CONGRESSMAN DAVIS, REPUBLICAN, DECLARES WAR ON BUSHCO, HOPING HIS SUBURBAN CONSTITUENTS NOTICE AND LET HIM KEEP HIS JOB

One Republican who got the message from Tuesday's election loud and clear was Tom Davis (R-VA). Davis, who has represented moderate, suburban, Republican-leaning Fairfax County since 1994, saw his hopes of being appointed U.S. Senator go up in smoke Tuesday (since they depended on Allen winning the presidency and Kilgore winning the governorship-- the former unlikely and the latter... well... you know already that Kilgore was stomped). Davis' suburban constituents looked into the radical, fanatic face of today's hard right Republican Party and turned away from Kilgore in droves. Moderates and independents deserted Republicans everywhere. And Davis, who has been preparing to get his district a little more gerrymandered in 2010 to protect him from the Democratic surge there, was one of the first to start fretting.

Davis is doing all he can to distance himself from Bush and the radical right-wing of the GOP, the dominant wing both nationally and in Virginia. Yesterday he threatened, as chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, to start issue-ing subpoenas to Bush cabinet members and to Bush's counsel, poor old Harriet Miers, if they keep stonewalling him on legitimate document requests issued by his select committee on Hurricane Katrina response.

Yesterday Davis played the enraged drama-queen at a committee hearing, sounding more like a Democrat than like one of Tom DeLay's henchmen as he moaned and groaned about BushCo's failure to hand over e-mails and other communication records related to Katrina and how badly FEMA and other Bush crony-infested operations botched the response. Huffing and puffing and threatening to blow their house down, Davis set a "final" deadline of Nov. 18 for BushCo to comply with his demands. And in case the folks back home still didn't understand that their rep was no Bush-patsy no mo' and added that “If documents aren’t produced by that date, I’m ready to proceed with subpoenas.” Ouch! BushCo is very subpoena-phobic right now for some reason(s).

Davis has requested documents from the White House, the secretaries of defense, homeland security and health and human services and from poor old Harriet. The Bush Regime has been dragging it's feet on releasing any more documents after the ones they did send over showed what a shallow, vapid airhead Bush had appointed to head FEMA, with Mike Brown fussing and preening in e-mails about his wardrobe to frantic and despondent underlings in New Orleans watching babies' bodies float by. Davis is also threatening to charge You're-Doin'-A-Great-Job-Brownie with perjury for lies he testified to while under oath at a committee hearing. The message to constituents: "You're right; Bush is the worst and I'm not going to be an enabler anymore." We'll see if Virginians fall for this next year.