‘When did it become us versus them?’

November 4, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney was in Idaho this week, campaigning for some Republican candidates who are struggling in this traditionally-red state. When Coeur d’Alene businesswoman Melodee Watt heard the vice president was coming to North Idaho, she waited in line at GOP headquarters for a ticket. After all, as far as Watt was concerned, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Watt, however, was prohibited from hearing the Vice President speak.

“She (a GOP volunteer) typed in [Watt’s information] and said ‘Oops, we have a little problem,'” Watt said. “I thought ‘What? I’ve never been arrested or anything.'”

The volunteer had pulled up a scarlet “D” by Watt’s name. She was flagged as a Democrat, and Democrats were not invited to the vice president’s rally.

“I don’t recall ever registering as a Democrat or a Republican. Over my lifetime I have leaned Republican and I have leaned Democrat,” Watt said. “It was kind of embarrassing.

“I just wanted to put politics aside and show respect for the office. I left there feeling excluded from my country.”

Kootenai GOP County Chairman Brad Corkhill confirmed Democrats were not allowed in. “It’s our party and that’s what we want to do,” he said.

It was a public event, on public property, with a public official, and if the local Republican Party even suspected you were a Dem, you were excluded.

The Bubble lives.

Watt said she thought she would be exactly who the GOP would want at the rally: An undecided businesswoman.

Now, she said, she felt like picking up a sign and marching out in the cold with the Democrats.

“No wonder there’s so much division in this country. When did it become us versus them?” Watt said. “No matter how you feel, one way or the other, we’re all Americans.”

That, of course, is pre-9/11 thinking. We’re not all Americans, we’re all either Bush allies or suspect.

When did it become us versus them? I think I remember the day and time.

That sounds about reasonable to me. My parents, after having been lifelong Democrats, voted for Dubya in 2004 (I finally relented, and began speaking to them almost a month later. But things have been tense ever since.). Ever since that point, even though they are still registered Democrats, I have felt that they don’t have the Right or the Privilege to do so.

Partisanship is a two-way street (and thank God I have two brothers who helped to not only cancel their votes, but to reverse the impact by one!)

  • Kootenai GOP County Chairman Brad Corkhill confirmed Democrats were not allowed in. “It’s our party and that’s what we want to do,”

    It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to…

    The problem with living in a bubble is one eventually runs out of air. I look forward to seen Dick choke on his own flatulence.

  • 🙂 Taoi (that’s Yoda for TAIO). Dick might choke on Bush’s famed flatulence. I’m sure it would be an honor for Cheney. He put the Repugnant into Republican.

  • Off topic, but this site has tag clouds of keywords used by US presidents going back to the founding of the republic. It’s fascinating. (via Crooked Timbers.)

  • Ya know Bush-hatred is kind of rejuvenating. I never thought I would hate with the same passion I hated Nixon. But bam here it is. It’s like The Viagra of My Discontent. I don’t even need the Meth. 🙂

  • Nice to see you have a constructive hate-on, Dale, even if you do cause the Bard to do 6,000 rpms in his grave.

    Is it me or are Dems funnier than ReThugs? I dunno. Maybe if I thought bigotry was amusing.

  • Yeah, the big tent party. But the rulers of the party view it as their exclusive domain hidden behind closed doors and separated from the ruled, i.e. the non ideological pure. Jesus Christ, is this America?

  • If Mr. Bush and his Republican allies wish to synergize their fundraising in light of their desires to exclude all that are not of themselves, they merely need to set up souvenier t-shirt sales at the rallies. So long as the t-shirts are brown, I think Mr. Bush’s supporters would buy up the whole lot of them at each such rally.

    For the sake of our democracy, vote against Republican candidates this November 7th. -Kevo

  • I say they should keep the bubble going. The more they exclude, the smaller their base gets. 20 years from now they will be a fringe party relaced by a new centre right party founded by sane conservatives. They’ll go the way of the Federalists.

  • Bush is so much worse than Nixon in every respect. I have tried to find any of his pronouncements or policy utterances that I can get behind, just to see if there is somewhere there a tenuous connection to reality , but it’s so hard… Truly the the one and only thing Bush says that I can accept is that he apparently doesn’t want to criminalize illegals (unless of course he decides they’re enemy combatants).

  • ‘When did it become us versus them?’

    i believe it was way before your link, CB, when we first began to hear that ‘uniter not divider’ bullshit.

