Today’s opining on the public discourse.

And they’re off:

It’s only been a couple of days since Barack Obama was declared the president-elect, but it’s hard not to notice that congressional Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Take these ridiculous comments from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R).

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona’s junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

“He believes in justices that have empathy,” said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven’t been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don’t exist.

Jon Kyl may want to have a discussion with his non-batshit insane constituents before he gets too hot and heavy on the whole filibuster-everything-in-sight idea:

Democracy Corps and Campaign For America’s Future polled the voters and got some pretty darned interesting answers, you betcha.

US voters want the Republican Party, which took a beating in this week’s general elections, to embrace progressiveness and work with Democratic president-elect Barack Obama to get America back on track, a poll showed Friday.

What? We’re a center-right country. Everyone knows that. Well, everyone who thinks labels are more important than policy, and superficiality is more important than substance, knows that.

“By nearly three to one, voters think the Republicans should support Obama’s policies,” Robert Borosage, co-director of CAF told reporters.

Even among Republicans, nearly half — 45 percent — thought their party should work with the new Democratic Party president elect and help him bring about change.

You know what, this is excellent news. It means that nearly half of the Republicon party could be salvagable. I smell a Centrist party in the making… Oh, and Arizona? You have some work to do. That ratfucker Kyl has deserved nothing more than a boot to the arse since he first got elected. I know. I was there. If you need to borrow a boot, let me know. I’ve got lots.

Kyl’s a dumbshit, but he’s being eclipsed just slightly by Norm “A Recount Would Be Too Costly and Franken Should Graciously Concede – Wait, What? I’m Behind? I Demand A Recount!” Coleman, who, like all Cons, has discovered his adoration for the courts now that he’s getting his arse handed to him:

Senator Norm Coleman isn’t waiting for the recount. He’s filing to stop the canvass of votes that will certify the unofficial totals reported. That’s right, Coleman wants to win the election based on the unofficial totals. This is not the mandated recount, which under Minnesota law must happen after a close election, in this case less than .5% of the ballots. Such a recount is by hand, according to intent of the voter, and happens unless the losing candidate waives the recount. Earlier Coleman was pressuring Franken to drop out after the original unofficial totals had him up by slightly over 700 ballots. This is just the legally mandated re-canvass, reconciling the number of ballots with the vote totals, and checking totals reported to the Secretary of State. It has included correcting errors such as one town that didn’t call in results at all, and another where a typographical error cost Franken 100 votes. Inch by inch has been pushing against the incumbent Republican, and at least one person on the ground thinks that the reason for this action by Coleman is that Monday could dawn with him behind in the certified totals if the absentee ballots are counted.

Alas for Norm – the courts are not his friend. And we look to be expecting yet another Senator on the Dem side. What is this, now – 57, 58? I’ve lost count.

Not to be outdone in asshattery, Bush has decided to stick it to the poor and out-of-work one last time before icky socialist universal healthcare COMMUNISM!!11!1! takes effect:

After arguing that legislation to cut over-payments to private insurers would “harm beneficiaries by taking private health plan options away from them,” President Bush, on Friday, “narrowed the scope of services that can be provided to poor people under Medicaid’s outpatient hospital benefit.”

The new regulation arrives at a time when states are considering limiting Medicaid eligibility and Americans are losing their employer health benefits. In fact, the administration issued its rule to take public “health options away” on the very same day that the Department of Labor announced that the U.S. unemployment rate is at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent.

No one’s wondering why Americans took to the streets in overwhelming numbers to celebrate Obama’s victory, now, are they?

At least 2012 is shaping up to be a very good year. Speculation on Republican front-runners is already rife among the party of defeat, and it looks like they’ve learned nothing:

As far as I can tell, there was very little positioning among Republicans for the next presidential race for about 48 hours after Barack Obama became the president-elect. But with only 1,460 or so shopping days unti
l Election Day 2012, that apparently didn’t last long.

Mitt Romney is off on a Caribbean cruise with influential conservative leaders. Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee are stepping up to help Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ runoff campaign in Georgia. Huckabee is poised to kick off a national book tour … in Iowa.

