Gene Lyons must read: "Democrats Must Confront GOP Strategy"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/155592/print/

So here’s the big Republican agenda for the 2006 elections: Other people’s sex lives (a. k. a. gay marriage ), flag-burning, illegal Mexican immigrants, tax cuts and Chicken Little. There’s no surprise about the first few. A GOP campaign resembles a traveling tent show. White House sideshow barker Karl Rove expects that the rubes who line up every two years to see the twoheaded calf and the bearded lady will fall for flag-burning again. Never mind that Republicans have done nothing about it since President Bush’s father visited a flag factory during his 1988 campaign. Flag burning as a protest all but disappeared after 9 / 11. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N. Y., also has joined this crusade, the surest sign that she’s contemplating running for president in 2008.

Amending the Constitution to forbid gay marriage is another election-year shell game. Finessing it shouldn’t be too hard for Democrats. If your church refuses to solemnize same-sex marriages, that’s its undeniable First Amendment right. Forbidding people to enter into domestic partnership contracts due to sexual orientation, however, would be un-American.

No, that won’t persuade obsessive homophobes, but they’re fewer all the time.

<>Years of one-party government, Conyers said, have left Americans with many unanswered questions, such as “whether intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war... the extent to which high-ranking officials approved of the use of torture... whether the leaking of the name of a covert CIA operative was deliberate or accidental” and who did it. Any alert citizen can add particulars: the legality of National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps and the constitutionality of Bush’s 740 “signing statements,” as reported by The Boston Globe, in which the president claims the power to ignore laws with which he disagrees. Conyers wisely stresses that the GOP-led House impeachment of Clinton proved “that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate.” Nobody wants a government that does nothing but investigate itself. But the Republican Congress has completely abdicated its constitutional responsiblilites. Our democracy cannot long survive a president who claims the prerogatives of a king. That’s an argument the Democrats must win.

well worth reading in its entirety...

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/155592/print/

[Lefty48197]

1. It's amazing how simple-minded the GOP's national misleadership is

Fourth of July is approaching? Let's talk about flag-burning amendments!
Economy is stagnant and people are worried about jobs? Let's talk about Mexicans and welfare queens.
Republicans make me want to puke.
Kicked and recommended because I think Gene Lyons is great for his role in co-authoring, with Joe Conason, "The Hunting of the President", one of the best GOP hate machine exposes ever written.