Everything Paul the Spud says (italics mine):
We're actually starting to hear a lot of this lately. Republicans/"real" Conservatives are fed up with the out-of-control Bush administration, and they're ready to vote for the Dems, just to get them out of office. Well gee and gosh guys, that's all honorable and cool of you, but I just have one question for you. Where the hell were you guys during the last election?
This editorial, in particular, takes the cake. His finger wagging and scolding is just so much hot air, for the simple fact that the Bush Administration has been completely out of control since day one. Granted, things were jacked up tenfold after 9/11, but it is absolutely unforgiveable that it would take this long to realize that the Bush Administration is bad for America.Before the 2004 election, everything that Cunningham mentions was already going on. The out-of-control spending. The earmarks. The arrogance. Not to mention everything else negative that Bush brought to the table. The Bush Administration has been rolling around in an orgy of unchecked power for the last six years, and suddenly now, a sex scandal is the straw that broke the camel's back?
Waiting for this election was simply not necessary. You could have stopped everything you're complaining about if you had been responsible and held your elected leaders accountable in the first place.
So, hey, thanks for the votes... we appreciate you finally taking some responsibility for the fanatics that you put in office and supported for the last six years. It's just a fucking shame for the rest of us that you couldn't set aside party loyalty for the love of your country before the last election.
So much for personal responsibility.
Of course, now we're all saved because the grown-ups are here. Not those who realized from the get-go, or even early on, that the Iraqi War and Occupation were horrible ideas. No, according to Chris Matthews:
The real grown-ups, gentlemen, and Margaret -- is that the best critics of this war are the Republicans. [Sen.] John Warner [R-VA], the chairman of the Armed Services [Committee] -- it's not the lefties, it's not Jack Murtha out there even. It's the smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy and calling for a change.
Shithead, it's the "smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy" only after 2,700 dead U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. That's not "smart." That's too little, too late. It's called really fucking stupid. And murderous too.
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It's just the authoritarian comventional wisdom that 'growing up' means falling in line.
What a sanctimonous, self-rightous piece of monkey shit Chris Matthews is! Man, that guy is a piece of work. Yeah, these smart, grown up Republicans who persued this fucking war in the first place are going to come back and save the day! I've known for a long time that Matthews was a fat faced, lout mouthed asshole, but this puts him on a whole new level of brazenness.
At this point in our battle against our country potentially becoming facist, I don't think it's wise to attack late (and belated) converts. We need their help in overcoming the problems they helped create. That doesn't mean we should give them a pass in the elections, -replacing the bad decisionmakers should be a high priority (and Democrats need to say this when Republicans try to change the subject away from the mess they created, to "well it's about the future"). We need to be gentle in reminding those who have been slow to realize the problem, that their slowness helped create it. Let's just not be so harsh that they abandon our cause.
In the case of things like that recordonline.com editorial, this is a truly excellent point. Even given that many of these people, the worst we can really say is that they're engaging in something which is difficult, which is necessary in any mature approach of politics, and which was widely demonized in the 2004 election as "flip-flopping": in other words, these people realized they were wrong. It's totally fair, under such circumstances, for the people who were right to begin with to gloat. But the people who are now realizing they are wrong are doing the right thing, and should be if anything either praised or quietly grumbled about, not openly attacked.
In the case of Matthews, however, this is not the way to look at things. Matthews isn't interested in acknowledging any problems or overcoming the problems he helped create. He just knows which way the wind is blowing and is trying to take credit for said wind on behalf of Fox News.