C’mon, Nancy – the Republics are falling apart

– as in, decomposing?

You know – rotting away?

The ones in office are “retiring” or changing parties, the ones who would otherwise vote Republican are defecting in huge numbers – hell, even the ones who should be manning the ramparts, the architects of the Thousand-Year Republic Majority, those who you would think would form the bulwark of Republic stalwartness – BushCheney’s Republican Guard, if you will – are shedding their uniforms and melting into the general populace, in Shock and Awe at the reversal of their fortunes.

It won’t be long before the indignant retort, “I was never a Republican!” will be heard throughout the land.

As my friend clammyc points out in his diary today, Republics are tripping over themselves in a frantic effort to exit stage left.

What are they running from?

The rotting corpse of the Republic Party.

Yes, the Republic body politic has turned ripe, and it’s gotten to the point where nobody wants to be in the same room with it anymore.

It’s like in the movie, Weekend at Bernie’s: The BushCheney administration has killed the Republic Party, but many in the GOP desperately want to carry on as if nothing has happened.  Obviously some Republics don’t know or don’t care what has happened; they’re still sitting in the room with the corpse, ignorant or in denial of its true condition. They’ll either continue to hang out with the cadaver – going to country club fundraisers or obstructing healthcare for children, all the time stupendously unaware that it is in fact dead – or else they’ll be feverishly hoping that no one notices the worsening stench.

Call it, Weekend at Boehner’s.

And the more the corpse decays, the harder it is for any Republics to show solidarity by remaining in the room.  Unable to tolerate the putrid stench, and realizing that they, too, are taking on a sweet sickly odor, more and more Republics are being sent fleeing from the party, screaming.  Eventually the only ones willing to remain with the horribly decomposing carcase will be the maggots, the necrophiliacs and the vampires – which, although still forming a sizeable proportion of the Republic Party, do not constitute a significant voting bloc among the general electorate.

American voters don’t like the stench, either: they are running from the GOP’s ghastly cadaver as fast as they can. They are fleeing the deceased frantically in every direction, intending to vote in 2008 (if they vote at all) for Anything But A Republic. But they will need a reason to vote for a Democrat. Unfortunately, it will not be enough for Democrats to be Not Stinking Republicans. The Democrats will need a better campaign slogan than,

Democrats: At least we’re still alive

– or,

Democrats: We smell better than the Republic Party

– or,

Democrats: There ain’t no flies on us

In talking with my independent friends about this, it’s clear what Democrats need to do to attract those voters:

Democrats need to show some spine.

This might begin by actually, you know, doing something about Republic corruption and abuse of power, which, after all, is the main reason voters put Democrats in power in November 2006 in the first place.

Unfortunately, what’s happened in the last nine months has mostly consisted of congressional Democrats trying to pal around with rotten Republics, thinking that “bipartisanship” is the same thing as “formaldehyde.”

It’s not.

See, the problem with hanging out with a rotting corpse is that pretty soon you start to smell pretty gamey yourself. In fact, it doesn’t take long for your own aroma to become indistinguishable – to the average voter, anyway – from that of the maggoty morgue-bait you’re associating with.

So rather than palling around with what’s left still clinging to the bones of the Republic Party, Nancy Pelosi should do the responsible thing and conduct an autopsy of the corpse: Roll up her sleeves, pick up her scalpel, make the “Y” incision, peel back the layers, probe around among the disgusting putrescent, cancer-ridden organs within, and lay out for all the world to see the full, awful, stomach-turning vileness that has taken over every cell of the Republic Party.

Once she’s done that – once Congress has conducted a thorough, sober, serious, comprehensive investigation into the laundry list of criminality perpetrated upon the people of this country and the world by the BushCheney administration – compelling, as is its Constitutional duty and prerogative, testimony from any party necessary – and displayed the disgusting details of it, just how many Republics do you think will want to stick around, and risk getting some of that putrescent, gelatinous slime all over them? Not many, would be my guess.

In spite of what many of the more cautious among us have steadfastly maintained, Democrats have nothing to fear from the impeachment process.  The American people are not so stupid as to believe that a significant investigation into the many wrongdoings of this current administration in any way constitutes a political witchhunt. (That’s just a high-falutin’ way of saying that they’ll be able to tell the difference between a sober examination of the wrongdoings of the current gang of criminals in the White House and environs, and a tabloid-hogging orgy of hypocritical and jealousy-fueled mock righteous indignation over a blue dress.)

To the contrary, what I consistently hear even among my friends who classify themselves as independents, although they lean to the right, is that in the last nine months, the Democrats have shown themselves to be no better than the Republicans they replaced in Congress. What these independents pine for is not More Of The Same, but More Of My Country.

Exit polling from last November’s election showed that the number one issue among voters nationally was corruption.  One could therefore reasonably infer that voters sent Democrats to Congress not to do corruption better, or to hide it more effectively, or to spread it around more equally, but rather simply to Clean. It. Up. To hold accountable those who are guilty of it.

Please bear this in mind, Madame Speaker:

The Republic Party is a joke – a foul-smelling, nonresponsive, unfeeling, cold, lifeless, unfunny joke.

The American people don’t want it – in fact, they are clamoring for its foul, rotting corpse to be removed from the American political landscape. The American people sent you to Congress to do a job.

Please do it.

Cross-posted at DailyKos