Keep Our Powder Dry
by jasonwhat

Updated for formatting

For once, I'm in agreement with the pragmatists of the Democratic Party. The fight to stop Alito is one that we cannot win. It is better to keep our powder try. You might respond, "Keep it dry! For what?" Glad you asked. I can think of fights for which we will be glad we kept our powder dry. (a rock solid argument on the flip)

1. What if a Democrat wins the popular vote in a Presidential election and may have won the Electoral College, but only a hand recount can count all the votes and account for the machines built-in margin of error. I don't know the legal system that well, but I suspect there would be a legal challenge that would go as high as the Supreme Court regarding the legality of the recount. What if SCOTUS voted on partisan lines NOT to count the ballots. As a result, the Republican wins. I know it is hard to imagine, but it could happen. I'm sure that if a subsequent recount did show the Democrat wonCongress would come up with some way to remove the false President, but either way, we should keep our powder dry for this scenario.
   
   
2. Imagine that a catastrophic terrorist attack happens on our shores. The Republican President gives some nice speeches and promises to kick some terrorist ass. He tells us that if anyone could have imagined such an attack he would have done everything possible to protect us. I'm just spinning my wheels here, but what if it later became clear that there was warning of the attack and the President did absolutely nothing to stop it? He was busy doing something ultra-Republican, maybe trying to start a new nuclear missile program -- who knows. At any rate, he ignored the threat and lied about receiving warning. This is a Republican we are talking about; so, he'd probably try to pull some crazy stunt like falsifying an EPA report that states the air at the place struck by the terrorists made the location unsafe. We need to keep our powder dry for this eventuality.
   
   
3. Republicans love war, particularly when they and their families don't have to fight. Terrorists don't really have their own nation, so the President would have to find somewhere to attack and appear "Presidential." It is possible, unlikely, but let me put on my tin-foil hat for a minute, that the President would manufacture reasons to go to war with a nation that was in no way threatening us. He'd probably pick some faltering Middle East country that he felt would be a cakewalk. How would he convince us to fight? Maybe, he'd say something about mushroom clouds and also suggest they were in league with the terrorists. He'd probably try to hint that the country had something to do with the terrorist attack on the US. I'm not sure what else, make a half-ass try at avoiding war through the UN. Sure, millions would see through this and take to the streets in anti-war marches, but we would need our Senators and Representatives to have some dry powder ready to stop the illegal war. At least we know that Republicans are all about integrity and hate "nation-building," so once no weapons are found andvthe war of choice is exposed, they'd hold the President accountable.
   
   
4. Okay, since I talked about voting once, maybe if the GOP was successful in stealing one election (see scenario 1), they'd try another. I think I read somewhere that a Secretary of State (the person who controls voting in each state) can also be actively campaigning for candidates running in the election. For instance, a Secretary could even chair a party's statewide Presidential campaign. It's hard to imagine that anyone with that much power over the vote would be all that actively involved in supporting a Presidential candidate, but I kid you not, it is perfectly legal. It is possible that the Secretary could control how the votes are counted, even how many machines get to each county and precinct. They could probably even set it up so that voters at Democratic strongholds would have to wait hours in line to vote on barely working machines. I hear some of these new machines don't have any paper trail, so who knows what the GOP could get up to with control of something like that. I'm a crazy Liberal, but I could even imagine the GOP challenging all kinds of voters -- even trying to keep mentally handicapped people from voting. Election fraud and abuse is pretty hard to prove, so we'd really need our powder dry.

These are just a few examples of how things could get much worse. I even dreamt up one scenario where a whole US city is destroyed because of incompetent planning and misplaced priorities. I bet if that happened the GOP would go with the "Nobody could have predicted this" defense. Crazy Wingers. Maybe, they'd out a CIA agent out of political spite, get caught running a bribery ring out of Congress, lose billions in a faraway nation-building scheme to change the world in our image (wait, Wingers don't support nation-building), give massive tax cuts to the rich and cause the deficit to soar.

The crazy rantings of a Northeast Liberal, I know. But who knows what those wacky GOPers could get up to, so let's keep that powder dry for a real fight. The Republicans won the Presidency and Congress fair and square, and vast majority of the country obviously supports them. Let's keep our powder dry and our noses clean for the next election, that's when real change can happen. The last thing people want is an opposition party vigorously opposing things. We have the next election, or the next one after that, or maybe the next one after that...with plenty of dry powder.

from daily kos via the newsblog