Nancy Pelosi's Approval Rating Plummets, While Dick Cheney's Rises

Pimp's Up, Ho's Down.

And the AP buries, in the fifteenth paragraph, a dramatic shift of 14 points in favor of enhanced interrogation techniques since 2005. (Whoops! The poll asks about torture. Okay -- so obviously EITs and "torture" which is not torture has an even higher approval rating.)

Some 52 percent of people say torture can be at least sometimes justified to obtain information about terrorist activities from suspects, an increase from 38 percent in 2005 when the AP last asked the question.

Note that AP hasn't asked this question since 2005. It's my guess that support goes up whenever Republicans make a case for it, then falls away as people revert to dumb default-liberal "let's be nice" thinking. So support probably spiked when Bush made a strong case for it in 2006, then fell away, and has increased recently due to Cheney's relentless advocacy.

Remember that anonymous sources in the RNC, as well as anonymous Republican Congressmen, were calling for Cheney to hush-up. They figured he was hurting the party.

I'm all for caution and strategic moderation of message. When I have disputes with my readers, it's often because I'm on the more cautious side of things. (See the week-plus running argument with readers over Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" line.)

But caution and moderation have limits.

Furthermore, it seems that many Republicans have become blood simple. A phrase, I'm told, which refers to the stupid robotic state that people sometimes fall into when they've seen blood shed or have shed blood themselves.

Some Republicans are so shell-shocked the jump at any moderately-loud noise. They're spooked. Their nerves are shot. They are no longer capable of distinguishing between outgoing fire and incoming fire. They hear fire of any kind, and they jump to the ground and extend their hands over their heads in prone surrender.

These people need to realize their nerves are shot and that they are no longer suitable for political combat and shut the hell up.

Other people retain the ability to distinguish between good fire and bad fire. Anyone with a chip still functioning on their circuit-boards could tell that Cheney was making a strong case -- even if one didn't think he'd actually prevail, it was a strong case, an honorable case, and at worst a case that did us no harm. Didn't persuade, but didn't scare off either.

And yet the shell-shocked zombies in the party began caterwauling and gibbering in fear the moment they heard the fire.

It's time for these guys to shuffle off to somewhere quiet to rehabilitate. If they can't do that, then they need to do the rest of us a solid and recognize they are no longer fit for command, and at the very least defer to the guys who are still able to think straight.

posted by Ace at 01:52 PM

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