And then there’s Bob Novak, fresh off his bizarre argument that Obama lacks a mandate, promoting his new favorite as the Republicans’ future leader.

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Even one of his strongest supporters for president in 2012 admits it is a “very risky choice.” But Republicans are in a desperate mood after the fiasco of John McCain’s seemingly safe candidacy.

Gingrich, of course, distinguished himself as a giant of the 2008 presidential campaign, arguing that “Saturday Night Live” should be sued for its skits about Palin, and laughing like a school-boy about the notion of improving fuel efficiency with properly inflated tires.

If that’s the best they’ve got, that’s pretty fucking pathetic.

Of course, they’re probably still a little punch-drunk, and the KOs just keep on coming:

Late yesterday the DCCC contacted their friends, supporters and… me to tell us that Democrats had just been certified winners in two more seats, MD-01, where Blue Dog Frank Kratovil beat a lunatic fringe wingnut, and VA-05, where Blue America candidate Tom Perriello came from behind and won a slim, hard fought, grassroots victory against one of Congress’ worst members, corrupt bigot Virgil Goode, a former conservative “Democrat,” not unlike Mr. Kratovil, who eventually, after voting with the GOP for years, crossed over to the Dark Side.

They may be comforting themselves with their center-right myth, but I’ve got bad news for them there, too:

Yeah, that Obama thing was pretty cool (I watched the returns the Obama campaign office in Harlem, which had to be one of the most inspiring places to be), but it’s worth noting that the victory extended far down ticket to state races.

To some extent the victories at the state level were more limited because Dems had already made big gains in 2006 and 2007, with Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire and chambers in Virginia and Indiana having gone “blue” in anticipation of Obama’s wins — with North Carolina Dems demonstrating increasingly progressive leadership by its Blue local leadership over the last few years. This had given those voters a chance to see and understand what progressive leadership was really about–and overcoming many of the caricatures of the rightwing.

What follows is enough to destroy the myth of the center-right. Enjoy your Saturday schadenfreude.

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

You know, I knew the right wing was going to utterly lose what was left of their minds when they lost the election. I was so damned correct:

Yesterday evening, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family Action sent out a fundraising e-mail lamenting the victory of Barack Obama. (Dobson had personally endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket.) The author of the e-mail, Focus on the Family Action senior vice president Tom Minnery, told his readers not to despair, saying that the right wing would overcome this situation just as Britons overcame Hitler’s bombing in World War II:

The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters.

You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II – when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler’s Luftwaffe – that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to the challenge. […]

It really says something about these fuckwits, doesn’t it? Expect Godwin’s Law to become rather ubiquitous, my darlings, especially if Obama’s reported to order sauerkraut for lunch.

John Derbyshire, sometime ally of the pro-evolution crowd, has gone straight for a madman:

He was quite absent in the Corner during the election, presumably because he was too honest to tell the requisite lies about the Palin farce. He’s back now, and horrified, of course, that Obama is president. But it has to be a land speed Godwin’s law record for someone to compare a president-elect, only days after the election, with both Hitler and Stalin. I do think that comparing Obama’s proposals for voluntary service to the forced labor marches in building the White Sea-Baltic canal by Stalin is absurd. But it is also deeply insulting to the actual victims of Stalinism.

Andrew Sullivan goes on to spank dear old Derb quite briskly. Good. Perhaps a few good, sharp smacks will jolt him out of his idiocy. I hold out a wee bit o’ hope on that front – the man’s at least clear-headed when it comes to science, so it’s possible reason will triumph for him in the next four years.

Am I holding my breath? No fucking way.

In the meantime, I’ll just content myself with the vista of James Dobson’s tears:

James Dobson of Focus on Family recently published an unintentionally hilarious, 15-page manifesto (pdf), describing the state of the nation in 2012, after four years of an Obama presidency. It was dystopian, speculative fiction at its most paranoid.

I guess it wasn’t too surprising then that Dobson was shocked when Obama actually won. Hadn’t people read his manifesto?

