Planning Ahead
by tristero
To add one more observation to Digby's post about how Republicans are using the censure effort to rally the Republican base:
The GOP has been anticipating a serious effort to hold Bush accountable for his incompetence for years. For example, here is Jed Babbin from National Review Online in 2003. He's worrying what might happen to poor George Bush if there's another serious terrorist attack in the US:If such an attack succeeds, the Democrats have been positioning themselves to benefit from it. All the talk of inadequate funding for homeland security — as if pouring money on Rainbow Tom Ridge will solve anything — is a predicate to their strategy. Bush will be blamed for protecting us inadequately. If the damage is sufficiently severe, and the economy tanks, they may even try to impeach him. If you think they can't do that, think again.
But even 2003 seems a little late to start planning the pushback strategy we're seeing against Feingold. My rough guess is that they started to develop it within days of the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that put Bush in the White House. That's why this effort to "rally the base" is so organized and the message is so meticulously tailored: this isn't an attack on Bush, but on the Republican Party which, as we all know, is the true party of America. It's also why it's an easy sell to a compliant, lazy press; they've been told to anticipate it for years, and "what it really means" when it finally happens.
Dig: Republicans started planning Clinton's impeachment in November, 1992. Y'wanna bet when they'll start working to impeach the next we-should-be-so-lucky Democratic president? Y'think they haven't started? Wanna bet?