  • For me, Bush’s honeymoon ended before his innaugural, when he started naming cabinet officers. It was, like, “By their acts ye shall know them.”

  • This is a bit off-topic, but this morning I suddenly remembered the scene in “Being There” when the black maid is floored when she sees her former co-worker, the mentally disturbed Chauncy Gardner, on the Dick Cavett Show. That’s the way I feel every time I see any member of the Bush administration. It’s like being astounded — over and over again.

  • “Bush is so much worse than Nixon in every respect.”

    After six years of GWB, I’m actually nostalgic for the good old days of Nixon.

  • I actually think this more ominous than divisive. They touch on it briefly in the article, but why did this woman get flagged as a Democrat? Based on magazine subscriptions? At the risk of generalizing, I doubt that a 50yr old woman who sometimes votes Republican has a subscription to The Nation. Like CB said, this is a public event, held on public property with the second highest ranking public official in the country and she was denied access because a computer, operated on behalf of Cheney, “flags” her name. Was she asked to wear a Yellow “D” on her lapel?

    I wonder if people with Parkinson’s were turned away. Or how about if they just support stem cell research? How about people who support civil unions?

    Is there any way of checking what this list is based upon or who’s on it?

    Oh, I’m sorry, that must be the Meth talking. I forgot we were talking about the VP – he doesn’t have to disclose anything to anyone because he’s above the law. And when in doubt – shred it.

  • Exactly Vincennes #15. They are like the Communist Party of the old USSR in so many aspects. They already want it where the top 3 to 5% own everything. How long before you have to meet such criteria to be invited to be a member of the only legal Party?

  • How is it that Americans could not see this sort of Gestapo thuggery in 2004, even though it took place right before your eyes? That was your last chance (short of the manifest unlikelihood of impeachment) to get rid of George W. Bush. Can anyone doubt the damage he has done to America since? Yet he seems unstoppable – every time the majority confidently assert, “Oh, no; it’ll never happen. That’d be ex post facto law, and the Constitution prohibits it”, the next thing you know, POW! Bush signs something into law that all the noddy-heads said was impossible. You might as well use the vaunted Constitution to wrap fish in, for all the attention the Dear Leader pays it.

    Does anyone really think such a rogue administration, such a clutch of conquistadores, is going to allow itself to be quietly voted out of office? You guys are going to be the best part of the next 50 years recovering from the depredations of that simian maniac. But you voted him back into power, as much because the rest of the world made it clear how much it loathed him as for any other reason.

  • Of course, “certain people” must be excluded from Rethug events. Their whole lives are made of fluff, of image and that image and the lies that support them must be presented as monolithic truth. That’s how you create reality and maintain your created reality and wreck the country. Don’t blame Cheney. He’s revealed his insanity for years now. I blame Ms. Watt (and by extension, all the other Rethug enablers) for wanting to “show respect for the office.” People deserve respect, not offices. And this Vice deserves contempt.

  • Interview with Cheney where Stephanopolous asks him what he thinks about the (Neocon) Founding Fathers, Richard Perle, etc., saying that the administration is “deadly dysfunctional”. Kind of fascinating from a research POV to watch this man speak/lie – I see no difference. I was actually watching something on the early WWII relationship between Hitler and Stalin and some of their commentary about not caring one iota about the lives that were destroyed by their efforts. Does anyone remember the names of the people that Genghis Khan killed? Ivan the Terrible? The only thing that matters is the goal of the State – and they are the State. Stephanopolous asks him about the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Cheney flat out says “it doesn’t matter.” Scary stuff.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4t55vAbHM&eurl=

  • Serious question. Let’s pretend for a moment that we live in a country where the actual written laws matter. Can they legally do this?

  • The problem isn’t that Melodee was a “Democrat,” per se; rather, it was that she was not a “Republican.” Remember, people—these goons live by the principle of Absolutism. If you are not one of them,then you are—by default—one of the enemy….

  • Now the Rethugs have their “enemies list” consisting of all but members of the Party. If Ms. Watt had simply shown up, and had tried to walk into the crowd, she would have been bodily assaulted by the Secret Service. This would have qualified her for a lawsuit – without question. We need to see this denial of ticket and resulting assault on camera. Who’s up for saving America?

  • #18 Homer said: “They touch on it briefly in the article, but why did this woman get flagged as a Democrat?”

