome in Washington DC.
Compromise is fine I guess, when the contracting parties are acting honestly and in the public interest.
However raw partisanship is what drives history as much as anything.
One presents a case honestly and forcefully and wins over the moderates to forge a new governing coalition.
Yes it is messy and yes it is loud but it also pretty much a historic norm.
The Ashcrofts and the Chambliss' of Bush's Washington aren't prepared to compromise on anything and why should they? Their GOP has never had so much power in it's entire history...one more good election and they can finally smash the modern state and reconstruct the rubble to resemble the dear departed Washington of William B. McKinley.
How can anyone ever hope to compromise with the likes of GOP activist Grover Norquist...a man who quite literally believes in the efficacy of the classic one party state on the South American model?
Brian just doesn't see this...ideological warfare is going on all around us, and all he can think on is nice powerful honest conservatives make nicey nice with weak wavering well meaning liberals.

Is he even awake to the world the rest of us live in?
This is not a time for compromise because as far as I am concerned there is no one to compromise with.
Try telling that to Brian with his quaint notions of George Bush being the centrist messiah.