GOD CHOOSES SIDES:

Sleeping With The Enemy (David Corn, November 28, 2003, TomPaine.com)

"This is what's happening right now at the White House," [a Republican operative who is no fan of the president] said. "As soon as Karl Rove pops open the champagne, he picks up the phone and calls Ralph Reed"—the former Christian Coalition whiz kid who now heads the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in the Southeast—"and says, 'Ralph, make it happen.' That's all he has to say. Ralph knows what that means. He and the campaign have already ID'ed the congressional districts where people will be enraged by the prospect of gay marriage. They have lists of the churches, of the pastors, of the people in the pew. They have contacts with the Christian radio stations, with the newsletters. Whether Bush says much about gay marriage or not, there will be a full-force effort on this front. It won't be visibly tied to the Bush campaign. The mainstream media might not be able to see it. But it will be there. And it might win the election for Bush. But, then, Bush might not even need this. Isn't he the luckiest man in the world? It makes you wonder what the hell God is doing." [...]

My father used to tell me that it is always smarter to be lucky than it is lucky to be smart. But Bush's luck also has something to do with Democrats. The Medicare bill, which was passed with the backing of the influential AARP, was made possible by two Senate Democrats: Max Baucus of Montana, the senior Democrat on the Senate finance committee, and John Breaux of Louisiana, the senior Democrat on the special committee on aging. They were key negotiators—or enablers, providing the GOPers bipartisan cover for a bill that delivered more to drug companies than the elderly. (In a scathing column, The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt blasted Baucus: "A fraudulent Medicare bill... is a testament to the skills and resourcefulness of Republican congressional leaders and to the lack of skills—and backbone—of a top Democrat, Max Baucus.") [...]

Here was a familiar scene: the Republicans united and disciplined, the Democrats debating among themselves. It happened with Bush's first, tilted-to-the-rich tax cuts package. That legislation passed with the support of a dozen Senate Democrats. (Baucus played an instrumental role in that debacle, too.) It happened with the war in Iraq. Twenty-nine Democrats in the Senate and 81 in the House voted to grant Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq whenever he deemed appropriate; the majority of House Democrats did not. With the Medicare bill, the White House persuaded (or muscled) enough of the conservative House Republicans, who gagged at the thought of expanding an entitlement, to win passage in an unprecedented legislative tussle that entailed keeping a 15-minute vote open for three hours. The Democrats in the Senate could not fashion a unified position.

The Democrats had a similar problem with the energy bill. Most opposed it, but not Daschle. "He's drunk the Kool-Aid," one Senate Democrat against the bill complained to me. "That is, the ethanol."

The Kool-Aid analogy is especially apt given that the Democratic caucuses are going to look like Jonestown come November.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2003 1:43 PM