Rich

Ever since he left his role as lead theater critic at the New York Times and moved over to regular op-ed pieces, Frank Rich has been kicking major boot.

He's been clear as a bell from Bush's sixteen word State of the Union lie that invading Iraq was a disastrous decision and that everyone involved with outing, including the President and Vice President, is a criminal.

He's back this Sunday with a piece on how the mainstream political pundits are morons about Lamont/Lieberman and what is really going on for the ruling party in this country.

I don't subscribe to Times Select, so this link is useless to me and probably most of you. However, Maccabee over at DailyKos has done the yeoman's job by getting key passages into his post. This one in particular made me smile, as it combines the two Nettertainment fixations, politics and entertainment:

The administration's constant refrain that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically: only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. The box-office returns of "World Trade Center" are a cultural sign of just how much America has moved on. For all the debate about whether it was "too soon" for such a Hollywood movie, it did better in the Northeast, where such concerns were most prevalent, than in the rest of the country, where, like "United 93," it may have arrived too late. Despite wild acclaim from conservatives and an accompanying e-mail campaign, "World Trade Center" couldn't outdraw "Step Up," a teen romance starring a former Abercrombie & Fitch model and playing on 500 fewer screens.

This stuff is tasty like oxygen, and I urge you to read Maccabee's whole post, if not the article itself should you subscribe. Rich lays out how the pundits equating Ned's win with some sort of far-left takeover of the Democratic Party are missing the main point: The coalesced consensus that the Iraq War, supported so strongly by Joe Lieberman every step of the deluded way, is a debacle and we need a plan for getting out:

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician's opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn't easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman's loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

Is it too idealistic to believe that the truth will out, ultimately, even after taking some body-blows?

Is it crazy that after the events and chicanery of the past six years I'd still have that hope?

To be honest, I don't. I'm hoping, but I'm not expecting that all wrongs will be righted, all evildoers punished, that the ship of state will be righted once more as it evidently was during Bill Clinton's Administration.

The change has already come in the public mind. How committed we Americans are to its actualization as governmental rule only time, starting Tuesday, November 7th, will tell.