I want to be on Karl Rove's enemies list

By Nancy Jane Moore

On the Doonesbury page this morrning, there is a quote from Karl Rove:

There were people who never accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush and acted accordingly. I'm going to name names and show examples.

My immediate response?

Pick me! [Waves hand in the air and jumps up and down.] Oh, please, pick me. I want to be included on that list.

Put me on the list of people who believed from the beginning:

• The 2000 election was stolen;
• Congress and the major media let Bush get away with acting like he had a mandate;
• Bush did all the wrong things after September 11 (not to mention before September 11);
• The War in Iraq was wrong, not to mention stupid;
• The list of damage done by his policies -- from foreign relations to the environment and global warming, to civil and human rights, to the economy -- is so large as to be almost incomprehensible;
• And he and Cheney should have been impeached and removed from office for high crimes (screw the misdemeanors).

If more people hadn't accepted Bush's legitimacy, we might not be in quite this bad a mess right now.

In fact, I have only one regret in my response to the Bush years. In December 2000, after the Supreme Court gave him the election on a 5-4 vote, I was angry and disappointed, but I also thought: "At least we live in a country that accepts the rule of law. At least there won't be rioting in the streets."

I was wrong. The U.S. should never have accepted Bush. We should have rioted in the streets.

[crossposted on Ambling Along the Aqueduct and Open Salon.]

The crumbling Republican Party: What's next after loyalty committees?

By Diane Silver

Karl Rove's dream of turning the United States into a GOP monopoly has become a nightmare for his once seemingly all-powerful party. Signs of weakness are everywhere. Today's case in point has popped up in Kansas, which was once the reddest of red states, where the GOP has just created a loyalty committee.

I'm not kidding, although any sane person would think this was a joke.

At a mid-year convention this weekend, the state party changed it's constitution, no less, to create the committee. The body will strip GOP officials of their party titles if they help a Democrat get elected. New Republican Party Chairman Kris Kobach sought the change and will chair the committee.

Kobach is best known as a failed Congressional candidate of far, far right, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant views.

I have to agree with Andy Wollen, chairman of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, an organization of moderate Republicans.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Wollen said. “It’s just the latest demonstration that these people just flat don’t understand people.”

It's also the latest demonstration of why the Republican Party is in trouble. If you have to keep people in line by clubbing them, you've already lost.

What Kobach and gang can't seem to realize is that people are running from the Republican Party because of the radical right's ideas and their love of bullying. I suspect the new loyalty committee will do nothing than drive more people from the state GOP.

Kobach and gang are the best thing that have ever happened to Democrats.

Here's more on the loyalty committee and on the state GOP's attempt to oust it's own representative to the Republican National Committee. Apparently, he isn't radical enough.