Centerblue.org

In an election cycle that promises to deliver a stinging rebuke to the GOP for its disastrous policies, increasingly desperate Republicans are resorting to truly disgusting and disgraceful means of keeping their claws on the levers of power at any price.

This is what Bush and Cheney had to say yesterday:

“However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses. That’s what’s at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq.”

Bush is not content to share power with Democrats, no–who are, after all, red-blooded Americans just like him. Any victory whatsoever by the Dems, any loss of absolute power in Washington by the Republicans, means nothing less than the ignominious defeat of America and a complete victory for terrorists. He makes this statement in the same breath as claiming the GOP wants to win in Iraq, while failing to explain how he intends to do that and while avoiding the NIE statement that the war is actually worsening terrorism.

Bush and Cheney are not alone in their vile rhetoric. In Tennessee, Republicans recently aired two racially tinged commercials against Harold Ford (who is black in a deeply conservative state): a universally condemned one in which a white female stripper asks Ford to call him (evoking interracial sex anxieties for voters) and a radio ad that beats jungle drums whenever Ford is discussed. In Virginia, George Allen slammed Jim Webb over fictional novels Webb had written describing hellish life in Vietnam during that conflict. And, of course, there’s always gay marriage.

These are your leaders, America–schoolyard bullies who show their true colors and throw a tantrum when threatened with losing their disastrous hold on power. It’s time to give them the butt-kicking that all good bullies deserve.