What Jesus thinks of the "Democrats" in the Senate.
There was plenty of blame to go around for the confirmation of the Mukasey nomination. This was a blatant failure of leadership by Senator Harry Reid for failing to mobilize opposition to an extremist who could not define what torture was. There was a blatant failure of leadership by the Presidential candidates for their failure to lead on the nomination as well. And what was especially sad about the latter is that Dennis Kucinich showed stronger leadership on his quixotic quest to put impeachment on the table than Dodd, Clinton, Obama, or Biden showed on the Mukasey cavein. We will deal with these issues later. But first, we will deal with the "Democrats" who caved in on this issue and who made excuses for why torture shoule be a matter for debate.
Jesus himself talked about people who sat on the fence. In the book of Revelation, he talked about several churches and their strengths and weaknesses. But he saved his harshest criticism for a church that was neither hot nor cold to him -- he declared that he would "chew them up and spit them into the ground" if they did not clean up their act.
At some point in time, the Senate Democrats have to learn that now is not the time to go playing games and being all nice and bipartisan. This is no time to go appeasing the Broders of the world and the Very Important People who rule the Beltway Crowd. This is a time for people to take a stand on the issues and do what is right. Yet, not one "Democrat" was able to stand in the gap and take concrete steps to stop the Bush administration from continuing to run the biggest criminal operation in world history.
This sort of thing has happened before in history and will happen again. Ezekiel talked about how all that was necessary for Israel to be saved was for one man in a position of power and authority to stand in the gap and do what was right. Yet, not one person did so, either because they were too cowardly, or they thought that doing what was right did not matter. And there was a king, Zedekiah, who was just like the weak-willed "Democrats" who were in the Senate -- doing the right thing one moment, and then letting himself be swayed by his advisors the next or letting himself be swayed by the flowery promises of aid from the Egyptians when they had no intention of sending such aid.
It would have taken one Senator to stand in the gap and issue a hold or a filibuster to stop the Mukasey nomination. It could have taken one Senator or a staffer to even come here and explain what we were getting in return for confirming Mukasey. Even that would have been more acceptable that what took place on Capitol Hill. And if we are going to avoid war with Iran, it will be because of people like Admiral William Fallon, who would refuse to obey orders to attack, or PhillyGal's friend, who would rather retire from the State Department than be assigned to Iraq, or any number of people in the Pentagon, who Hagel and Murtha give voice to when they speak out against the occupation of Iraq. If George Bush were to say that we were under attack from Zombies, would the Democrats cave in and vote him money to stop the imminent threat of Zombies?
The following "Democrats" caved into the Bush administration and voted for the confirmation of Michael Mukasey. Here they are:
Bayh (D-IN)
Carper (D-DE)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Schumer (D-NY)
Dianne Feinstein also caved into the Bush administration, like she has done so many other times. I am already doing a series of diaries on primarying her. Which of these five should be primaried, why should we do so, and who should we replace them with?