Broken Machine

So this issue is pretty much over. The specially appointed judge refused to reopen the case, and so did the appeals court. As might be expected, the federal judiciary ruled in precisely the same fashion the state courts did (19 times, I think it was). End of story.

The outrageousness of this episode makes the head spin. The Republicans violated their own states rights principles, which we should forevermore prevent them from invoking. I think this might even provide an opening for Democrats to steal the language of small government and federalism from Republicans. DeLay and company made a mockery of the separation of powers by intervening in a judicial proceeding that was already completed. They also moved one step closer to ending the rule of law in this country, as John Lewis so eloquently argued on the House floor. Political action should be for general purposes, not targeted to specific personalities. And rules, once established, should never be ignored. That way leads to absolute rule by decree rather than by constitutional deliberation. Go read your Aristotle. Those people are in no way conservatives. This display by so-called conservatives would make Edmund Burke vomit into his whig.

What makes this all worse was that the Republicans did this all not out of some compelling moral reason but out of political calculation. A bad calculation, it appears, given the public opinion polls.

I spoke briefly the other day about how I thought this was a political mistake on the part of Republicans and an opportunity for Democrats. I think the fact that half of the Democrats who showed up to vote supported the measure makes it more difficult to use this opportunity, which is more than a little frustrating. Why did they do so? I think some of them didn't take full enough accounting of the procedural and constitutional questions at hand. All they could see was that they were voting on whether to take away someone's life or not. But this position, however morally respectable, fails to appreciate the function of each member of Congress as a guardian of the Constitution. They take an oath to uphold that document when they are sworn into office. And they should oppose any measure, no matter how compelling, that violates the spirit of that document. Which this act surely does.

The other element of this disgraceful affair I find intriguing is the limited impact of the Republican Noise Machine. It was working in full gear. The media was on board as usual, and the coverage was incredibly slanted. But it didn't seem to move the numbers much. Americans hate what Congress did in overwhelming numbers. Like the Social Security issue, the right wing propaganda machine just can't seem to get any traction. Maybe Lincoln is right, and there are limits to how many people you can fool all of the time.

Social Security and the Schiavo case tell us two things. The first, that the moral degredation of the Republican party is pretty well complete. They really are fanatics who must be stopped. But the second, more hopeful lesson is that there is still room for liberals in this country. When the issues are put starkly, in basic and elemental terms, the citizenry can still make a reasonable choice. It's up to liberals to give them that opportunity.