Go Enjoy A Little Anti-GOP Schadenfreude Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

In the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons that graced the Saturday mornings of my childhood, sometimes the Coyote would find himself in a painful situation having grabbed an anvil while not standing on firm ground. The anvil would send him crashing down to the desert below, often after he dared to look down and realized he had walked off of a cliff.

In similar vein, we may enjoy the scene of theocrats chewing one another to pieces. We should feel free to lend, purchase and indeed toss them as many anvils as possible, for maximum broken bones and blood on the dust of the desert below. But sometimes, the theocratic political hacks and politicians turn to feed on each other in seeming unforced errors. In such joyous cases, we should not interrupt but just enjoy the tint and smell of copious blood on the ice:

FIRST MESSAGE: "Hello, this is Doug Lamborn calling for either Jonathan or Anna. Something very serious has happened. There was a letter to the editor that you both put in your names to the editor of the Woodmen Edition and there is something that is blatantly false in that letter.

"I would like to get together with you and show this to you and appeal to you as a brother and sister in Christ. You didn't give me that opportunity but I am happy to overlook that and deal with you on that level because I think that is the right thing to do and show you where you made a blatant, wrong statement.

"Now there are consequences to this kind of thing, but I would like to work with you in a way that is best for everyone here concerned. So please call me at your earliest convenience. It is now 2:40 (p.m.) on Saturday afternoon.

SECOND MESSAGE: "Hello, this is Doug Lamborn again, I'm finishing up my message from a moment ago. I got cut off. It is critical that you get back to me as soon as possible on this because I'll be going back to Washington here in a few days and I have to make sure that this is resolved one way or another. And like I said I'd rather resolve this on a Scriptural level but if you are unwilling to do that I will be forced to take other steps, which I would rather not have to do. So please call me. This is essential. Call me by tonight, Saturday night and we can get together sometime Sunday afternoon."

It is a strange moment when I feel sympathy for anyone associated with James Dobson, but it was his operatives in Colorado Springs who criticized Rep. Lamborn (R-Dobsonville CO, aka Colorado Springs) for his opposition to federal anti-dogfighting proposals.

Now reasonable minds may differ as to whether dog-fighting is a legitimate target of state prohibition (lobsters are boiled alive and ducks fattened forcibly for foie gras lawfully in most states) and whether the federal government is the appropriate level of government for any such laws. I find dogfighting disgusting, but cannot formulate at hand an argument as to why a dogfighter's pleasure does not merit respect while a gourmand's taste for lobster and foie gras do merit such respect. Perhaps it's the income level of the respective parties, or the fact that dogfighting is a spectacle whereas lobsters and ducks are tortured out of direct public sight, or that the torture is a (perhaps undesired, perhaps reluctant) means for the gourmand as opposed to an end in itself for the dogfight enthusiasts.

But for a Congressman to call and threaten his constituents on a voice mail is pretty brazen. I take it as a sign that the GOP is cracking under pressure, and losing its bearings. To quote one Republican operative:

"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.

The Schadenfreude tag has not seen nearly enough work lately. Shame on me.