ooooohhhh no, dr. bill

Dr. Bill must be feeling flush after winning a straw presidential poll in his own backyard – a victory akin to winning the “best hamburger” cookoff competition at a family picnic.

Senator Bill Frist, the amazing doctor who can diagnose a persistent vegetative state off an edited videotape viewed from the Senate floor, responded to Senator Russ Feingold’s call to censure George W. Bush over his illegal wiretapping program by saying he was “hoping deep inside that the leadership in Iran…[was] not listening.”

The Patriotism Card.

Bill Frist is a scoundrel running for the presidency. What did we expect him to say? Just what he did. It’s what most Republicans and virtually any Republican in a position of “leadership (and I use that term loosely)” says anytime it’s pointed out that the emperor has no clothes. Question their patriotism.

Of course, it never occurred to Dr. Bill (and I call him that because he’s another politician we can’t afford) to defend the White House program that has data mined all of our email, telephone and cell phone traffic in a vain attempt to track down potential terrorists. That would be virtually impossible, since the program hasn’t accomplished squat on the terrorism front.

Then again, we would be foolish to expect anything more from Republican leadership. Question their immoral war in Iraq and they wrap themselves in the flag and spout off about supporting our troops. Point out the fact that they have never fully supported the troops with the armor they so desperately need and they wrap themselves in the flag and question your patriotism – how dare you criticize the president in a time of war! This is politics straight off a McDonald’s drive-up menu and Bill Frist’s response to Senator Feingold is the Happy Meal du jour.

Perhaps the most pithy commentary on current Republican strategy was offered by Aaron Sorkin at the end of his movie “The American President.”

You might remember the movie? Michael Douglas as the president and Annette Bening as his lobbyist/girlfriend? The movie spawned the television series The West Wing

Sorkin’s president, Andrew Shepherd, a democrat, has been under constant personal attack by his political challenger, Bob Rumsen, played by Richard Dreyfus and looking decidedly like Dick Cheney. Rumsen bewails the fact that Republicans couldn’t conduct their preferred campaign, a character debate, when Shepherd won the White House because his wife had just died from cancer.

But faced with reelection, Shepherd has begun dating Sydney Ellen Wade. Rumsen refers to her in one interview as “The Presidential Mistress.”

After trying to ignore Rumsen’s character assassination attempts throughout the movie, and losing Sydney along the way, President Shepherd finally responds in the final reel.

He says, in part:

“For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character.

“For the record: Yes, I am a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U. But the more important question is why aren't you, Bob? This is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question. Why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for president, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? If you can answer that question, then, folks, you're smarter than I am, because I didn't understand it until a couple of minutes ago.

“Everybody knows American isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship.You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating, at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free, then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

“I've known Bob Rumson for years. I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong.

“Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. Nobody has ever won an election by talking about what I was just talking about.

“This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they're terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We're a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections…”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how Republicans gained power. That's how they govern. That's how they plan to get reelected.

We cannot allow it. We cannot be afraid to stand up and point out the fact that these people are breaking the law, that they care robbing us blind to secure their own reelection and that they are rapidly turning huge portions of the world against us by making their own people fear anyone with a different skin color, a different religion, a different sexual orientation or a different opinion.

Enough. Stop. Now. Senator Frist, unless you have something substantive to say, get off the stage and clear the building. Go home to your cozy malpractice and help your family bilk Medicare for millions of taxpayer dollars.

More soon.