Party over Country, Over Self, Over Everything That's Holy

Place your bets - who's the most pathetic example of the most tragic and despicable Republican on Earth?

A) John McCain (see Shakespeare's Sister, who makes a good case) or

B) Colin Powell, who, refused to resign in protest over the rush to BushCo's War in Iraq although he knew that the rationale for the war was built on lies and although he knew that the people who were planning it had no hope of being able to fight it competently much less win it and knew that because their planning contradicted everything in a little something we like to call the Powell Doctrine. And who, even now, refuses to swallow his pride and speak up for the men and women he sent on this deadly fool's errand.

C) Your choice here. But remember, it has to be someone absolutely Faustian and they have to be taking the country down with them. (I think that's what gives Powell the slight edge.)

Comments

[Chris Clarke]

C: every other person who still votes Republican.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Oh gawd. That picture of McCain hugging Bush nearly made me vomit!

[eRobin]

Chris: good point. They couldn't do it withouth the little people.

Sis: I knew you'd love it.

[doghouse riley]

Okay, it's a little like choosing which Staphylococcus variety you'd like in your wound, and I'm gonna add C: my own Sen. Dick Lugar, even though he's an also-ran (yet again, Dick!), for using his stature as the Senate's eminence gris on foreign policy to sort of mumble vague warnings about Iraq into his shirt before voting for the war resolution, then when it all turned to shit mumbling something about having mumbled a vague warning earlier. But he's a piker. Powell, for doing photo-ops at Crawford in November 2000, and for not resigning in early 2001 when a) he was put under Cheney's thumb and b) the "Hey, let's take our hands off the handlebars and see where we go!" Middle East policy was announced.

[eRobin]

Hi Riley: I forgot about the abdication of a Middle East policy. That would have been a good time to alert the country of the insanity at our helm. Powell was probably in savior mode at the time, thinking he could get it all back on track if he hung around. By the time they handed him the anthrax and pointed him to his seat at the UN, he didn't have enough integrity left to do the right thing and resign.

[Agi T. Prop]

Colin Powell takes the cake for me.

[KathyF]

Colin Powell. I've got a book called War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstom that explains why.

[Ereshkigal]

Colin Powell. Hands down.

McCain gets to be understudy in the B-cast of this creepy MacBeth rewrite.

When you open the competition for the title of Miss Congeniality in Tragic and Despicable Republican contest, I want to nominate Lincoln Chafee.

He comes so close, so often, to being wholly despicable, but never makes it to the finals. Generally likeable, unwilling to offend his party by actually taking a principled stand, Chafee crosses the aisle to chat with--but never date--Senators with spines.

Now his own party talks about replacing him. How tragic.

On the plus side, he can almost cry on cue (as we saw during the Bolton nomination process).

[eRobin]

On the plus side, he can almost cry on cue (as we saw during the Bolton nomination process).

Always a plus for an ineffective moderate Republican. You want to lock up that pity vote. The Chaffees of the world crack me up. Why don't they fight back with some imagination? What do they have to lose?

[intelicrat]

How can John "black baby" McCain even stand to be in the same F*ckin state as Bush let alone "hug it out"....I lost what little respect I had for McCain...as for Powell...he and Condi have done more to promote the "uncle tom" image than anything else. I would like to see a McCain/Powell ticket in 2008...go dems!