“Our hope is in the Lord, and we cannot forget that,” Dr. Dobson said. “He doesn’t make mistakes. He hasn’t lost control of things. He understands our fatigue and maybe our disappointment.

“I want to admit that I am in the midst of a grieving process at this time…. I’m not grieving over Barack Obama’s victory, but over the loss of things that I’ve fought for, for 35 years.

I just want to say one thing to all of the religious frothers who were absolutely certain God’s will would be done in this election: isn’t 365 electoral votes rather a nifty bit o’ proof that God’s an Obama Democrat?

So we all knew the Cons would go insane. How insane? Oh, you know – delusional:

If Democrats are very lucky, Republicans will take Tony Perkins seriously.

A conservative leader Friday laid the Republican Party’s poor showing at the polls at the feet of moderates who, he argues, led the party away from its core principles.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told CNN that conservatives need to take back control of the GOP if the party is to return to its winning ways.

“Moderates never beat conservatives. We’ve seen that in past elections,” he said.

Perkins added, “What Tuesday was, was a fact that people wanted change, and it’s a rejection of a moderate view.”

Why, yes, Tony, that’s correct: people did reject a moderate view. They wholeheartedly embraced a progressive one. So you just go right after that handful of rabid social conservatives. So kind of you to continue the radicalization of the Republicon party and ensure that moderates will be forced our way.

You can’t blame him for his delusions. He’s probably busy listening to the remnants of the Republicon party, which are, shall we say, totally fucking batshit insane:

In a new Rasmussen poll out today, Republicans overwhelmingly say that they want Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their presidential nominee in 2012. Sixty-four percent of GOP respondents said that Palin would be their top choice in 2012:

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

Three other sitting governors – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota – all pull low single-digit support.

This is the woman who’s trouncing all of the other potential candidates:

Sarah Palin stopped tonight to answer a few questions from the Alaskan press in an attempt to dispel some of the recent damaging media reports about her involvement in the McCain campaign. “I know that I know that I know that there was nothing done wrong in the campaign,” she said. Palin complained that
the other 49 states “aren’t quite there” like Alaska because they don’t allow the same “equal opportunities and equal treatment.”

She knows that she knows that she knows, and “me not be a dictator,” also, you betcha (h/t):

Palin also said she would not call on Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to resign, although last month, before his re-election bid, she said he should “step aside” and “play a very statesmanlike role in this now.” Stevens, 84, was found guilty on seven counts of trying to hide more than $250,000 in free home renovations and other gifts that he received from a wealthy oil contractor.

Three days after the election, Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, is about 3,500 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Mark Begich with thousands of absentee ballots to be counted in the next two weeks.

Said Palin on Friday: “The Alaska voters have spoken and me not be a dictator, won’t be telling anyone what to do.”

You know, me not be a dictator, either, also. If the Cons decide that’s who they want to run in 2012, against one of the greatest orators and savviest politicians in American history, by all means. Go right ahead. *wink*

So expect to hear a lot more of Sarah Palin in the coming years. She might even develop enough as a politician to withstand a rematch with Katie Couric (although I wouldn’t place any bets, were I you). She might even ascend from abysmally stupid to merely spectacularly stupid, as John Boehner has:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has an op-ed in the Washington Post today on the Republicans’ “road back.” Most of it was just shallow, boilerplate rhetoric, featuring all the sophistication of a greeting-card: “If we return to our roots, to our belief in freedom, opportunity, security and individual liberty, our party will come back stronger than ever.”

There was one section, though, that stood out.

America is still a center-right country. This election was neither a referendum in favor of the left’s approach to key issues nor a mandate for big government. Obama campaigned by masking liberal policies with moderate rhetoric to make his agenda more palatable to voters. Soon he will seek to advance these policies through a Congress that was purchased by liberal special interests such as unions, trial lawyers and radical environmentalists, and he’ll have a fight on his hands when he does so.

