Three and Out.
Not only do I not know how things are playing over in the proverbial Peyoria, I don’t know where and what that proverbial Peyoria is at the moment.
In the past couple of days, we’ve been witness to three moments of RNC clean-up duty, as the Republican Party detects a distinct shift in momentum away from them. The House Republicans saw the need to hold off on what was quickly becoming the sleeper issue of the election season, the mother of all water-cooler issues. It must have been a disappointment for them that gay marriage or flag burning was taking a back-seat to… THE DRAFT.
The Giant White Elephant in the room that everybody was ignoring comes into full view, everybody glances at it, and then goes back to ignoring it.
Alan Keyes has come out for compulsory service. He’s about the only one. Sometimes there’s an advantage to being fifty-points behind in your race!
The question plagues everybody’s mind, though: over-stretched military… stop-gaps… recruitment shortfall… “muscular military policy”… something has to give. What and where?
Jump over to the veep debate. I don’t know how this figures into the great picture. The punditry and spinsters dig in for the couple of sound bytes that demonstrate who… won… the vice-presidential debate. Immediately, the RNC trumps two moments as being the markers of Cheney’s greatness… the moments of “Bool-YAH!”. “If Kerry is unable to stand up to Howard Dean…” and “Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of the Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.”
Kieth Olberman, the next best thing to Jon Stewart, does a “blow by blow” bit, and calls it a narrow Cheney victory… provided the comment about never meeting Edwards is true.
Which makes the great “BOL-YAH!” moment a great dud.
The rest of Cheney’s statement, as if it matters, is untrue. As it relates to a later question, a stupid ass question, Cheney has no interest in “uniting” anybody, and hob-nobs with basically the Republicans… and toss in Zell Miller while you’re at it.
The essential truth of Cheney’s statement is if not true, at least essentially true. (Wheels within wheels.) Edwards’s suit looks empty to me. This spurs the thought: Good thing he’s not the presidential candidate. Who’s their guy on that front?
We also learn from the debate that there’s a Spam-parker who’s a huge fan of George Soros. Cheney accidentally flubs the name of “factcheck.org” and says “factcheck.com”, the URL parker immediately redirects his page to George Soros. (For its part, factcheck.org weighs in on Dick Cheney’s comments, calling Cheney a liar. This is comedy gold.)
MSNBC’s debate panel announces that Cheney clobbered Edwards. Somewhat ridiculous, but the reasoning makes sense: it was impossible to call the presidential debate for Bush, and you can’t appear to be favouring anybody… thus one sideclobbers the other in one, the other does so in the next.
Today, Bush announces a major policy speech, insisting that the cable news networks are obliged to cover it. It’s a fifty-minute campaign stump speech, replete with the loyalty-oath signed audience and blistering attacks on John Kerry.
Debate prep, of sorts. And largely Debate clean-up. It’s easier to clock your opponent when he’s not there… and he needs to do something.
Thus… 50 minutes on Fox News and MSBC. CNN, evidentally, cut it off after a few minutes.
The positive here, of course, is that the ratings for the cable networks are crap anyways, and the lack of “major policy” sucks the sound-clips somewhere after the story of the Duelfer Report — which said exactly what we knew when this explains the situation well enough.
I come back to the question: “What does it all mean?” As far as I can tell, it means that Bush better get his schtuff together for Friday’s debate, or it’s all over. As far as I can tell, Cheney looks “presidential” (albeit an evil type of presidential) and Bush doesn’t. Perhaps Edwards looks “vice-presidential”? I don’t know.
And the Republican Party are scared spitless of the Draft issue.
(Other news: Republicans are threatening to sue because Michael Moore for giving away free underwear, and the perfect storm that might take out Tom DeLay continues to gather… we’ll see.)