Groundhog's Day In November

....and brothers and sisters, did I ever see one helluva big shadow.

The day off from this crapola did me some good. I was better able to focus on my "day job," as opposed to the day before, where I was distracted to the point of mental paralysis. Despite spending half the day in one meeting that pre-empted me from the other one, I managed to get quite a bit done. Then I came home and managed to stay awake long enough to help my son (who is still in his private school, praise the LORD) make considerable progress on a big Social Studies project that is due on Friday.

Most important of all, I was able to put the electoral disaster that is a harbinger of political, economic, and national security disasters to come aside and function at a morale level not far off of plumb. This unquestionably reflects the power of prayer, as it is written:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

It's true, brothers and sisters. It works. HE works.

You might want to give it, and Him, a try, first and foremost for the forgiveness of your sins and the eternal life of your souls, but also for the long, dark times ahead, of which this was the first installment:

Prior to the President's press conference beginning, I told you that based on the leak that Don Rumsfeld was asked to resign, it alerted me to the reality that it's going to get worse before it gets better. The President's press conference confirmed that for me. The president referred several times to the phone call that he had with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the speaker of the House. I think the best way to sum up the substance of that call, and I'm just guessing, of course, because I was not privy to it, but I think the best way to sum up the substance of that call was the president saying, "What do you want? I've got it. What do you want? You want a minimum wage raise? You got it. You want guest worker program and an amnesty program for illegal immigrants? You got it."

Democrats won the election. They get to choose what we get. That was the attitude that I got from the President. They won. They get to choose what we get. He reminded everybody of his new tone that he tried to bring and unite people in 2001 when he was inaugurated, going to try to do that again. I think what's going to happen here, folks, this is why I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. I think the President has seen how this is done. This is a page out of the Clinton playbook. After the 1996 and the 1998 elections and after the impeachment, Clinton's only objective, (not saying this is the President's only objective, but Clinton's only objective) was to keep those poll numbers up and get out of town loved and adored, just make everybody happy, just get rid of all the controversy, get rid of all the consternation, get rid of all the confrontation, all of the partisanship, whatever. Just give it to them.

We'll find a way to compromise and give you what you want, if not all of it, a lot of it. So if you want something done on stem cells, we'll talk to you about it, or we'll come up with a compromise. If you've got a problem with our tax cuts, why, you won the election and we'll find a way to work with you on it! The bottom line is that there's not going to be any partisanship from the president. There's not going to be any partisanship from the Republicans going on, especially these next two months before the Congress assumes power.

So, just like that, not even twenty-four hours after the polls close, Rumsfeld's gone. Could there be any more symbolic gesture of surrender in the war on terror? Is it even possible that a single American soldier will remain in Iraq or Afghanistan by the time Crazy Speaker Nancy takes the big gavel after New Year's?

Brothers and sisters, if George Bush is throwing in the towel on defending the country against the Islamists before the Conyers Committee can even kick off its impeachment hearings (which they will anyway, no matter how supine Dubya gets), does it even matter if he gets impeached?

Defeat has evidently (and depressingly unsurprisingly) fully brought out GDub's inner RINO. And it apparently has short-circuited his legendary verbal discipline:

This is sort of tough to watch because the President said that he... I don't know how to characterize this. He was asked (summarized), "You said just two days ago over the weekend that Rumsfeld was going to serve the last two years." "Yeah, I knew that. I thought that was the case, but I didn't know that we were going to lose, and when we lost and so forth," and he got caught. He got tripped up. He didn't answer the question I'm sure as well as he would have liked because the report's going to be that he misled the reporters over the weekend knowing full well he was going to can Rumsfeld when he wouldn't admit it, and he said, "Well, I wasn't going to make a major change in the command structure in the campaign. I don't want the troops to think that I do that kind of thing, make moves for political reasons only, and so that's why I didn't do it."

