Holy. Effing. Sh*t.

Are they blithering idiots, or shameless slimeballs?

So, at Digby there is this analysis of some Sunday political banter. David Brooks says of Nancy Pelosi:

But I think her main drawback is that she is -- and her main drawback and success, their flip sides -- is that she is a Democrat to the bone. And she is a very partisan figure. She's grown up with a tremendous loyalty to the Democratic Party and tremendous partisanship.

And so, whatever her talents are, spanning the partisan divide is not one of them. I think she'll reinforce the partisan divide, which is not to say that Tom DeLay was not a hyper-partisan before her. But she is a hyper-partisan.

And to me, one of the problems with Washington now is loyalty to team takes precedence over loyalty to the truth. And I don't think that's going to change with her there.

And then later, Mark Shields:

Probably not. I mean, she can be speaker of the House. She can certainly start a healing process.

You know, I think, if Gerald Ford were the speaker of the House, he probably wouldn't preside over a House where only he'd bring legislation that had a majority of his own party before he brought it. He would seek across the aisle.

I think that's the test of healing, in the process and the good faith ... I think how well she does perform -- I mean, she presided over a Democratic Party, it was the most united -- according to Congressional Quarterly, which keeps tracks of these things -- of any party in the Congress in the past 25 years, but that was in opposition to George W. Bush.

There's this brain-bendingly self-serving ratchet that works in supposed standards of governance. Republicans do egregiously wrong things, finally get thrown out, and then start braying about how the new majority Dems have an obligation to make up for the sins of the past (never recognizing/admitting that the sins are theirs; this is where the idiot/slimeball question comes in) and play nice with them.

Presidents can never have the lack of oversight that Nixon did (not that he was so bad or anything); therefore assign a special prosecutor to Clinton as soon as he comes in office. Presidents can never suffer the witch hunt Clinton did (not that it was a witch hunt, or that it was a GOP witch hunt); therefore no one is allowed to second-guess W.

Amazing.