McBush 2008!!!

A gift from heaven!

I like the current trend in this year's primaries. The Republicans were afflicted with a field of candidates which were more like a collection of the willing rather than of the qualified. When you look over the lot of them, Tancredo, Thompson, Romney, Hucklebee, Giuliani, etc., you have to agree there wasn't much to pick from. A bucket full of annoying and cacophonous defectives. None of them amounted to a sword with a cutting edge. In fact, they all resembled dysfunctional bayonets. All blades and no handles, each one of them was a greater threat to undercutting one of the three legs of the traditional conservative tripod than knee-capping the Democrats. And now they have settled on the John McCain option. I am surprised and delighted.

As some one who has pushed for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and the immediate renunciation and annulment of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, this is a consolation prize. At this point in time, the best I could hope for is a Democratic-Republican match-up which promised to produce one of the greatest landslide defeats of an incumbent party in American history.

That is what this Democratic primary is about for me. Of course I want to pick the progressive candidate who can best lead our nation as we try to re-start the 21st century in the wake of the most ruinous eight years in our history. That means change: creative governance, prudent security and more peace and tranquility. But that's only half of it.

The other half of it is administering the greatest possible, tsunami-sized rebuke to the Republican party for their complicity in enabling Bush's outlaw cabal as it squandered our resources, undermined our Constitution, destroyed our international reputation, and diverted our foreign policy into assuming the role of this century's greatest international aggressor.

The selection of the Democratic candidate who can best serve in both of these capacities of tranquility and tsunami has not yet been resolved. But it excites me to see that the erstwhile Republicans are settling on/for McCain.

At the end of the day, the Republicans have had to resort to running on George Bush's coat tails! I remember back in the doldrums of 2005 or so, when people were lamenting the fact that Bush would leave office, un-impeached, uncensored, and undefeated. There was even talk of amending the Constitution to enable a third term, so that the country would have one more whack at Busheney, electorally.

Now look at what has happened! McCain has thoroughly married into Bush's war occupation and Bush has endorsed McCain. They have exchanged vows! There's not a dime's worth of daylight between them. We can run against a third Busheney term, after all! McCain has morphed into McBush! McCain represents four more years of George Bush, except that he doesn't stutter or strut quite as much and apparently can pronounce nuclear.

And what does he offer the American people? More of the same:

Doublespeak
More Lies!
More Torture!
More Wars!
Fewer Jobs!

McCain was against tax cuts before he was for them; against torture before he was in favor of it; against repatriation of the undocumented before he was for it. He's willing to spend 100 years in Iraq, if that's what his notion of victory requires. No health care reform, if that's what his victory requires.

McCain has bartered away all of his principles as a maverick, non-movement conservative. In the interest of getting the keys to the White House, he has become what George Bush has always been: a willing conduit and tool of the Neocons. Republicans want to settle for him, because they realize they have no other destination in reach. There may be no light in sight at the end of the Iraqi tunnel. But there's no other option for the GOP than to plunge ahead into the darkness. The American people will not follow.