A Thousand Moments of Clarity

More and more Republicans seem to be waking up from a five year drunk. They’re squinting outside through the curtains at a car they don’t recognize sprawled across the front lawn, with the doors open and the headlights still on and the remnants of some kind of garden fencing wrapped around the left front tire. Just wait till they find that dead hooker in the bathtub.

Yep. It’s Morning After in America.

Recovery specialists will tell you that an alcoholic can watch a whole lot of life slip away, and still rationalize how it’s being lived. Marriage, career, family, friends, home, health – all lost and gone, maybe forever, but it’s never their fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault. One thing that tends to bring a person into recovery, the experts say, is when they realize, for certain, that if they don’t change they will die. That one shining moment of clarity, when suddenly they can see exactly where this train is going, and exactly who is stoking the engine.

For some Republicans, it was Katrina. Having the whole world get a good whiff of America’s third world underbelly was bad enough, but the shameful spectacle of Bush’s dingbat crony Michael Brown assigning the blame to just about everyone and everything short of Ted Kennedy’s driving was a bit much, even for the faithful.

Then Bush nominated Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court.

Watching “conservative icon” Ann Coulter on TV saying, “She is simply unqualified for the job, it’s stunning that he would nominate her. I’m running scared now,” was like watching a lost weekend survivor, pouring the last of the vodka down the sink, muttering “Oh my god, what have I done…”

Maybe it’s just as well that team Bush is charging ahead, staying the course. Those recovery specialists will also tell you that once an alcoholic has turned the corner, it almost bodes well for their continued sobriety if there is nothing behind them but scorched earth. If they can say “Hey, I never cashed in my kid’s Tiger bonds, I never drank fingernail polish, I was never even indicted – I don’t see how a little cocktail after a hard day would hurt…” then their recovery is at risk.
But if they see nothing in the rear view mirror but the near total wreckage of American democracy, maybe they’ll keep working those steps.

Let’s take it one Republican at a time.