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03/14/2005: "Bush’s Demicracy (Yep, That’s How I’m Spelling It)"

Bush and his right wing cronies talk a lot about democracy, but what they actually practice is “demi-cracy.” The “demi” doesn’t refer to the former Mrs. Willis but to the prefix meaning “partial,” for example in the terms demigod or demitasse. In other words, he’s not practicing real democracy but something closer to apartheid, where a ruling group has all political power and opponents have no power. Then consider the excellent analysis done by the inimitable Hendrik Hertzberg in the 3/14 New Yorker: “if each of every state’s two senators is taken to represent half that state’s population, then the Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million.” Talk about tyranny of the minority! Bush doesn’t deserve credit as an advocate for real democracy because the GOP approach to governance under his leadership is to totally disregard, ignore, and even mock almost half of the elected representatives of the country, and by extension millions and millions of voters making up half of the electorate. Here’s an illustrative quote from Karl Rove: “Next time one of your smarty-pants liberal friends says to you, `Well, he didn't have a mandate,' you tell him this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democrat candidate for president since 1964.'' As you will recall, Bush got 51 percent of the vote in November to Kerry's 48 percent. In other words, Bush had a plurality of 1% over citizens wanting to be the first to kick a wartime president out of office. What is Rove talking about with “higher percentage of the vote than a Democrat?” Only that there was no third party distracter like Nader or Perot. Why not? Because dislike of Bush was so intense that those opposing him were unwilling for the first time in decades to dilute their vote. I’d hardly call that a “delicious” testament to voter confidence in Bush! More outrageous is what Rove and Bush are doing with that 1% “mandate.” They’re acting exactly as if every single opposition candidate had been defeated, such that they were handed total ownership of policy by a unanimous popular vote. This is not an exaggeration. In the House, Hastert is unabashed about his bringing to the floor only those bills that have “a majority of the majority.” In the Senate, Frist is unabashed about eliminating the last bastion of respect for minority rights, the filibuster. Republicans are scheduling committee meetings without bothering to invite the committee’s Democrat members. Speaking of respect, when was the last time you heard the term “smarty pants” used by an adult?