Friday, June 20, 2008

McCainization on FISA

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There was an article in Slate a few years back about how The Bush Administration dealt with its political opponents. It would say some crazy thing, the opponent would genteelly agree, then the Bush League would be all, "you really believe that crazy thing?" And the opponent would be like "yeah." This is how Hillary Clinton ended up insisting that preemptive war was a great idea.

And no one has suffered this worse than McCain. In 2000, he was a crabby somewhat corrupt former war hero senator would would say obvious truths, such as you can't spend a trillion dollars twice or Dubya is totally unfit to be president. In the last 8 years, he's famously come around on the Bush tax cuts, supported the nuttiest military action on record, started to advocate for torture and gone from a campaign finance reform activist to only being able to run because the FEC's understaffed. Other people are keeping track.

And with McCain, it looks like an obvious case of trying to get the President's support in order to get the support of the President's supporters. So, fine. He's now totally unappealing both to his 2000 supporters, who must be appalled at the way he's cozied up to an administration that sleazed him out of the race that year, and the continuously inebriated mouth breathers who apparently form the majority of our electorate, who remember him as the 2000 guy who caused problems.

But, what on God's green Earth is going on with Congress? How did they get McCainized? Seriously, I can conceive that there's simply some good argument against impeachment that's yet failed to get through my skull. I concede that it's pretty thick. But, yesterday's FISA bill compromise is just ridiculous. In the last 7+ years, legislators have seen that there's going to be no reciprocity if they give in to Bush on some issue, so why all the capitulation?

At the beginning, it looked like repetitive application of a clever realization about how media and politics interact. But, now? It's starting to look like Star Trek mind control slugs.

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