An editorial in yesterday's New York Times explains rather well why, for the first time in many, many years, the list of political candidates endorsed by the paper (due to be released tomorrow) will not include any Republicans.
The Difference Two Years Made
via New York Times
The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled
by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as
everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution.
But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it
claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits.
Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional
Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the
president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay,
the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your
party is in control of everything.
An administration convinced of
its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to
deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for
what we live with today.
Congress, in particular the House, has
failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the
president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation.
It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about
whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass
destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that
has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have
botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.
After
the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu
Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon
from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to
happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at
debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to
hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even
though many of them were clearly sent there in error.
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