2006: The Year of the ‘Macaca’

The exit polls do prove to be revelatory.

I hope that Mr. Rich is right...that we are no longer a nation of smoldering racism and intolerance.

Is it possible that Americans have roundly rejected the politics of hate and fear, the politics of division and distraction?

I will reserve judgement, as long as Limbaugh's ratings aren't in the basement and Faux News is still on every public TV in the red-states.

However, Faux News' ratings plummet, over the last, year gives me hope.

2006: The Year of the ‘Macaca’ - New York Times:

OF course, the “thumpin’ ” was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush.

Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The country saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans’s fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the “compassionate conservatism” that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.