A Sign Of Life, A Harbinger Of Death

FINALLY, the accursed "New Tone" has given way to "Kiss my Texas ass":

Typically, disputes like those over the U.S. attorney and terrorist-surveillance program are worked out by compromise. If a president wants to protect his prerogatives, he also wants to preserve a working relationship with Congress. But this particular relationship can’t be saved. Comity is impossible with a Congress bent on doing all it can to destroy what remains of the Bush Administration. In the matter of the U.S. attorneys, the Administration has provided Congress 8,500 pages of documents and numerous officials and former officials have testified. This isn’t enough for a Congress that won’t stop until it has run-down every outlandish conspiracy theory about the firings that — even if clumsy and ill-advised — were perfectly within Bush’s power to make.

And so, the Administration was justified in saying both, “no more,” and “see you in court.” There, it can hope to get a decision that strengthens the executive’s ability to protect its deliberations for a long time to come.

I remember when President Bush reached out to the new incoming Democrat Congress after last November's mid-term election and offered to "work together" with Crazy Nancy and Dirty Harry to "do the business of the American people" or however he insipidly phrased it. I wanted to put a brick through my monitor. How the frak, I raged, could this dumbass STILL not have figured out that these creatures were not interested in "working with him," never had been, never would be, and were only interested in using their regained power to utterly destroy him and his party? For six freaking years they had screeched their extremist fatwas against him, made their impeachment threats, promised to make his life a relentless nightmare beyond his feeble imagination, and STILL the "New Tone" was alive and well.

Well, I guess I got my answer. The "New Tone" hung on for an additional six and a half months, through thousands more documents and dozens of additional congressional committee star chambers before this White House finally got it through its pretzel-heads that the Donks aren't interested in "working with" Bush, never have been, never will be, and are only interested in using their regained power to utterly destroy him and his party, and stepping over the corpses to take back the White House and impose, Hugo Chavez-like, the Stalinist dictatorship that was so shockingly taken away from them thirteen years ago.

Better late than never, I guess.

But then again, it may be never after all:

The New York Times leads today with David Sanger's story, "In White House, debate Is Rising On Iraq Pullback; Political Considerations; Not Waiting For September 15, Aides Seek to Forestall G.O.P. Defections." The piece is tendentious, as one would expect - but the Weekly Standard has confirmed that there are real discussions going on at the White House, with advocates of what is being called "The Grand Bargain" pushing hard for the president to move soon to announce plans to pull back in Iraq. So this week will not only be a week of (mostly silly) debate on the Hill; it will also be an important moment of truth for the President, who will have to decide whether to give General Petraeus and the soldiers a chance, or to accept the counsel of some of his advisers and begin to throw in the towel on Iraq.

"Forstall GOP defections"? You mean like RINO Senators Warner, Voinovich, and Domenici (Lugar was re-elected unopposed last year - more's the pity), foolish old men who, when it comes right down to where the cheese binds and the wheat is eaten, consider our men and women in uniform and the national security of the United States itself worth less than a pile of dog shit by a stop sign compared to what their senile intellects tell them is the way to get re-elected a year and change from now? Haven't those craven codgers already defected? How will following their so-called "lead" on using the idiotic nonsense of the so-called Iraq "Study" Group as a crumbling fig leaf for a cowardly and dishonorable surrender to al Qaeda and Iran overseas and the DisLoyal Opposition at home discourage other Republicans in both Houses from turning a few panicky Pachyderms into an elephant stampede? And how would that stampede not go straight off the friggin' 2008 cliff?

The White House is denying the NYT story. And perhaps it is an attempt by the "Gay Lady" to trigger the GOP implosion via Iraq that they narrowly missed reaping on the illegal immigration amnesty. But that there is any plausibility to this possibility at all is unspeakable.

Bill Kristol leaves no doubts about the whirlwind it would reap for what's left of the Bush presidency:

Let me be clear: The President ordered the "surge," which only recently came to full strength and whose major operation has been going on for less than a month. If he were not to give it a chance to work, he would properly be viewed as a feckless, irresolute president, incapable of seeing his own strategy through a couple of months of controversy before abandoning it. He will have asked our soldiers to go on the offensive, assuming greater risk of casualties - and then, even though the offensive is working better than expected, will have pulled the plug on their efforts.

Indeed, the White House is living in a fool's paradise if they imagine that "compromising" now and in this way buys them anything. Even the New York Times editorial page has abandoned the pretence that its preferred strategy will lead to anything other than catastrophe in Iraq, and in the very near term. If the President gives in now, he will not be credited with a statesmanlike compromise. He will be lambasted by the left for fighting a bad war, and by the right for fighting it badly, recommitting us to the fight, and then losing it. The remainder of his term will be mired in congressional investigations as the waters fill with blood and the sharks go in for the kill. The Democrats will be emboldened to press him on every front, especially since Iraq is virtually the only position he's actually been defending. Lame duck does not even begin to describe where President Bush will be if he does this.

What's more, the President will lose any ability to mitigate the effects of the withdrawal or control it. The pullout will become a wild hell-for-leather race for the exit, and the result will be a triumph for al Qaeda and Iran, and a moral and geopolitical disaster for the United States.

And let ME be clear: that is PRECISELY what the Democrats want. Partially to finish off George Bush, partially to finish off the GOP once and for all, and partially to seize total power and never, EVER risk having to relinquish it ever again. But mainly because they HATE America as it was founded and as it has existed and thrived for the past 231 years. They hate it so much that if they can't debase it into a giant Cuba, they'd sooner see it destroyed - as long as they themselves and their familes and entourages and groupies and slackers and posses of parasites, pervs, panhandlers, pickpockets, and perfids are exempted from the carnage, of course.

And this is what the President is being counseled to "compromise" with?

Y'know, I really don't care if Warner and Voinovich and Domenici hang together or separately next November. But it's up to Dubya whether or not his legacy is his entire party dangling right alongside them.