A few officemates pulled me aside to watch the MoveOn anti-Bush video winners.   Given the San Francisco Bay Area, the videos were met with more than a few chuckles of approval.   Big surprise.   What was interesting was when one of my co-workers - who knows my opinion about Iraq and thus infers my opinion about Bush - jokingly asked if I was offended by or disagreed with the videos.   My honest answer was that I was NOT.

I think the videos could have been funnier BUT, overall, I have to admit that many made good points.   The winning video, for example, focused almost entirely on an anti-deficit message - one I strongly agree with.  Conspicuously absent - except perhaps as a side reference - was change to the War on Terror.  IF the videos herald the Democrat's post-Caucus mainstream platform, this is a Good Sign.   The People have been heard on the issue of the War.  They will instead by bombarded by and thus strongly educated on federal spending.  By Democrats.

"Ambition countering ambition" - a bedrock principle most esconsed by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson is our most enduring constitutional safegaurd against totalitarianism.  It's taken a Republican takeover of Washington for many of us to realize it again today.  Andrew Sullivan notes:

If the Congress were in Democratic hands, it might be plausible [why we have big deficits]. The White House could say that it has proposed tighter spending, but that the Congress over-ruled them. But the Republicans control both branches of government! Bush has vetoed not a single spending measure and keeps proposing even more spending. For me, the bottom line is that only divided government can control spending excess. If you're a fiscal conservative, you've got to split the ticket if you want some restraint. The Republicans are no better and arguably worse than the Democrats at stiffing their own special interest groups. So in an era of Republican dominance in Congress, the case for a sane Democrat in the White House is getting stronger.

The Washington Times goes further and describes the unrest felt at stalwart, top tier Conservative / Libertarian thinktanks towards the administration:

National leaders of six conservative organizations yesterday broke with the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, accusing them of spending like "drunken sailors," and had some strong words for President Bush as well.
    "The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto," Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, said at a news briefing with the other five leaders. "I complained about profligate spending during the Clinton years but never thought I'd have to do so with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling the Congress."

Groups like the Heritage Foundation provide the intellectual leadership that steer covetted big ticket donors and are at the heart of "the vast right wing conspiracy".  This is a major structural schism which, like a freight train, is slow to gain visible momentum but pretty hard to stop in the long run.  FWIW, big donors are a much smaller overall component of the GOP's finances vs. the Democrats so the impact will require a longer time span to be felt (David Brooks fears we are facing a timespan of decades).   By contrast, the NAACP - despite appearances - in many ways has more sway over Democratic party purse strings than the Christian Coalition has on Republicans. 

At a different level, it's still sorta hard for me to concede this point in the environment of SF political discourse.   I deeply disagree with the gut, visceral dislike so many have for W.  Out here, my issue-by-issue equivocation towards Bush comes across as unbridled enthusiasm.  I've tried to explain to myself that the a priori emotion they feel at Bush's name is the same churn of the gut I get when I think of Hillary (ew!).   But, I still think it's actually much deeper than that.  

I fear that many of "them" see the crack in the dike - deficits - as their opportunity to usher in a rather broad platform that is based on an underlying utopian vision, moral/cultural relativism, that sees profitable business as parasitic, that readily recognizes market failures but not governance failures, and which ultimately believes that the true answer to deficits is increased taxes on the phantom rich & biz rather than lower overall spending.   It's one thing - and a very bad thing at that - for Bush to betray avowed small government principles.    It's another thing to use evidence of his duplicity to toss out the principles altogether.

Fareed Zakaria said that fierce Bush critics need to be reminded that "some things are true even if George Bush believes them."   At least to the extent that the MoveOn commercials portend the '04 Democratic platform, they seem to recognize this and take a tactical / surgical approach to changing domestic policy.   As much as I fear the philosophic basket case that has historically made up the Democratic party, like Andrew Sullivan, I'm finding myself more and more drawn to it & governmental stalemate as 2004 unfolds.