SemiConscious Dot Org

Wolcott turns a phrase like few others, so it’s worth quoting him at length:

The ashy clouds over Mordor have parted, my friends. It was only a year or so ago that the Permanent Republican Majority seemed not only a grim possibility, but a stark near-inevitability. Karl Rove’s master plan seemed to have a mortal lock on the political future. So downbeat was the daily news and so dispiriting the performance of the Democrats in 2004 that I had internalized liberalism’s permanent underdog status, consoling myself that at least I lived in a liberal city in a liberal state and had plenty of company in the commisseration ward. But I also took heart in Emerson’s insight that everything looks permanent until it’s secret is known; that invisible cracks form deep in even the sturdiest structures and over time will not be denied. But “over time” can be a long time. Decades, even. And so much would not survive that long a wait.

The wait was shorter than I could have ever hoped and dreamed, and with far more dramatic consequences. I would go through the entire list, but consider: Tom DeLay-gone; George Allen-gone; Rick Santorum-gone; John Bolton-gone; Donald Rumsfeld-gone. It’s been clear since the midterm elections that the Bush administration and the Republican Party never anticipated (anymore than I did) that the Republicans would lose both houses of Congress. They assumed-and why wouldn’t they?-that they would have two unassailable years to pack the government agencies and the courts with their cronies and gerrymander the Democrats into crippled, ineffectual archipelagos. Two years for Bush to walk tall in the roving spotlight and stage-manage his triumphant stroll into his legacy, a two-term titan with a permanent Republican majority to Reaganize his memory. Two years for Rove to gloat in his desaturated fats of his own genius.

Instead, there’s a shitstorm brewing, the flags are beginning to snap on the flagpoles, and karma is about to pay a nasty housecall.