Relentless

One thing that's very obvious about Republican and right-wing behavior in general since the election and inauguration of Barack Obama to the Imperial Presidency is their utter relentlessness in pursuit of their political objectives, objectives which were made very clear almost immediately: resisting everything the Administration tries to do, and preventing as much of it as they possibly can, with the goal of undermining and eventually destroying the Obama reign.

Not only are they relentless, they are ruthless as hell. Their lies come in barrages. Doesn't matter how often they are debunked and refuted, the old lies are repeated, new ones crop up. On and on, no matter what.

The right wing ruthlessness and relentlessness are redoubled when the ease of rolling Team Obama is revealed, as it has been with the Health Care "Debate."

The Administration has backed off nearly every promise they ever made to attract Progressive support and has generally backed the Senate Finance Committee's efforts to reduce and restructure Health Care "Reform" legislation so that it is essentially little more than a give away to the Insurance Cartel, paid for on the backs of the groaning middle class. Republicans continue to say NO!, loudly. Their propagandists in the media make the case endlessly that Health Care Reform will lead inevitably to Pulling the Plug on Granny, guaran-damn-teed, while they whip up as much fear as can be mustered among a generally ill-informed and typically apathetic audience. The propagandists love it, the Republicans love it. And, from what they can tell, it works.

We can go on at endless length describing what the Rs are doing, and part of the blogospheric process is to do just that -- describe and discuss the perfidy of the opposition -- but my point today is that what the Rs are doing is what the Dems and their progressive/liberal allies should have done in the early stages of the Bushevik takeover of the Government. But they didn't do it. In fact, those who were capable of doing it, and who wanted to do it, were deliberately and forcefully silenced and/or marginalized by both the establishment liberals and by much of the "serious" lefty blogosphere.

The Rightists are giving us all an object lesson in how to cripple a regime right out of the gate, and yet I don't think the idea is penetrating the shields put up by the Dems and their progressive/liberal allies. The idea that you can actually do this in a political context is alien to both the Democrats and the primarily blogospheric progressives. It's just too... rude, and nothing is worse than being rude when you're trying to make a Logical Argument to win the day.

Now they are calling for Eric Holder's head on a platter because he has opened an investigation into the "possible" abuse of prisoners by the CIA in 2003 and 2004 based on the CIA's Inspector General Report. They are calling for his firing and for the end of any and all "investigations" into what was or was not done during the early years of the GWOT, by civil or military authorities. And they are going full tilt in their insistence and outrage. Well, that's how you conduct a political campaign if you intend to win.

I expect the Cheneys -- père et fille -- to emerge from their bunkers any minute now to condemn and otherwise denounce the Obama administration for entering into areas they are not authorized to go and stirring shit they know not of. Muttering darkly all along about the New Horror that will be unleashed upon America because of it.

It's how it's done.

If you want to win. But because this lesson is never learned by Democrats and their allies, it is reasonable to suspect they don't want to "win" -- except to hold on to their position at Court.