What a Difference a Day Makes

Wednesday, October 26 -- 2,000 killed in Iraq;

Thursday, October 27 -- Miers withdraws her Supreme Court nomination;

Friday, October 28 -- Scooter Libby Indicted;

Monday, October 31 -- Alito nominated to Supreme Court; and

Tuesday, November 1 -- Standing Rule 21 invoked by Senate Democrats to impose a Closed Session to discuss probe of pre War intelligence by White House.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post best described the reaction to the last item in Mad About You: "In the genteel club that is the United States Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) had a screaming temper tantrum yesterday."

"'About 10 minutes ago or so, the United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership!' he announced. Never, he said, have 'I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.' Epithets flew from his mouth: "They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas. This is a pure stunt.'"

"Frist was now sputtering. 'This is an affront to me personally. It's an affront to our leadership. It's an affront to the United States of America!'"

I realize that baseball metaphors are the rage (as Fitzgerald noted during his Friday news conference announcing the Libby Indictment), but alas, I am not such a sports fan. As I have observed the recent events noted above (along with several other Republican mishaps of late, such as the Delay and Frist legal troubles, Katrina and Wilma disasters) the analogy that comes to mind is that the Republicans are just a big group of kids (male, of course) playing grown up. Despite playing pretend, they are still kids. So there's lots of yelling things like "It's mine, mine, mine," or the meltdowns, with the inevitable tantrums when they don't get their way.

The fact that Bush timed Miers' withdrawal and Alito's announcement to deflect from the news of hitting the magic 2,000 and the indictments by Fitzgerald is business as usual for Bush. Presidential propaganda as an art form. Without these distractions to try to distract us, we otherwise would have had to have another terror alert.

In fact, the intensity of the reaction to the fact that the Democrats managed to manipulate the news back to the war, the pre-war intelligence failures and the White House's role (as well as the hysteria of the right to the Miers nomination) suggests that, as things evolve, the tantrums are getting worse. The scary things is that kids also like to play war. I only hope that another war isn't the ultimate "gotcha" by Republicans exercising macho muscle.

Somewhat off the subject, I have to end with my favorite Frist quote from the Closed Senate Session outburst:

'Mr. Leader,' one stunned journalist observed, 'I don't remember you being so exercised over something before.'"

"'You've never seen me in heart surgery,' the senator, a transplant specialist, replied."

What?? A heart surgeon with a temper (no doubt with a matching ego)? Can it be?