After seeing how the public got to ask the questions in the Democratic YouTube Debate, the brave GOP candidates are jumping off the ship. Seems they don't want any unscripted questions to break through their carefully crafted images.

The real question is, are they afraid they will get some tough questions about Iraq, or do they fear that one of their wingnut supporters will toss out some missive best discussed behind party doors? Do they really want America to see how radical and out-of-touch they are?

The Democrats have to be delighted about this. I can see the campaign commercials now, how the GOP is scared to answer citizen questions, the wimps. Should be fun.

I listened for years as the GOP faithful bellyached about Bill Clinton, as he changed and adjusted his stances on the issues of the day. He had no principles, they said, not like a Republican.

Well, meet Mitt Romney, the GOP answer to Bill Clinton. He's slick, good-looking, and seemingly changes his stance on every issue depending on which way the wind is blowing.

Or course, Rudi Giuliani isn't far behind in this department.

Still waiting for those principled Republicans to decry their own candidates' lack of principles. This seems to be yet another case of do as the GOP says, not as it does.

While Bush is bashing Nancy Pelosi for going to Syria, he's silent about the Republican congressmen who are there already.

To use the word hypocrisy to describe Bush's complaints about Pelosi would be an insult to hypocrites.

With the Family Values Party fielding a host of presidential candidates with a history of divorces and extra-marital affairs, it's a given that some of the longshots like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will start taking their shots:

"If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate's personal life and personal conduct in office doesn't matter, then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology."

The headlines this week said the Democrats are split, in disarray, because there was a battle over who would take the second spot in the House behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Yet, the same headlines claimed the Republicans were being united by their leadership decisions.

Huh? Do I smell the stentch of bias here?

Look at the facts. Pelosi was unanimously elected to lead the Democrats in the House. On the Republican side, there was a failed push to remove John Boehner as their new leader, to replace Dennis Hastert. Both men were tainted due to the Mark Foley sex scandal and subsequent fallout. There were 28 votes against Boehner's leadership among the caucus. Gee, that doesn't look like unity to me. Roy Blunt had 57 votes against him for the number two spot. Does that look like unity?

Then move over to the Senate, where Trent Lott makes a comeback as minority whip after being ousted for his Strom Thurmond comments. He won the position by one vote. Does that sound like unity to you?

How much more blantantly biased can you get?

Your supposedly liberal media at work.

Looks like there are calls being made to Nevada voters. If you get a call like this, try to record it, or at least report it.
Desert Beacon: Tarkanian Supporters Robo-Call Smear:

The Nevada Republican Liberty Caucus, supporting GOP Secretary of State candidate Danny Tarkanian, is robo-calling this morning in northern Nevada to spred its allegation that Nevada Secretary of State candidate Ross Miller is "soft on rapists." The call cites a single case of plea bargaining, not substantiated by any further information. The NRLC connection is not acknowledged until the end of the call.

The American Conservative says vote Democrat:

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen--in America and the world at large--as a decisive "No" vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush's failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration's endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why--thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush's decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration's calculation--as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides--the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran's hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel's northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.

The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can't face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

This post from Kos brings back a lot of memories. Kos starts out with quoting conservative blogger John Cole, and his problems with the current Republican party:

I hate getting up in the morning, surfing the news, and finding more and more evidence that my party is nothing but a bunch of frauds. I feel like I am betraying my friends in the party and the blogosphere when I attack them, even though I believe it is they who have betrayed what 'we' allegedly believe in. Bush has been a terrible President. The past Congresses have been horrible- spending excessively, engaging in widespread corruption, butting in to things they should have no say in (like end of life decisions), refusing to hold this administration accountable for ANYTHING, and using wedge issues to keep themselves in power at the expense of gays, etc.

Kos goes on to explain his Republican roots and how he left the party, and it reminded me of my past. I was a registered Republican, raised in a Republican household. I attended events surrounding the 1976 GOP convention in Kansas City at the age of 13 with my mother, who was editor/publisher of our hometown newspaper. I wore a Reagan hat, and voted for him when I was old enough.

But I, like Kos, saw the rise of the authoritarian side of the party, the religious right. When it comes to fiscal matters, I am still pretty much in the conservative camp. But to me, the Republicans talked about freedom back then, and I believed them.

Then, when it came right down to it, they really didn't mean it. I left the party in the mid-80s after figuring that out.

As the scandal over Rep. Mark Foley grows to show that Republican leaders covered up his preying on teenage boys, we have finally found an issue that the GOP can't spin.

If Republicans can't keep sexual predators from prowling the halls of Congress which they control, how are they going to keep America safe?

This should be the refrain of every Democrat for the next six weeks, in front of every camera and microphone they see.

The fact that Republican leaders hid Foley's sick behavior blows the cover off the utter hypocrisy they have engendered for years. Hey, marriage between consenting adults of the same sex is wrong, but having a congressman chase boys around the capitol is OK.

Let's find out how many of these so-called family values congressmen knew they had a gay sexual predator among their ranks and did nothing. That should make their base really happy.

Hurray for Glen Greenwald, whe searched the historical archives to show how the Republicans are the original cut & runners from Islamic terrorism. Check it out.