A new Gallup poll reveals that more Republicans than Democrats approve of the current Congress.
Why wouldn't they?
The achievements of this new Congress are almost all negative, Republican "achievements" (i.e., extending the FISA Act, voting to fund the war without any timeline for withdrawing the troops, voting against giving the troops sufficient time at home before they are sent back for another tour in that pointless bloody war, voting with true profile-in-cowardice pomp to censure free speech).
Why do Republicans approve of this Congress more than Democrats do? The conclusion, though heartbreaking, is inescapable: because Republicans still have a majority in both houses, even if some of the poobahs prefer to call themselves Democrats. It's true, they dispense their perks and handouts to different client-patrons -- Schumer and his hedge fund managers, for example -- but they are not what many of us meant or were thinking of when we joyfully voted for "Democrats."
We're a nation divided, and I don't understand the sanctimonious calls for bipartisanship, for reaching out to our brothers and sisters across the aisle. There were good Germans who reached out to Nazis, there were good Americans who reached out to the Southern slave-holders, but some evils don't lend themselves to feel-good compromise; they must be defeated.
Who are our enemies, those who feel the way I do, those who admire this Congress more than Democrats do: the Americans who prefer even tiny tax cuts for themselves to sufficient armor and equipment for our soldiers; who prefer preemptive, unending, unilateral war to diplomacy, international consensus, and peace; who prefer corporate bottom lines to the survival of the planet; who prefer breathtakingly reckless spending to fiscal responsibility; who prefer fear-mongering and O'Reilly spin to honesty and intellect; who prefer fake and illegal security policies to the Constitution; who prefer illegal detention and torture to the world's opinion and the Geneva Conventions; who prefer an arrogant imperial unitary Executive to the formerly equal, now dithering, inconsequential, and rubber-stamping Legislative and Judicial Branches; who prefer flat earth creationism and faith-based ignorance to evolution, stem cell research, condoms to prevent the genocide of AIDS, and science in general. For all those Americans this criminal, bully-boy president and his corrupt, deceitful, incompetent administration have been a series of mostly unalloyed delights. Nothing our brave new Congress has done, with its presumed Democratic majority, has even momentarily wiped the mean, privileged smiles off their smirking faces or dampened a whit their cloddish joy.
For the Democrats to approve of Congress more than Republicans do, we would have to elect some Democrats. Happy days. Then we would ratify the profound changes our Congress made as it reclaimed the country, restored the Constitution, ended the war, reached out to the other nations of the world almost all of whom supported us after 9/11 and fear and despise us now. Imagine, a Congress willing and able to make fundamental Democratic principles about fairness, decency, honesty, responsibility, and peace into the laws of the land.
Guess which party would like that Congress better, in those good times I used to believe were coming, those happy days I thought were here again.