The Second Time as Farce

Mark Steyn does a riff on the Democrats' descent into madness:

At midday Thursday, as George W. Bush was about to be confirmed formally as the winner of the presidential election, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by Agence France-Presse as the ''Democratic former presidential hopeful,'' led 400 other Democrats in a protest outside Congress. Presidential-wise, they may be former but they're still hopeful. So they were wearing orange, the color of the election protesters in Ukraine, who overturned their own stolen election with an ''orange revolution.''

Now, on the one hand it's very brave for the Rhymin' Reverend to lead an orange protest. There is no rhyme for the word ''orange.'' Irving Berlin tried and the best he could manage was ''door-hinge,'' which just about works in certain boroughs of New York but would make an unreliable jingle for the Rhymin' Rev to bellow at Bush from outside the White House:

''We're here, we're orange

We're pushing at your door-hinge . . .

On the other hand, what's he really saying? That Americans are in the same situation as Ukrainians? That their election was stolen? In Ukraine, the one side poisoned the other side's candidate. His face broke out and his hair turned gray. John Kerry's hair is fabulous and for much of the campaign his glowing moisturized skin looked like an orange revolution all by itself. He was obviously worried about being poisoned, which is why he nibbled so tentatively during his pretend lunch stop at Wendy's and only took a couple of sips when he was doing his impression of a regular guy drinking beer at that sports bar in Ohio. But he managed to dodge that bullet and Jesse Jackson never got a chance to channel Danny Kaye: The pellet with the poison's in the Brahmin with the Botox.

Al Sharpton did the country a service. He pushed Jesse the extortionist aside as the automatic leader of the black left, but earned little credibility for himself. A classic proof of Marx's dig at Louis Napoleon:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

But what can these idiots be thinking?

In 2000 Gore won a majority of the popular vote, and Florida was close. At least they had a case that he was the choice of the people and the Electoral College was an anachronism. It was even conceivable that Florida could have gone the other way if a sympathetic court massaged the recount enough. And the Supreme Court decision was at best a stretch.

In 2004, W. won the popular vote, won Ohio by a small percentage but a decisive margin, even after a needless recount. They didn't have a case that even a paranoid would believe. Didn't bother them. The likes of Barbara Boxer (epithets deleted) and Maxine Waters (more epithets deleted) plunged headlong into the briar patch.

From a partisan perspective, it's amusing to watch the opposition self-destruct. From a patriotic perspective, the degeneration of the opposition into gibbering idiocy poses the threat at some future date that the frothers-at-the-mouth will dominate the party and win an election. Imagine a White House and Congress that sounded like the California Legislature or a Pacifica radio station.

Given the inevitable hubris and overreaching of a dominant GOP, it gives one pause.

HT: Powerline.