The newest cynical ploy

[Xenu]

From TPM:

So here's where we are. It now seems clear to just about everyone that the other shoe has now dropped. We know the president's final strategy to keep the subpoenas at bay in 2007 and 2008. Put the worst al Qaida bad guys at Gitmo and force a rushed debate over legislation over how they will be tried. An up or down vote, either the president's kangaroo courts or nothing.

Dare Democrats to vote for nothing. If they do, mutilate them with 30 seconds. If they don't, sow dissension among the opposition.

It's hardly a surprise. This whole White House is the fruit of the poison tree. Their national security policy has always been essentially political. Nothing has changed. It's what all of us have always predicted.

But here's where it gets interesting. Three Republican senators say they won't play ball: Warner, McCain and Graham.

If the president can't get a clean partisan vote in the senate, that takes a lot of the wind out of his sails, though they may be happy just to do the bogus vote in the House.

Warner, I don't see where he gets rolled. He's almost 80. Been a senator for twenty-five years. Been married to Liz Taylor. Opposed a Republican senate candidate from his own state. I think he sticks.

Graham, he seems like a fairly straight arrow on this stuff. Figure the same for him.

So it comes down to McCain. Not your ordinary Republican, I grant you. But really, really wants to be the next Republican President. My gut tells me he flakes and goes along with Bush. He's basically already sold himself to the party's establishment for the GOP nod in 2008.

But there's another possibility.

McCain's no fool. He can see that Bush is now about as popular as a week old mackerel. And he also knows that the GOP nomination will only get him the presidency if he still has some colorable claim to political independence when the election comes around. McCain may figure that he's pandered and kowtowed enough to the Republican base that standing up to Bush can actually be in his political interest.

Makes me feel...a little ill, frankly.

[Rspaight]

The really depressing part is that the Bushies' "let us do whatever we want or terrorists will kill you" strategy still works. Bush was out there yesterday, bragging about how his torture policies have prevented all kinds of terrorist attacks (also known as the Lisa Simpson Tiger-Deterring Rock Argument), while his own Defense Department was issuing new guidelines specifically banning the torture methods he was boasting about (at least at DoD facilities, but not at the secret European CIA prisons that Bush finally admitted to yesterday). When the President's rhetoric is hawkier than the DoD, it's time to back away slowly from the red button.

Ryan