[Newspoetry] Big John

[DL Emerick]

John Nichols | The Anti-Republican Republican
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anti-republican-republican-who-is-really
-a-republican
John Nichols, The Nation: "In the eighth year of Republican dominance of the
executive branch of the federal government, after an extended period in
which Republicans also controlled the legislative branch of the same federal
government, the party's nominee for president told its convention, 'We need
to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect
our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we
respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the
way we train our workers to the way we educate our children.' Never in
recent American history has the candidate of a party seeking to maintain its
hold on the presidency seen its candidate so aggressively dismiss the legacy
of the incumbent commander-in-chief and his allies."
 
Why does everything in Washington need to be changed now, John?  I don't
understand what you have been doing there for the last quarter-century.  Why
didn't you change it then?  Do you have no leadership skills?  No ability to
persuade others of the wisdom of the course that you would chart?  No
friends and allies who align with you?  After 25 years, John, is that all
you have to say - that everything needs to be changed in Washington?
 
Perhaps, John, you could convince me if you could explain why you
enthusiastically supported Bush for the Presidency in 2000 and again in
2004.  If things need to be changed, now, surely Bush and his crony
capitalism is one of those things.  But, instead of arguing for change, you
just thumped for Bush, to be re-elected.  And, during those years, and
almost all the rest of your tenure in office, John, you have thumped for one
Republican cause after another.  Indeed, you thumped for Bush's bills 90+%
of the time in the last few years - and they almost all passed and became
laws - and now you say "Everything must be changed in Washington."
 
I don't understand your hypocritical inconsistencies, John.  And, your
recent campaign positions wholly erase your previous "maverick" commitments,
replacing those positions with variants of the highly partisan GOP
orthodoxy.  You have abandoned any claim to being a "maverick", except an
historical claim of once having postured yourself as one.  You say that
partisanship must be overcome and ended - just as you pick a highly
partisan, even mean-mouthed Veep, and loaded your platform with highly
partisan positions and let extremely partisan people populate your podium
throughout the convention.
 
You even say, "I can work with Democrats", when the plainest fact is that
Democrats, in the past, have been the ones who worked to enlist you - and
they did, on extremely rare occasions.  John, if I want some President who
works well with Democrats, I think Barack Obama, the Democrat, would better
be able to do that.  And, John, the truth is that your fellow Republicans in
the Senate and the House don't want to work with anyone.  They are the ones
who have constantly refused to put the nation first, endlessly advancing
their partisan interests over the good of America.  They are the ones who
have blocked sensible health care legislation in America.  They are the ones
who have - like you - wholly supported the Bush administration's many
follies of international diplomacy and its infinite mismanagement of the War
on Terror and its abysmal misapplications in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Yes, John, things in Washington need to change completely - including
removing you and your Republican colleagues from the United States Senate,
removing the toads that Bush appointed to the Supreme Court and other
judicial offices.  Will you and they make those sacrifices, confessing as
you resign how you have not put the good of America first - but instead
incessantly advanced your petty partisan causes, dragging this nation down
into its present ruinous condition?
 
 
No, of course not.  You will not give the American people a Straight Talk on
Bush and the follies of the failed regime that Bush heads.  You would not
even mention Bush, or your party, as the causes of America's many
misfortunes.  You have not in any of your speeches admitted to being a loyal
and highly supportive member of the most grotesquely failed regime in
American history since the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover years - and possibly even
further back than that.
 
So, Big John, if you really want to impress me with your fitness to lead,
answer these questions.  Quite frankly, for all your experience, you have
accomplished very little - and so, there you are, after 72 years, pointing
to your old scars as if the scars alone were some kind of merit badge -
exempting all the rest of your later life from examination - as if you could
wrap yourself in the flag and drop all those years in the deeps of the
ocean, like a sailor dead at sea.  It won't do, John - not at all.
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