If Limbaugh's summarization is accurate, I don't read it that he was going to ax Rummy all along and just wasn't announcing it during the campaign; I read it that he's going to ax Rummy NOW because the Democrats won and he's going to give them everything they want. Which is why I agree with Rush that Dick Cheney's scalp will be next.

But in the bigger picture, what does it matter? Whether the Enemy Media goes off on another "BUSH LIED AGAIN!!!!!" riff or not, the course leftward has been set by the President himself, and it's going to be at maximum warp. Hell, there may not even need to BE a 2008 election because at this rate, Bush will have resigned and handed the keys to the Cracker Barrel at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue back over to the Clintons by next summer.

Maybe he can save time and hand them over to Osama bin Laden instead. Or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or Kim jong-iL. It would provided at least a modicum of gallows entertainment (or entertainment on the way to the gallows) to watch those three thugs and mass murderers fight a triple-threat steel cage match - with all of OUR leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, hanging above the ring.

But never it let it be forgotten: when the next 9/11 (or worse) hits, the incoming traitor Congress will have had an at least passive collaborator. And his name will be George W. Bush.

~ ~ ~

One additional thought on the whole "Crazy Speaker Nancy ran 'conservative Democrats' to get back the majority" meme: I'm not buying it. There's no such thing as a "conservative Democrat," and voters who thought that's what they were voting for have no excuse for not knowing any better. The Democrat Party is run by left-wing extremist quislings and even if some of these Donk freshman are "Blue Dawgs," they won't be for long.

As to the hope expressed by Jen that the Dems will "overplay their hand" and "expose themselves" and get cashiered two years from now, all I can say is, again, don't count on it. If some voters can be fooled into thinking that a Democrat can be conservative after the past six years of rampant, deafening neoBolshevism - and oust genuine conservatives in the process - what reason is there to think that they won't remain fooled and keep these wind-up "Blue Dawgs" in office indefinitely.

And remember one other factor: the GOP is about to become a lot LESS conservative. The President has already sounded that trumpet.

Ramesh Ponnuru has a piece in the next National Review on "the crisis of conservatism". Brothers and sisters, I don't need to read the first word to know EXACTLY what he's talking about.

UPDATE: Looky who's replacing Rummy:

"Not Bob Gates!" said the lobbyist. It had been widely expected that Rumsfeld would be replaced by a major industrial executive. Gates, a former career employee at the CIA who rose to the top of the agency, has no experience with the defense establishment.

He has no known views on Iraq, and consequently there is no way of knowing how he might depart from current policies in Iraq under Rumsfeld. He was a deputy in the first President Bush's Administration (at the National Security Council) of General Brent Scowcroft. While Gates remains close to Scowcroft (as he is to George H.W. Bush), that does not mean Gates shares Scowcroft's disapproval of the Iraqi intervention. Indeed, Gates is considered a cool, non-ideological analyst. [emphasis added]

Don't buy Bob Novak's disclaimer. If Gates is indeed the pick, the reasons are obvious: "no known views on Iraq," "non-ideological" and "former Scowcroft disciple." In a word, a RINO. One who will preside dociley over the dismantling of the GWOT and the retreat from the Middle East. Which is the only breed of SecDef nominee that will ever get past Carl Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee.

Limbaugh said yesterday that things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better. I think he's an optimist. If we weren't at war, this would just be the usual sports-like wounded pride and chest-thumping and trash talk and such. You know, like during the Clinton years. But the thing is, 9/11 really did change everything in one sense: we were given incontrovertible proof that we're at war whether or not we like it, whether or not we admit it, and no matter where we try to run away to escape from it. There is no escape. And now that we are running away, that means by definition that the enemy will follow right on our heels, and the war will return to our shores.

And when it does, at least if we're hit again in the next few years as a result of this retreat, George W. Bush and the GOP are going to get the blame for it.

I don't think it will get any better for our deposed kings, destined to be denied from ever again reigning over a realm that isn't poisoned beyond recognition.