[promoted by BooMan]

It’s that simple. That’s our one line summation of the GOP.  That’s 2006 in a nutshell.

The buck never stops with these guys.  

The GOP is the party of deferred accountability.  If you can somehow “put it off” or “change expectations” or “change the rules midstream” then it doesn’t matter that you haven’t done what responsible adult leaders do:  take stock of the facts at hand and make the tough decisions.  

This is a point we Democrats need to understand and make clear to the nation; and, if I might offer some friendly advice to our Republican brethren on the other side of the blogosphere: it’s high time that someone in the GOP, some faction within the Republican Party, have the integrity to stand up and say, “It’s time for some accountability here, folks.”

Right now, they are a party of lemmings.
In every instance, at every point where our nation has sought to investigate the significant events of the last five years:

  • 9/11
  • WMD
  • Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay
  • the Rove Affair
  • Enron and Cheney’s top secret “energy summit”

This White House, hand-in-hand with their friends in Congress, have stymied, thwarted, and deferred  their way out of saying anything until they absolutely have to.  The buck never stops.  And even when this White House does speak, they never answer forthrightly.  They just pass the buck.

You would think that there would be some level of accountability to the public, that there would be some respect for our ‘”right to know.”  You would think that a Party that espouses traditional, conservative values would step up to the plate, would take responsibility for telling the truth to our nation.  Not these guys.

And it goes deeper than that.  The policies they do enact are deeply enmeshed in “buck-never-stops-ism.”

When you cut taxes and run huge deficits, as the GOP has done on the national and state level, you’re not being fiscally responsible, in fact, you’re just taxing our kids.  It’s that simple.  And whether it’s George in D.C. or Arnold in California it’s the exact same tune.  Why pay today for something that you can defer into the future? Why be responsible adults?

Let our kids pay for it.

I’d like to remind our GOP friends that they once had leaders who would actually dip a toe in the waters of reality from time to time.  Not anymore.

It’s defer city.

  • Global warming?  We’re still studying it.  (sweat, drip)
  • Dependence of foreign oil?  Let’s drill in Alaska. (defer, defer, defer.)
  • Medicare drug plan?  Let’s write legislation that has a big hole in it that we’ll fix later.
  • Education?  Let’s test kids, a lot.  Let’s test kids and make the states pay for it.  (test, test, test)  

Now, this lack of accountability has gone so far that some things that are blatantly obvious to anybody who reads the news in this country…just don’t sink in with the GOP.  Friends, Tom DeLay and Karl Rove are huge liabilities.  H-U-G-E.  And  yet the entire GOP has rallied around these two corrupt turds, and played buddy-buddy with them as if there would never come a day when what was obvious to the rest of us would happen:

The sleaze was gonna ooze out from under the door at some point.  

It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.  We all knew that.  It comes as no surprise that the President was lying to us when he said he’d fire anyone who had anything to with the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name, that he was lying to us when he told Scott McClellan to go out to the press two years ago and say Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with this leak.  Now, this is a serious matter.  In a word, is there any accountability here, or is it just lip service?

They’ve deferred for two years on this one.  The President has passed the buck on the leak that outed Valerie Plame when all he had to do in the first place was walk down the hall and do the right thing.

And  that brings me to some pointed questions for our GOP colleagues in the blogosphere.  What are the standards?  Are there any? Can you just say anything if you are a Republican politician because your party will never hold you accountable to the truth, to common sense, to American values, to the voters, to your own words?

And to bring this home, I would like to ask our GOP colleagues about the war in Iraq.  Will the GOP ever do an accounting of what’s gone wrong?  Is there any accountability for the state of the war and our military?  Does it even matter to the Republicans that there were no WMD? That there was no link to 9/11?  That we are still there with almost as large a force as we invaded with?  That our citizen-soldiers are still dying in Iraq?  That we haven’t done a full investigation of the crimes at Abu Ghraib?

I know, as a Democrat from a family whose members have served in the Armed Forces, it has troubled me how the GOP has ruthlessly attacked Democrats as if we would not defend our nation.  The smear on John Kerry by the Swift Boats was unconscionable. In my view, it is not in anyone’s interest to attack a combat veteran and question his medals and his wounds. More importantly, it is not in either party’s interest to break the longstanding patriotic tradition that regards national security, and service to our nation, as a bi-partisan issue.  Does that trouble anyone in the GOP?

To be frank, I look out at the GOP and I see a  pack of lemmings.  I don’t see a single voice of courage.  I see a party beholden to Karl Rove’s attack and smear and distract politics and addicted to “buck-never-stops-ism.”  Some Republican Senators may know better, but they do and say nothing of consequence when Tom DeLay and Karl Rove smear us. And they never, ever hold the President accountable for anything.  You can say many things about the Democrats, but that is simply not true of our side.

What to do?

Well, when I look ahead to 2006, to the State races and National races this is what I’m thinking about.

  • Accountability.
  • Reality.
  • Pragmatism.

Friends, I know that Democrats are capable of that kind of decision making, reality-based, at home and abroad.  We may be a broad coalition representing many different viewpoints; but because of that we do have to deal with facts.  Indeed, we’re good at that.  Our party is actually into policy and good government.    We are the wonks who gave you Social Security and Medicare….and, yes, in cooperation with our Republican colleagues, we fought and won WWII and the Cold War and built the UN.

No, we Democrats are not perfect, no one is…heck, that’s why there have always been two political parties in this country…but we are dedicated to making government work and dealing with facts.  And, to state the obvious, we love this country and will defend it like every other American, no more, and no less. Friends, we should never let the GOP smear us like they have on National Security, not ever again.  It’s time for us to stand up to this lie, this taunt, once and for all.

I’ve said before that the only language that the GOP understands is a loss at the ballot box.  I think that holds, though, sadly, it may be that the only language the current administration truly understands is the force of law and the stain of scandal. From what I’ve seen, no amount of outrage or protest, or even common sense, can break the lemmings from their wild-eyed march over the cliff with George W. Bush.

And so, at the end of the day, it is left to us to whup their ass at the ballot box in 2006, and fight them in D.C. on principle till that point. And we must hope, for all of our sakes, that someone from the other side has the courage to stand up to this mess.

What’s going on in Washington D.C. is not good for any of us in this country.  I think we all know that.

The buck must stop at some point.  And, imo, grown ups on both sides of the aisle need to stand up and take responsibility.  If we can’t do it for ourselves, we need to look in the mirror and realize that it’s time to do it for our kids.

{I’ve cross posted this on dKos, LSF and MyLeftWing as well…not something I’m going to make a habit of since we all read dKos…simply because, well, I’d like this essay to have as wide an impact as possible. Thanks!}