SHOW SOME BACKBONE!!

GEEZ, I'm furious about the tepid, mealy-mouthed response the Republicans are giving about this stupid U.S. Attorney firing flap:

Congressional Democrats are planning a new, two-track strategy for maximizing the political windfall - and the disclosure of potentially embarrassing information - from the Bush Administration's firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to top party officials.

House and Senate Democrats plan to delve deep into the details of the corruption cases that might have been disrupted by the high-level purge, the officials said. At the same time, top Democrats will escalate the fight for testimony from top White House officials, including Karl Rove.

This is a total non-story, or should be, but the Republicans are serving themselves up once again instead of telling the Democrats to shove it where the sun don't shine. There certainly is no lawbreaking here, and for Democrats to decry anyone doing anything for political purposes is ludicrous. They wrote the book. Every Republican on the Hill should be in front of a microphone telling America what garbage this is, and that the DEMOCRATS are doing what they're doing for political purposes...heck, they even admit it:

Several Democratic officials were unabashed in discussing the potential political benefits for their party if they can convince voters that President Bush ousted U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Democratic strategists said the controversy is already helping them recruit House and Senate challengers for '08 races. "We know from last cycle that Democrats can win in Republican districts where corruption is an issue," one of the officials said.

Well heck, let's have some hearings on the Democrats! Meanwhile, this is going on while we're fighting a war, while William "Cold Cash" Jefferson sits on the Homeland Security Committee, and while Sandy Burglar runs around free.

Something's very, very wrong.

JASmius adds: The next step in this phantom saga is whether or not the President lets his brains turn to "New Tone" clam sauce and allows Karl Rove to be hauled before Pat Leahy and fiends. To do so would be to completely abandon the Executive Branch's prerogative of executive privilege in the absence of any criminal allegation and surrender a dangerous amount of power to the Leglislative Branch.

The Democrats are trying to cut Dubya's balls off with a pretend olive fork. We will soon see whether he hangs them out there and hands them a Ginsu steak knife.

UPDATE: BTW, if Bill Clinton were still in the White House, d'ya think this might have gotten a bit more coverage?

UPDATE II: How's this for backbone? Count on Cap'n Ed to be mature, reasonable, objective, intellectually generous, and miss the point entirely.

UPDATE III: I think this probably says it all:

Republican officials – at the request of the White House – have begun interviewing candidates to succeed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, reports CBS News partner Politico.com....

Gonzales' hold on his job grew more uncertain Monday as the Senate debated removing his authority to unilaterally name U.S. attorneys. The White House said it merely hoped he would survive the tumult. [emphasis added]

There's your presidential vote of confidence - akin to that of a baseball team owner or GM in a manager who has started the season 0-19 (or Mike Hargrove in another month). If Bush was sticking by Speedy, and Speedy was determined to stand and fight, there would be no question of the A-G's survival no matter how much rumor-mongering the Democrats spun. Ditto if the GOP congressional remnant was willing to go to partisan war as well.

Rush Limbaugh's apoplexy is a match for Jen's:

What do you mean, we hope [Gonzales survives]? They hope he'll stay? It's up to im? (sigh) I don't know. I was talking about this last night with a friend. I just remain mystified over this White House's refusal to fight back on any of this stuff. There has to be a reason, and the reason cannot be that they don't understand that they are being targeted for destruction. They have to know that. It cannot be that they are relying on some miracle down the road to pop up and embarrass all these critics. (If it's that, LORD help us.) [In addition to which, the far Left is beyond embarrassment, if they're even capable of it anymore; ditto shame. They're like sharks; they just keep coming and coming and coming, insatiable and mindless, their only instinct to devour elephant flesh...] There has to be an active policy and philosophy that says, "We're not going to respond to this. We're not going to fight it, and we're not going to get down in the mud with the people leveling these charges. We're just going to give these people what they want. We're going to act embarrassed. We're going to act like we got caught."

It is really inexplicable to me.

Some [*AHEM*] might say that the President has never been partisan because he believes that being partisan is beneath the dignity of the office and he's just not going to do it. Well, okay. Fine and dandy. But why does that mean when they want Rumsfeld's scalp, you give them Rumsfeld's scalp? Why does that mean when they want somebody else's scalp you give them that scalp? I'm telling you, it's beyond explanation to me. I just don't have an answer. I have thought of every possibility out there. It's not just the President. Nobody within the Administration reacts
to this stuff in an instinctive or visceral way the way all of us do, the way all of us would if it were us that were being targeted for destruction....

There's not going to be any "clearing of the air." The blood is going to be thicker in the water. Bush gave 'em Rumsfeld. They want more. Give 'em anybody, and they're going to want more! I just don't understand the White House attitude about this. I don't understand it. They have to understand this. There can't be this much naïveté in there. There just can't be!There's no response to this stuff. The President could stand up and say, "These charges are baseless. I am not going to get rid of the attorney general. These eight US attorneys, if I want to get rid of them, I can get rid of them - and I can get rid of them for whatever reason I want, whenever I want. I don't care what you think of it." It might cause a firestorm, but what the hell do we have now? They're going to keep attacking him no matter what he does. Why give them what they want in the process?

Because George W. Bush is his father's son, and the Bush family motto is that governing transcends politics. Campaigning is that distasteful but necessary evil that you have to do for a few months every couple of years. Apart from that you're to conduct "the people's business," and part & parcel of that is working with the opposition. And part of working with the opposition is being civil, reasonable, and willing to compromise. Perpetual jockeying and scheming for political advantage - the "permanent campaign" - simply does not fit into that worldview, even to the limited extent of defending yourself and your administration.

Dubya and his party are getting creamed because they're not playing the same game the Democrats are. It's like we're playing golf and they're playing tackle football. It's like a pro wrestling match where the babyface (i.e. good guy) gets his ass kicked by the heel (i.e. bad guy) because the heel is willing to break the rules to win and the babyface isn't. It's like arm wrestling where they get to use bazookas to burn our heads off. It's like sport fishing with power saws where we're the fish.

Actually, it's worse than all that, because we don't have to "break the rules" to blast these bastards out of the water. We just have to be willing to engage them. And that the Bushies and GOP legislators will not do.

President Abraham Lincoln was under enormous pressure in 1864 to fire General Ulysses S. Grant because of the huge casualties he was incurring of Union soldiers. Lincoln didn't timidly reply that he "hoped" Grant would stay; rather, he retorted, "I cannot spare this man - he fights." None of Grant's predecessors would fight, and that's why the Union was losing the Civil War; Grant would, and did, and because of that the North won and the country was preserved.

George W. Bush may still be willing to battle the terrorists (though only to a certain point), but he is not willing to fight a DisLoyal Opposition that is as determined to destroy him and the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism as Osama bin Laden and Adolph Ahmadinejad themselves. And because of that he will lose his administration, his party will fall further into the permanent minority, and his country will be brought to its knees by the Islamists.

I knew all this was coming on Election night. Do I look like a pessimist now, or a prophet?

We report, you decide.

ONE LAST UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini sums it up to a "t".