Dotted along the rocky hillside upstate, small campsites huddled against the wind and rain under swaying branches. The fires from campfires hissed steam and wood smoke spread in gray and filled the gullies and spaces between the walls and trees. Inside the tent, four fathers tried to sleep with varying success. These camp-outs always made for long nights of fitful rest on hard ground. Sleeping bags are either too warm or too light. Somebody snores, wakes up, turns over and goes silent. Then one of the other guys starts snoring. We take turns creeping out to empty our bladders.
And all through the night, the wind picked up and rain grew more steady. We were camped under some huge trees on a hillside and laying there in the night - probably around three or four - I recalled all the felled trees I'd seen nearby. With each surging gust, I waited for the snap of big limb and thought about the boys down on the hill, tucked in in twos and threes and fours. Each hour brought stronger wind, harder rain.
That snap never came, and the dawn came with a cold rain that left us miserable but safe (except for this horrid cold, which has laid me up with hot tea and a hotter laptop). But the crack came loud and clear and brutally for the rule of the modern Republican Party, even as we broke camp.
The scandal over sexual advances on a House page was the final, limb-cracking gust of a nasty wind - a storm that will now settle into a punishing electoral gale that will (if God sits in Heaven) blow out this corrupt, disgusting, lying, malicious, torture-loving, Christ-invoking, race-baiting, gay-bashing, money-grubbing, elite-enriching, reputation-smearing bunch of un-American pirates, this disgraced GOP, this former party of Lincoln and Roosevelt, into the gutter of history - washed away by torrents of blood and dishonor.
You can lie about intelligence, diagnose a brain-dead woman by videotape, leak the name of a CIA operative, leave young American troops to die, disregard warnings about al Qaeda, sit back and watch New Orleans wash away, and put the Congress of the United States on the payroll of lobbyists. And get away with it all, with an outside chance at retaining one-party rule. But when you fail our children, watch out. That's a political storm. As Paul Begala said, "Somebody sends an email like that to my kid, they are going to deal with the law firm of Smith & Wesson, OK? It ain’t going to go to no Page Board."
Elections are about turnout. Few people switch parties or change their minds. If you can manage turnout like the Republicans have so masterfully these last dozen years, you can hold power even if registrations are in the minority. This scandal goes to the heart of the turnout battle: it disgusts values voters, those Republicans who have (in my view) been led like sheep to vote against their own economic interests in the name of American tradition and sexual mores. The Foley scandal and the Republican leadership's clumsy reaction sweeps that all away. It depresses the base deeply, even as the other side is completely fired up.
And there's a word we haven't heard much during this one-party Reign of Error. Maybe it's the one word Republicans should really fear, the word that makes Bush Administration hacks sweat in their sleep, a word that's whispering in the gusts of the coming storm.
Subpoena.
