SOME CONSERVATIVES STARTING TO REALIZE BUSH FASCISM IS UNCOOL-- WHEN IT'S DIRECTED AT THEM

Everyone knows what the ACLU is and why it is one of the most important and cherished organizations in our country. But many people are as enthusiastic about another non-profit with a similar name, the ACU. This one is not about protecting anyone's civil liberties, but rather about restricting them in favor of corporate dominance. It is the American Conservative Union, a treacherous cabal of far right extremists and plotters headed by David Keene. The ACU can be reliably counted on to be on the wrong side of every important issue facing our nation. Do you want poisonous pollutants pumped, unrestrained and unrestricted, into the air? Send a check to the ACU. Do you want to see minorities' abilities to vote restricted and working men and women kept from collective bargaining with powerful corporations? Write some more checks to the ACU. Do you want to see American jobs shipped off to slave-labor countries where multi-national corporations can claim a PO Box as a "headquarters" so as not to pay a million dollar tax bill and instead just send a $100,000 campaign "donation" to Tom DeLay and his pal Jack Abramoff? ACU is the group for you.

So wasn't I surprised this morning to read Keene bellyaching about the vicious manner in which the fascistic Bush Regime treats the people with whom it disagrees. The ACU, like many conservative organizations, are feeling the wrath of the Bush Regime for their opposition to his latest and most pathetic example of grotesque cronyism: the nomination of the clearly unqualified Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

Keene doesn't expect Bush's stealth candidate to give anything away during the confirmation hearings. He says he doesn't know enough about her-- or think he will find anything more out about her from the secretive Regime he has always supported-- to be able to quell the complete skepticism he feels towards her nomination. Keene points out that the Regime stooges who are trying to get the Far Right behind this nomination are all full of hot air (etc). "The case for Miers is simple," Keene writes. "The president knows her and likes her. She’s a hard worker and a woman who did well as a lawyer in Texas, is devoted to the president and has performed loyally as a White House staffer. Oh, and there is one other thing. Ms. Miers regularly attends church and apparently takes her religion seriously. This, according to White House arm twisters, tells us that she would vote on the court in a way that would please social and religious conservatives."

But the part of Keene's missive that struck me as most familiar-- and caused me some of the schadenfreude Al Franken is always talking about-- is when he complains, bitterly, about the "way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Miers’s conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out. Most conservatives have stood with Bush from the beginning. Those of us who know him like him. We’ve swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because we’ve believed that he and those around him are themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. We’ve been there for him because we’ve considered ourselves part of his team."

"No more," he thunders (or was that a wimper? You can't tell because it was written). "From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step" (good analogy to their fascist roots, of course) "without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States."

We'll see. Meanwhile, let any conservatives with a fucking SHRED of a conscience left-- if there are any (which I doubt)-- meditate on how George "I'm a uniter, not a divider" Bush has split our country in two with his lies and with the very mass demonzations of his critics which these conservative lock-steppers have participated in for the last 5 years-- starting with their militant approach to the stealing of the 2000 election in Florida. Stew in it a little, assholes.