THAT SPLINTERING NOISE YOU HEAR

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I've been hoping for the past four years that each outrageous overreach by the Republican far right would finally be the one that makes the American public sit up and realize what kind of monster-with-the-fur-on-the-inside they've been cheering on.

It appears that - faced with having the American Taliban dictate how they will spend their end days, after having their retirement security handed over to the land sharks of Wall Street after the money they paid into the system is declared a "worthless debt" by the man whose oath of office demands that he defend and protect a constitution that protects and confirms the public debt made for the payment of pensions - may be the moment when the alarm goes off.

It's not surprising. Comics have known for a long time that when YOU slip on a banana peel, it's funny has hell, but when I slip on a banana peel, it's a tragedy.

The good news is, the Far Radical Right is so Far, so Radical, and so Right, that they're even scaring Harry and Sally Suburban, who vote Republican to maintain their property values and keep the government out of their life.

The Republican base is splintering. The Religious Extremist minority of the party that came out en masse last November and put Moron Boy back in office, and then decided that they had created a mandate that required him to do their bidding in the creation of a Fundamentalist Theocracy has finally scared the rest of the party.

One thing the Southern True Believers have never managed to understand is that - for the rest of us in this country - the scariest thing to see is Tobacco Road in full frothing frenzy. That part of the South is still mostly a joke to us, a joke made in hopes that the lunacy will confine itself to rolling in the sawdust in their revival tents and putting only themselves at risk of a rattlesnake bite. But when the sawdust gets spread on the street outside a hospice any of us can imagine ourselves being in, and the rattlesnakes are being waved in our face in public, the rest of us in this country turn away in revulsion.

The Republican Far Right is about to learn the lesson every extremist movement in American history has had to learn: the rest of us don’t like you when you threaten our everyday existence.

Nine weeks after his inauguration, George W. Bush is learning the limits of his "mandate" and the exact amount of his "political capital." Social Security, immigration, gay marriage and Terri Schiavo is splintering the Republican base.

After he won re-election with the support of 9 in 10 Republican voters, Georgie-Porgie is seeing significant chunks of that base balk at his major initiatives, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.

34% of Republicans say Democrats in Congress should prevent Mr. Bush and party leaders from "going too far in pushing their agenda." 63% of all Americans, a record for Moron-Boy's, want Democrats in Congress to block Bush and the Republicans.

41% of Republicans oppose eliminating filibusters against Mr. Bush's judicial nominees through the "nuclear option" Senate Republican leaders are considering. Americans do not want to see Senate Republicans change the rules in the middle of the game: 50% oppose the change, while 40% support it.

32% of Republicans call it "a bad idea" to let workers invest payroll taxes in the stock markets. After 40 days of the Bamboozlepalooza Tour, that number has held steady since January.

Resistance among Democrats and senior citizens has driven overall opposition to 55% from the 50% recorded when he announced his plan in the State of the Union Address.

On the "nuclear option," And the surprising thing is that 41% of Republicans also reject the change.

By decisive margin of 54%-35%, Americans want the Congress and President to play a less active role when it comes to "social and moral issues facing the country." 50% of Republicans agree.

Amazingly, on gay marriage, of all things, Republicans are narrowly divided, with 48% of Republicans saying Congress should pass a constitutional amendment banning this, while 47% say it shouldn't.

The anti-right trend even covers tax cuts. 54% of Americans say the tax cuts have not been worth the increased deficit and cuts to domestic programs, while only 38% say they have been worth it. Surprisingly, even 25% of Republicans agree that the tax cuts have not been worth the cost.

Bottom line: Bush and Rapture Right are now so scary, they're scaring Republicans.