"I Hate You, Mr. President. I Love You, Mr. President."

It's almost like one of those old-timey, redneck, Cry-in-Your-Pearl-Beer songs. You know the kind I mean. It sort of goes like Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart" only with about 100 extra verses thrown in.

And yet, despite the fact that their love, George W. Bush, for purely selfish and Messianic reasons, threw his entire party under the tracks of an MRAP, the Republican Party, in spite of its Protean pretensions, can't quite bring itself to either individually or collectively badmouth and trash-talk their spousal abusing, self-centered sociopath of a lover.

(Oh, sorry. Wrong dictatorial wifebeater.)

Even though said spousal abuser has been so brutally solipsistic that anybody even associated with him is likewise stigmatized. Sure, up to a point, they're legitimate victims, sort of, but we tend to look at them as enablers, as weak-kneed saps who flinch everytime George dekes them by smoothing his hair.

They should've, instead, stood up to such abuse and made their old flame accountable under the rule of law. They proved it could be done in the summer of '74. But old lessons are forgotten and old habits die hard.

That's why it's so endlessly amusing to see Republicans running for re-election repudiating the Bush Doctrine in all its blood-spattered glory, the overall doctrine of slash and burn while not actually naming their abuser because they have exactly one soft, conservatively compassionate spot in their igneous hearts and it belongs to dear Georgie in his gravy-spotted wife beater shirt, torn and bloody knuckles, still insisting he's relevant even though he has one foot out the door. That, plus George still has powerful friends who will always be on call to stick a body or two in their car trunks under cover of night.

Take Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, for instance.

In the campaign ad above, Sununu bills himself as a champion of civil liberties because he called for changes in the USA PATRIOT Act, specifically for the parts that restore our civil liberties.

OK, question: Which parts of the USA PATRIOT Act don't shred our civil liberties?

Well, golly gee, I sure am touched, John, but if memory serves me correctly, it was Russ Feingold and not you who alone opposed Bush's own Enabling Act, shredded civil liberties and all.

But note that at no time in this ad is Bush's name ever brought up, as if Alberto Gonzales just nominated himself, as if the USA PATRIOT Act was written by elves that magically appeared in the dead of night (which actually isn't too far from the truth).

Forget the fact that Sununu stood shoulder to shoulder with four other Republicans and some Democrats in debating the PATRIOT Act. In the end, as with every other Senator except for Feingold and one abstaining vote, Sununu voted for it, including the especially Orwellian/Kafkaesque Sections 215 and 218.

Back in 2004, Republicans swallowed, swallowed and swallowed and never thought to spit four years ago when they trotted out Fred Thompson to deliver a summertime Valentine to George W. Bush. This time around?



Indeed, how do you tell the story of a presidency, Fred? I don't know but the postscript is sure 180 degrees from the prologue, isn't it?

They want to bash him. You know it but while they're silently weeping with rage, their balled-up fists remain jammed in their pockets because, like Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain, they just can't quit that man no matter what, even though he's pretty much shit all over their job prospects, slathered that famously dysfunctional Bush spunk and even shook out the extra drops all over their faces just for good measure.

But this time around they think they're showing backbone because they're not so discretely spitting instead of swallowing. But a blow job is still a blow job no matter what you do.