One Less Angry Man...

So, President Bush. You finally give us Rummys' head? Two to four years too late (depending on whether you think Iraq was a failure in the sense that we never should have gone or that we didn't seem to have the right plan to "win the peace").

Why now? Why the day after a midterm where your party screws the pooch and loses the House and the Senate? Why not make Rummy Secretary of State and Defense? Why start listening to people now, when many, many folks have been telling you for at least two years that Rumsfeld was a drag on your administration and had to go? It's one thing to be loyal, and another to be a stubborn pig-head.

So, the predicted G.O.Pacalypse happened, and fairly thoroughly. And I'm ambivalent. My hope is that this was the cleansing fire which will force the party to take a look at itself and refit to come back in 2008 and beyond.

But I'm afraid that won't be the case. You see it happening already in Massachusetts. Even before the election, some Republicans were saying Kerry Healey was going to lose this election because she wasn't pro-life. Or that she didn't come out forcefully enough against gay marriage. She wasn't red meat enough; that's why she lost.

Which is, of course, insane.

Put aside that Massachusetts is the bluest of the blues. We've got incredibly conservative pockets (it's an Irish Catholic thing), but for the most part we're an extraordinarily live-and-let-live state. We generally don't go in for telling people what to do... at least on social issues. Those folks clamoring for Lt. Governor Healey to be more red meat forget that we only won the Governorship after 16 years of wandering in the wilderness because we ran Bill Weld, a social moderate, versus Boston University President John Silber, a conservative lunatic. Weld won because he a) was a fresh face in a year when the voters were ticked, and b) didn't scare people with a set of "agins" as policy positions (I'm ag'in abortion, I'm ag'in gays, I'm ag'in the spotted owl...)

I don't know that Lt. Governor Healey could've won this year, regardless of the campaign she ran. It was just "one of those years". People are ticked, whether it be about Iraq, or the plundering of the American economy by the hyper-rich, or the weather. I know the Patriot's muff-job against the Colts had me pissed. Not enough to vote against my boss, but... it was close...

So what's the moderate to liberal Republican to do? Well, I'm still hoping there'll be legislation to set up a preserve for us, as an endangered species. Maybe Vermont. Vermont's friendly to our kind, that might work. (Poor, poor Lincoln Chafee... The Rhode Island Senator actually lost to a guy named Sheldon. That's the kind of year it was. The Sheldons of the world beat the Lincolns... Now Lincoln will have to get on with his life's work - spending his trust fund.)

The republicans had a 16 year run in Massachusetts. Not a bad run, considering the state's political climate since World War II. And Deval Patrick is an impressive politician. Now, he had the advantage of running from ahead basically the whole time, so you can go into a prevent-defense type of campaign and not have to accuse your opponent of being a father-raping coke-addled communist with secret lustings for Kristie Alley. But like his former boss, President Clinton, Governor-Elect Patrick understands that a lot of politics is capturing the imagination of the people and inviting them on a journey with you. People respond to positive appeals. I wish him well, his success, afterall, will be good for me as a resident of Massachusetts. I'm not the sort of partisan hack that wants him to crash and burn just so my guy would win the next election. Governing's more important than partisanship.

So good luck, Mr. Patrick. If you need me, I'll leave my address:

Kal Jones
Fourth Hut on the left,
Liberal Republican re-education camp number 4
Vermont.