Who put the “con” in consensus?

            With the Democratic ward healers running amok, especially the Senate bunch, the word consensus takes on a brand new meaning.  Now that Bill Safire isn't around anymore, I'll take over.  Consensus comes from the Greek "con" meaning "never tell the truth when a lie will do" plus the Greek "sensus" meaning "at least the amount of sense Olympian Zeus gave a monkey."

            (Enter Politicus)  "We need to have a consensus, even when there's no consense on the one side and damned little on the other."  (Politicus is played by Barack Obama in tonight's performance.)  Okay, we get it!  You want to play nice-nice with the old crepitators on the outré side of the I'll.  Is there any elected official on Capitol Hill who hasn't yet heard that a two-thirds majority—you know, the kind that's absolutely filibuster proof—of Americans favor a Public Option?  You can bet their staffers have heard it.

            So why can't the Democrats write the Public Option into the Bill and get it signed by the President?  Well, I think we ought to ask Max Baucus that one, since it's the Baucus Caucus—otherwise known as the Conservative Wing of the Democratic Party—that's pushing Democrats into line with the feckless Republicans, including that Olympian Snowe job from the frigid north.  Max Baucus, aka: Max Nix, represents the Democratic Party about as much as that fossil from Georgia, Zell Miller, did.

            Trying to find "common ground" with conservatives of any political party is a no-win—just ask the Iranians.  Common ground in American political life means status quo ante (which I shorten and simplify to "sqa", and pronounce like a homonym for a Native American housewife).

            The problem is that all of those ethically-challenged sqas hog all available TV cameras and spout talk designed to demonstrate their toughness and rugged American individualism.  (Mmm, Soundbytes!  Get 'em in your grocer's freezer!)  Common ground should be seen in America the way Commonwealth was seen in apartheid South Africa: Wealth for the whites and Common for the blacks.  Just ask yourself who gets the common and who gets the ground in the current health care debate?

            Toughness!  Who elected Poopdeck Pappy to Congress, anyway?  How about representative democracy?  Ever hear of that one?  Even William F. Buckley era conservatives understood that greed was wrong, and that any conservative government had a social responsibility to lift up the economic lives of its people.  I defy any literate conservative to deny this simple truth, which is proven best by the failure to do so under the right-wing ideological regime of President Bush II, as compared to the old style conservative administrations of all other post-WWII Republican Presidents.

            It's time for Barack Obama to put his popular vote where his mouth was and leverage the voices of the American people who sent him to the White House.  We want a Public Option, and the Baucus Caucus in the Democratic Party should either respect the wishes of the American people, or the senior Senator from Sin City should remove them from responsible positions in the Senate.  Perhaps he should also remove himself, for he seems as useless as a thermometer in Hades.   Conservative Democrats who want to "let them eat cake" should dine with the Tea Baggers—tea and cakes are simply splendid together—WASP soul food, m'dear.