    Maybe because she had a look of intelligence in her eyes, rather than blank,cult-like adoration (to be in the presence of the almighty Cheney)?

    OK, I’m only (slightly) kidding.

  • Hey Dale (#5) – as a dyed-in–the-wool Nixon-hater since my Dad was ranting about the Checkers speech, and someone who was on Nixon’s Enemies List (unofficially), who can lay claim to having actully pissed on Nixon when I went to the Nixon library, stood by the grave, looked around and saw no one in the vicinity and Did The Deed, I can tell you that my Bush hatred makes my Nixon-hatred look like my dislike of the girl who said “no” to an invitation to the Junior Prom. Actually, had we done a thorough house-cleaning back then, we’d have gotten all these scumballs back when they were Wannabe-scumballs, and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

  • Actually, in the midst of all this, I have an anecdotal bit of “good news.”

    Today I went to a regional contest for those in my hobby of scale modeling, an activity where I have a pretty major reputation as a product reviewer and instructor in “how to do it” – which drives a significant majority of my fellow modelers nuts, since they are all rightie idiots and I am as unrepentant a leftist in those forums as I am here (I go out of my way to do historical articles about guys like Dick Best, the guy who won the Battle of Midway, later being the Librarian at RAND who let Daniel Ellsberg copy the Pentagon Papers, and judged that a more ringing defense of his country than sinking the “Akagi” at Midway,or the 761st Armored Battalion, the fightingest unit in Patton’s 3rd Army, who were known during the war as “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Niggers” – it drives the righties berserk every time I do it, which is why I do it).

    Anyway, I digress. At the show, several guys in the course of talking to me – most of them being people I would consider “honest conservatives” and not the wannabe-brownshirts who are so commonly found at these events – came right out and said I had been right about the war, and that they were going to vote Tuesday for antiwar candidates.

    I dunno, if they were all in the same congressional district, even with races as close as they are, I don’t think there was enough to swing the election, but every step of progress counts.

    So do make sure to Be Yourself politically in public. It matters. There are people who are watching and thinking.

    Change is coming.

  • Wonder how much taxpayer money was used for Cheney’s travel expenses for this trip?

    Comment by 1watt — 11/4/2006 @ 6:02 pm

    That’s right. Every last single penny for transportation and security for this event should be charged back to the RNC or claims need to be presented to the Federal Election Commission.

    Indict/Impeach Cheney First.

  • Sunday’s NYTimes is up online. The lead editorial is a scathing indictment of BushCo. Here is a little bit of it, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

    On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

    That is why things are different this year.
    […]
    This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

  • Another rat jumps ship and points fingers-ok, I know it’s a mixed metaphor. This time it is Chalabi and he points the finger at Wolfowitz.

    “The real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz,” Chalabi says, referring to his erstwhile backer, the former deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz. “They chickened out. The Pentagon guys chickened out.” Chalabi still considers Wolfowitz a friend, so he proceeds carefully. America’s big mistake, Chalabi maintains, was in failing to step out of the way after Hussein’s downfall and let the Iraqis take charge. The Iraqis, not the Americans, should have been allowed to take over immediately – the people who knew the country, who spoke the language and, most important, who could take responsibility for the chaos that was unfolding in the streets. An Iraqi government could have acted harshly, even brutally, to regain control of the place, and the Iraqis would have been without a foreigner to blame. They would have appreciated the firm hand. There would have been no guerrilla insurgency or, if there was, a small one that the new Iraqi government could have ferreted out and crushed on its own. An Iraqi leadership would have brought Moktada al-Sadr, the populist cleric, into the government and house-trained him. The Americans, in all likelihood, could have gone home. They certainly would have been home by now.

    What’s more, according to Chalabi you can add Wolfowitz to the list of some say:who:

    “In Wolfowitz’s mind, you couldn’t trust the Iraqis to run a democracy,” Chalabi says. ” ‘We have to teach them, give them lessons,’ in Wolfowitz’s mind. ‘We have to leave Iraq under our tutelage. The Iraqis are useless. The Iraqis are incompetent.’ “What I didn’t realize,” Chalabi says, “was that the Americans sold us out.” Turkish coffee is served, then tea. I consider Chalabi’s predicament: the Iraqi patrician, confidant of prime ministers and presidents, the M.I.T.- and University of Chicago-trained mathematics professor, owner of a Mayfair flat, complaining of being regarded, by the masters he once manipulated, as a scruffy, shiftless native.

