The Republican Candidate

Just a refresher because I think this is important.. you know.. unlike Obama's bowling aptitude..

Like most right-wing leaders, the life of John McCain is chock full of dishonorable, ugly behavior. Huge numbers of female voters would be disgusted by the details of how and why he dumped his first wife, after she was in a disfiguring car accident that caused her to gain much weight and lose several inches of height, in order to marry his much younger, prettier and extremely rich mistress with whom he had been committing adultery while his first wife raised his three children.

I've never once heard that mentioned on "Hardball" or any of the other "news" programs. Not once.

The problem, of course, is that it is perceived to be some sort of character assassination. It's just true.. every last word of it.. McCain did exactly what is described.

If I were Obama, at the first debate, I'd ask McCain how his first wife and 3 children are doing. I'd say something like "I hope she's well. A car accident is a terrible thing" - and the press would go ape shit, and they would spend weeks talking about how McCain threw his wife to the curb.

What the dominant wing of the GOP has proven more than anything is that they have no political principles. Political principles are but props in their quest for power. That's how they've been able to violate every alleged political value they have when they're in power, from their alleged belief in restrained federal power to responsible spending, to say nothing of their professed belief in traditional moral values and the traditional masculine virtues which so few of them actually exude.

There's no question that, with a Democrat in the White House, they will suddenly re-discover the virtues of Congressional oversight and limitations on executive power. So will the media. That's not an entirely bad thing. Our system relies upon adversarial dynamics of that sort to ensure that no one faction can consolidate excessive power. That's been one of the reasons we have such disaster over the last seven years. The institutions that are meant to check the President and that should have been doing so -- the media, the Congress and, yes, the "opposition party" -- failed so profoundly in their duties.

In reality.. the only thing Bush did for the Conservatives is launch a war. They enjoyed Saving Private Ryan so much that they desperately wanted a modern version, for real. Bummer it didn't turn out quite the way they had hoped.

Doug will definately find his voice when a Democrat is President, and the Democrats control Congress. That's why the internet is so great. There's a record of what people said.