In record numbers, Americans voted on Tuesday for a skillful presidential nominee promising change, but “change” should not be confused with a license to raise taxes, drive up wasteful government spending, weaken our security, or give more power to Washington, Big Labor bosses and the trial bar. Americans did not vote for higher taxes to fund a redistribution of wealth; drastic cuts in funding for our troops; the end of secret ballots for workers participating in union elections; more costly obstacles to American energy production; or the imposition of government-run health care on employers and working families.

This seems to summarize the Republican message of the week quite well, doesn’t it?

Democrats may have won the White House, expanded their majorities in the House and Senate, and claimed control over a majority of the nation’s statehouses, but it’s “still a center-right country.” Why? Because John Boehner and conservative pundits say so.

Boehner and his cohorts insisted as recently as five days ago that Obama presented voters with a radical, socialistic policy agenda, but as of today, Obama presented himself as a “moderate.” Got it.

Might I just add: 365 fucking electoral votes! That’s a mandate, baby, yeah! Eat it, asshole! Ahhahahahahaha!

Ahem.

Yes. Right. Well, do expect Republicons and their favorite pundits to spend the next several weeks and years attempting to rewrite history, claiming that Obama won as a conservative although they swore he ran as a communist radical liberal Europe-loving America-hating elitist lefty etc. etc. They’re so cute when they try to change reality, aren’t they?

Looks like Joe Lieberman’s picked up their reality-denying ways quite handily:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), according to multiple reports and sources, has no intention of allowing Lieberman to stay on as chairman of Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. A Lieberman aide told the Politico that “essentially what transpired is that Senator Reid talked about taking away his position perhaps for another position and Sen. Lieberman indicated that was unacceptable.”

“Unacceptable“?

Look, Reid is offering Lieberman a very sweet deal. By some counts, much too sweet. Lieberman betrayed the Democratic Party and broke his word to his own Democratic constituents. Reid is nevertheless willing to a) let him stay in the Democratic caucus; b) keep his seniority; and c) give him the chairmanship of something else. That, by any reasonable measure, is ridiculously gracious of Reid. It’s certainly more generosity than Lieberman deserves or has earned.

And yet, Lieberman thinks that’s “unacceptable.”

What possible incentive could Reid and Senate Democrats have to offer Lieberman an even better deal? The message is, or at least should be, surprisingly straightforward: “If you don’t like the generous offer, join the minority party.” It must drive Lieberman crazy, but the fact remains that Democrats don’t really need him. He has no leverage.

Or, put another way, what Lieberman finds “unacceptable” is of no consequence.

Lieberman, of course, is singularly unaware of this small fact. He still thinks he matters, poor fucker.

Steve Benen would like to remind us just why Liberman’s so intent on keeping his coveted chairmanship:

This seems to be routinely overlooked, but take a moment to consider what the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs actually does: it’s the committee principally responsible for oversight of the executive branch. It’s an accountability committee, charged with investigating the conduct of the White House and the president’s administration.

As chairman of this committee for the last two years, Lieberman decided not to pursue any accusations of wrongdoing against the Bush administration. Lieberman’s House counterpart — Rep. Henry Waxman’s Oversight Committee — was a vigilant watchdog, holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and launching multiple investigations. Lieberman preferred to let his committee do no real work at all. It was arguably the most pathetic display of this Congress.

And yet, now Lieberman acts as if keeping this chairmanship is the single most important part of his public life. Why would he be so desperate to keep the gavel of a committee he hasn’t used? I’ll let you in on a secret: he wants to start using the power of this committee against Obama.

Lieberman didn’t want to hold Bush accountable, but he seems exceedingly anxious to keep the committee that would go after Obama with a vengeance, effectively becoming a Waxman-like figure — holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and launching investigations against the Democratic president.

Lieberman doesn’t care about “reconciliation,” he cares about going after a Democratic administration. Why else would he fight diligently to be chairman of one committee instead of another?

Something to keep in mind as we move this country forward. What the rabid right did to Clinton will pale in comparison to what they attempt to do to Obama.

It’s our job to ensure they don’t succeed in their little power games. America, and the world, can’t afford to let them indulge in their fuckery.