Fools

Via TPMmuckraker.com comes a quote from Congressional Quarterly:

[N]ow that the Republicans have worked out a deal on detainees, Democrats are not planning any organized effort to filibuster the deal in the Senate, even though they may not agree with some of the specifics in the legislation.

With just a few days left before the election recess, Democratic aides say they are not going to give Republicans an opportunity to paint them into a corner.

“We’re going to do what we can to limit the amount of daylight between us and them on national security issues in order to neutralize this as a political issue,” a senior Democratic aide said.

I can only hope that these unsourced Democratic aides are wrong, or engaged in some convoluted smokescreen. Because if, in fact, the Democratic leadership has decided to play it this way, they are worse than fools, they are cowards who have forsworn their oaths of office.

First, you would think by now that they would have learned that the tactic of keeping your head down so they won't attack you doesn't work at all. Attacking is the first, second and third play in the GOP election playbook, and whether or not the attack has any bearing in reality doesn't matter. They don't need a pretext, and even if you deny them one, they will just make one up. You can't defuse the Republican attack machine with protective coloration. Doesn't the phrase "swift boat" ring any bells?

Second, by standing down on this, they would be giving away an opportunity to seize the 'national security' issue. Don't worry about the Republicans "painting you into a corner", get out there and paint them into the corner, dammit! Americans are ready to question whether the guys in charge know what the hell they are doing. It's time for you to stand up and raise the questions on their behalf. Tell the public what the weasel words in the GOP compromise really mean, and put the GOP on the defensive. Show the pictures of Abu Ghraib, and demand that the GOP explain how that won't happen under the new law. If you can't make a powerful political case out of torture, secret prisons, and Soviet-style trials, you should just get the hell out of politics.

There's a famous apocryphal story about when LBJ ran for Congress, where, falling behind with only days left to go, he suggests to a campaign aide that they should hold a press conference to announce that his opponent, a wealthy pig-farmer, was known to have routine carnal knowledge of his sows. The campaign manager, shocked, replies “We can’t say that, Lyndon. It’s not true.” LBJ, demonstrating the kind of Texan political smarts that would later reach its vilest extreme in Karl Rove, supposedly said, “Of course it’s not, but let’s make the bastard deny it.”

Modern Democrats are so far away from that kind of rough-and-tumble political saavy that they're afraid to make the accusation even when it is true. We're talking about torture and brutal, un-American evil.

Make the bastards deny it.