but they sound so reasonable, and went to good schools...

In today's Salon, chi-chi old fart Garrison Keillor writes:

"Only the GOP can save us":


It's time for honorable Republicans to save us all from George W. Bush, a man who does not represent the best that is our country.

?????????!!!!!!!
If you occasionally read Salon but aren't a subscriber, you are aware that you can get a "day
pass" by watching a 30 second ad to access the article in question. For this? I'd say don't. Keillor posits the existence of reasonable republicans in DC, and while there may well be such characters, or at least ones who mean to be, he further posits that they'll:

speak up,
actually be heard,
not backtrack upon being lambasted by Fox News et al,
not get screwed for not backtracking,
and....... their input will fucking matter.

I also find myself wondering if Keillor was aware of Feingold's censure motion as his op-ed went to press. He doesn't mention it, and if he knew about it, and it wasn't exactly a secret, this only serves to underscore the paternalism that Keillor feels towards the rabble. "Populist grandstanding? How unseemly!"

Earlier this week Mike De Wine, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel and Lindsey Graham, four so-called moderate, reasonable republicans of the sort that make Keillor go all soft at the knees, got set to introduce legislation to make it illegal for journalists to report on federal wiretapping activities, and expand the scope of the wiretapping that's currently going on without court warrant.

Hagel, perhaps ironically, was one of the senators who criticized the administration when their warrantless wiretapping program came to light in December. Maybe he just wanted a piece of the action.

I suppose Keillor would tut-tut me for suggesting this, just as he did last fall to liberals who objected to Roberts' nomination for chief justice:

There were worse nominees George Bush might have sent up to the Supreme Court, and he did not. So shake hands with John Roberts and wish him well...
Democrats were prepared to ... sic the dogs of direct mail on him, but when he brought forth a summa cum laude Harvard man, the crowd quieted down and the dogs crawled back under the porch. The gentleman, John G. Roberts, has a fine résumé and did well at Harvard. Barring some unsavory revelation about close ties to the Gambino family or membership in a secret militia group, welcome to the Court, sir.

This is old-fashioned American elitism and we all believe in it. When you meet the surgeon who will open up your chest, you want his degree to be from a great and famous school, not from the Amigos College of Medicine, P.O. Box 45, Del Rio, Texas...

Mr. Roberts has a good story. A boy grows up in Indiana, which is a disadvantage, but he overcomes it by hard work and clean, purposeful living...

So don't get too excited about a Supreme Court appointment. It's just a job. The only people who know what Judge Roberts will amount to will be the historians 50 years from now and even they won't agree about it. I say, if a man can go through Harvard summa cum laude and still be a yahoo, then the country is in worse trouble than we knew.

Emphases mine. Perhaps we can send him to Indiana, although I imagine Indiana hasn't done anything to deserve it. For my part I do subscribe to Salon, and generally mean to continue, but it occurs to me that if Keillor is so fond of chiding Salon readers for their immoderation, maybe he'd like George Bush jrs proposal regarding allowing union members to opt out from having their dues monies spent on political advocacy applied to Salon "dues". Can I subscribe to Salon without any of my money going to pay Mistah Woebegone's salary?

see also Zembla's "heads they win, tails we lose"