Let’s get real!
The president and most congressional Democrats now agree on quite a few things about Iraq. Among the most important, it’s broke and withdrawing our troops immediately would be bad for Iraq and for the long range interests of the U.S. Now that they’ve agreed to dance, we constant critics of the war have to keep the pressure on while not completely boxing them in.
The one thing we must not lose focus on is accountability. The hubris of George Bush and the Republicans must not be forgotten even as we seek to help them ease out of the problem. Even those of us who once supported Bush and the Republicans must turn on them in the next two elections. We must work to elect as many Democrats as possible in ’06, and we must do everything possible to have a Democrat taking the salutes of the marchers in the Inauguration Day parade in 2007.
Keep in mind – and in your hearts – the Democrats we elect are simply politicians who will push too hard in other directions and will soon develop that same arrogance that is destroying the Republicans. Steeling ourselves, we’ve got to realize that we’ll be switching back to the Republicans not too many years down the pike.
It has taken me many years to realize that both parties satisfy their bases at the expense of the vast majority of citizens, so those of us in the middle have no choice but to turn them out whenever they lose sight of the middle classes and the political center. In the present case, the Republicans by serving those who worked so hard for their election and elevation to power, big business interests, neoconservatives, and Evangelical Christians, have turned their backs on manufacturing workers and the middle classes. They must be punished at the polls – regardless of how they change their spots over the next three years.
So it will be with the Democrats when they worship at the altar of public employee unions and others seeking to switch too many federal dollars to their advantage at the expense of centrist Americans. But we can’t punish them until they do their dirty deeds and that won’t be for several years after we propel the present bums into the ranks of the unemployed.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
