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Democrats in Senate Act as An Opposition Party

Democrats in Senate Act as An Opposition Party: Republicans Dumbstruck


A BUZZFLASH.COM EDITORIAL
From: http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/11/edi05069.html

The Republican Party, which has recently spent most of its time defending the treasonous outing of a covert CIA operative, was struck dumb by an ingenious act of the Senate Democrats. What could cause the GOP Senate to rise up into a frenzy of stunned indignation?

In an unprecedented, uncharacteristically daring move, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid forced the Senate into a secret session to demand accountability for the Bushevik lies that led America into the Iraq War. The November 1st action took everyone by surprise, including BuzzFlash, because of its unexpected creativity and defiance.

After Karl Rove, a traitor to America, had engineered a series of PR moves to divert the media from the GOP TreasonGate indictment and ongoing federal investigation, BuzzFlash had printed an editorial noting that the White House was once again getting away with betraying America and distracting the nation from the unprecedented incompetence of the Busheviks.

But after BuzzFlash criticized the Democratic leadership for their enabling of Bush's credibility at a time when most Americans disapprove of him and have turned against the Iraq War, the Democrats in the Senate unexpectedly took a bold action that left the Republicans momentarily reeling. Indeed, Bill "Inside HCA Trading/Malpractice Diagnosis by Videotape/Cat Killer" Frist turned into a frothing fountain of incomprehensible babble.

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Cherish the moment. It may not come again soon.

But it does at least offer some hope that Reid and the Democrats in the Senate realize that they cannot continue business as usual. They cannot let a cover-up of the betrayal of America and the outing of a CIA operative specializing in the tracking of the illicit sales of Weapons of Mass Destruction go unpunished. They cannot let the Bush administration continue to damage America's national security. They cannot let those who are destroying the United States from within remain unaccountable.

These issues matter to our personal safety and our safety as a nation. But it also matters that the citizens of the United States view Democratic leaders as people willing to fight to protect us from evils within and without. Many people voted for Bush because he appeared willing to fight for what he believed in -- even if his beliefs were way out of the mainstream and his ability to make war highly flawed. They thought the Democrats too weak and wobbly to run a nation under threat of terror. Such are the nature of perceptions.

You have to act like a brawler if you want people to respect you. You have to fight like an opposition party that is outraged at the suppression of the truth and the daily employment of character assassination as a tool of White House policy. You have to act like you are going to throw a roundhouse punch at the next person that tries to pull a fast one on America. You have to identify failure as failure and not keep pretending it's success (because of some false mythical notion about being "moderate" that the GOP has used to neuter you).

Bush's "Boy Toy" in the Senate, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been sitting on an "investigation" that he promised to "resolve" by last January. The report he was supposed to issue was to cover the Iraq lies and deceptions that persuaded America to go to war.

We are sure it would have been highly sanitized (it was to be the second part of a pro-Bush Senate investigation into the "incorrect" casus-belli pre-war information on Iraq), but "Boy Toy" Roberts still won't pursue the second part of his obligation to the American people. There must be some real damaging stuff there that "Boy Toy" Roberts has in his possession, because he was going to make any second installment pro-Bush to begin with, as he did with the first part.

Harry Reid may not have popped an uncensored "follow-up" report out of the "Boy Toy's" toaster yet, but he sure got the GOP's attention, grabbed the headlines back from Rove and focused them on TreasonGate and Cheney's Iraq prevarications, and gained the respect of a lot of Americans.

Because you can't govern the world's last superpower by being timid. You need to grab the bull by the horns and show you are not afraid to use bluster and bravado to get to the bottom of the truth.

Forget about the DLC and "being moderate"; it's about the perception of power. Hardly anyone but Bush's hardcore minority base agrees with him on the issues. The Democrats just have to show they have a bit of Joe Louis in them.

Don't stop now, Harry. Keep surprising us. Throw them off their deceitful game.

No more business as usual.

And don't think throwing them a sucker punch now and then is beneath you.

Because you have got to earn the respect of a public that wants someone who can protect them -- and that doesn't happen by playing nice-nice.

Remember, acquiring power in the U.S. is about acquiring the "perception" of being powerful -- in all its ramifications.

A BUZZFLASH.COM EDITORIAL

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