    These passages come form a long article in the International Herald Tribune. It also contains an explanation of how Chalabi helped push into war with Iraq.

    David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, offers one of the most compelling explanations for how pivotal Chalabi’s role was in taking America to war. Kay said that while the C.I.A. had long regarded Chalabi with suspicion, disregarding much of what he gave them, Chalabi had succeeded in persuading his more powerful friends in other parts of the government – Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, and Wolfowitz. The pressure brought by those men, Kay told me, ultimately persuaded George Tenet, director of the C.I.A., that the White House was committed to war and that there was no point in resisting it. “In my judgment, the reason George Tenet and the top of the agency came over to the argument that Iraq had W.M.D. was that they really knew that the vice president and Wolfowitz had come to that conclusion anyway,” Kay said. “They had been getting information from Chalabi for years.” Of Wolfowitz, whom he has known for years, Kay said: “He was a true believer. He thought he had the evidence. That came from the defectors. They came from Chalabi.” Kay said he continued to feel Chalabi’s influence with Wolfowitz even after the invasion, when Kay was leading the team searching for W.M.D. from mid- to late 2003. “Paul, when faced with evidence that we had developed on the ground, would say, Well, Chalabi says this, the I.N.C. says this, why are you not seeing it?” Kellems, the Wolfowitz assistant, disputed Kay’s story, saying that Tenet’s views were shared by officials across the government. “The position taken on weapons was the consensus view of the United States, including of the Clinton administration and other Western intelligence agencies – as well as that of Mr. Kay himself prior to visiting Iraq,” Kellems said

    Collin Powell aide Larry Wilkerson place Kay’s analysis in cold hard light.

    Wilkerson raises a crucial point. Assuming that Chalabi was a source for at least some of the bogus intelligence, we might ask ourselves: so what? Was the American national security apparatus so incompetent that it could be hoodwinked by a handful of shopworn engineers and an Iraqi mathematician to take the country into war? Or is the lesson more disturbing – that Chalabi simply gave the Bush administration what it wanted to hear? “I think Chalabi and the I.N.C. were very shrewd,” Wilkerson said. “I think Chalabi understood what people wanted, and he fed it to them. From everything I’ve heard, no one says he is dumb.”

    Read the whole article it is fascinating.

  • Jurassicpork – that is a great article – thanks for the link.

    I was thinking how Jon Stewart has almost become entirely mainstream now. It’s not even anecodotal that people get their news from him. There are actually studies showing that when people do, they are actually better informed than your average American (whomever that is).

  • “‘When did it become us versus them?'”

    January 20, 2001.

    or to the east, north, west, and south of there.

  • Rege, Homer, you’re being conned.

    “They [the U.S.] certainly would have been home by now.”

    How would that install four major permanent airbases and a 60-acre Ctiadel?

    Leaving is not Bushco policy, AND NEVER HAS BEEN.

    Cheney, and Scooter, saw Chalabi as a useful tool. Maybe Wolfowitz was conned, but Cheney just didn’t care. They just need a nail to hang the corpse on — THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE ‘FACTS.’

    Btw, Chalabi was given a private tour of the aftermath of the live test of the Pentagon’s new wall system. He was real impressed.

    As for, an Iraqi government could be ruthless — Chalabi echoing the hatred for countrymen so expected of ex-pats — note that Ustad Allawi, a terrorist who used to blow up schoolbuses and movie theaters in Iraq, walked up to six uncharged detainees on his first day of work as PM, and blew their brains out with his own pistol. “That is how it’s done,” he commented, to U.S. Marines who already knew.

  • You know, one of the things I hope Congress gets around to looking into all this private party with public funds thing and passes a few laws to allow all Americans to see their elected representatives. I don’t want riots for people I don’t support, but we should all be able to exercise our right to protest.

  • Kootenai GOP County Chairman Brad Corkhill confirmed Democrats were not allowed in. “It’s our party and that’s what we want to do,” he said.

    It’s our party and we’ll lie if we want to
    lie if we want to, lie if we want to
    You would lie to if it happened to you.

  • Good for you, Tom! Not all model builders are rampant righties (hey, some are even female!). Are you the Tom Cleaver on Modeling Madness?

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