Tuesday, January 12, 1999 -- St. Paul, Minnesota -- In the January 7 edition of APJ, Dave "Doctor" Gonzo wrote:

CNN's John King reported from the White House that the Managers wanted to call some 15 witnesses -- and that the President's defense team may well want to depose each and every one of them.

If that's true, The Doc predicts that this gang invasion of the Senate may last well into the summer -- practically guaranteeing a full rupture within the GOP and Democrat domination of American politics for at least a decade.

'Nuff said.

Remember that sickening feeling we had, all through the Reagan years (it lifted once Bush became Prez, which is why we were able to recover our collective brains in time to elect Bill in '92), that the Reagans had put some sort of "fix" on fate? That Nancy's astrology and magic really DID work?

I'm feeling a similar feeling now... except that it isn't the American public that's bewitched, like ensorcelled lemmings, into heading madly towards their doom.

It's the neo-Confederate GOP.

They thought they could get away with it, didn't they?

They truly thought that the American people were really enamored of hate-disguised-as-morality, didn't they?

They didn't realize that Reagan's success was due almost solely to his cult of personality, which Nancy's astrologer (Joan Quigley, a gung-ho blue-blood California Republican with a keen strategic mind) actually did help advance -- and very few of these hyper-born-again Nazis would ever mess with anything so "immoral" as an astrologer, even a good Republican one like Quigley (greed good, burning crosses good, astrology BAD), so their chances of replicating the Reagans' success with the general public were, are, and always will be negligible.

The 1994 GOP Congressional coups were thirty years in the plotting, and the end result of Tricky Dick's incredibly cynical and racist "Southern Strategy" and Dickie Scaife's bottomless checkbook. Republicans would have gotten the House and Senate in 1994, Clinton or no Clinton: blaming him for their loss (as do many hyper-lefties who hate democracy anyway and want to see it collapse) is ridiculous (the Republicans actually did get both Houses in the early 80's, only to lose them both by the mid-80's -- a fact which they are eager to cover up, as it ruins the bumper-sticker logic of their "40 years of Evil Dem Control" spiel, and because it points up the fact that Reagan's vaunted Teflon coattails weren't long and sturdy enough to re-elect most of the imbeciles who rode into office with him in 1980).

And now, as the corporate-controlled press prostitutes itself and the American people's opinion of both the GOP and the "news media" nosedives, the GOP fanatics have been rendered incapable of coherent thought, much less coherent action.

Which is exactly what I wanted to see.

The very same bozos whose mantra is "they'll forget all about this by November of 2000" are doing EXACTLY those things that will ENSURE that even the apolitical person remembers these sorry events as if they were hard-wired into one's brain.

Yeah, let's have that ultra-long trial! Yeah, let's call witnesses that contradict each other! And yeah, let's have someone quiz Paula Jones about just how her lawsuit got off the ground -- and how deeply her lawyers are in bed with Ken Starr!

Which reminds me:

The DeLay "Jane Doe" dirt package -- treated so reverently by Clinton-haters of both political extremes -- is not likely to be part of the Senate trial, according to Steven Smith, a University of Minnesota political science professor who appeared on Minnesota Public Radio's "Midday" program on January 6th. His guess is that Rehnquist -- who wants to keep this short, because if he doesn't he'll have to recuse himself from the SC for the trial's duration -- will do his damndest to block everything outside of the actual impeachment articles from being considered.

Riddle me this: If the DeLay dirt is so good, how come five of the House GOPers -- including Michael Castle (R-DE) and Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), who were shown it prior to their foreordained pro-impeachment vote -- have now come forward to beg their Senatorial peers to avoid a trial, saying that they would have voted for censure had DeLay allowed them to vote on the censure option? One would think that if the DeLay dirt were even remotely credible, these House GOPers would be urging their Senatorial colleagues of both parties to nail this woman-raping, miscenigating Spawn of Satan.

But the DeLay dirt, while it may not be a part of the official proceedings, is already in play where the Neo-Confederates hope it counts: the public.

Amazingly, the Republicans are still using the "disgust 'em 'till they stop voting" strategy. They keep forgetting that while the strategy worked in 1998, it worked in reverse: Republican voters didn't hit the polls with the fervor of past years -- or, even worse, wound up switching parties in protest -- while Democrats got much bigger numbers than normal. But the Gross Old Party just a-keeps on a-disgusting, to the point where its popularity with the general public is the lowest it's been since Nixon was impeached.

Meanwhile, back at the circus going on outside of the Senate, Ken Starr's at it again. Not satisfied with trying to take her child away from her -- and needing to be able to say he has something to show for his whole Sexgate fiasco -- Starr has decided that Julie Hiatt Steele needs to be punished even further for daring to (horrors!) ruin the credibility of one of Starr's chief stoolies, Katie Willey.

What a stud! That'll boost those sagging GOP ratings, eh, Kenny?

But Mr. Atticus-Finch-Only-In-His-Dreams is running scared; and wants to do a pre-emptive strike before the really bad doo-doo hits the rotating blades.

The man investigating Starr's Leaks-R-Us Shop, the special master -- whose identity was supposed to remain a secret, but whom the Washington (Starr) Post ID'ed as DC Appeals Court Judge John Kern III (talk about your prima facie evidence!) -- is still hard at work, but indications are that his job is soon to be wrapped up -- and not in Starr's favor.

How do we know this? Because Judge Norma Holloway Johnson -- against all of Starr's squawkings and protests -- released the news that Starr wanted kept secret until after the special master finished his review: namely, that Starr did his damndest to obstruct the leak probe at every turn. Remember, one only needs one instance of prima facie violation of Federal Rules 6(e) to nail the violator: Johnson found 24. And, if by some miracle and/or application of strong-arm tactics by Starr's buds Sentelle and Silberman, he gets away from Johnson, there's always the DC Office of Bar Counsel's probe: and DC Bar laws concerning grand jury secrecy are far more severe, and have far less wiggle room, than does Federal Rule 6(e).

Oh, yes: There's also the matter of the Susan McDougal trial next month. This case stands to become an excellent instance of the accused turning the tables on the accuser. Susan will be able, for the first time, to come forth with proof that she is telling the truth and that, at first, so was her late ex-hubby Jim... until Starr got his mitts on him. Subornation of perjury, anyone? How about witness tampering? Or shall we save all those for the David Hale grand jury probe?

Starr is like a chicken with its head cut off: He's dead, he just doesn't realize it yet.

And the GOP is in the same fix, as prominent Bible-thumping members stand in dire danger of being exposed by Larry Flynt as hypocrites -- not just in terms of sex, but in terms of corruption as well. (I heard the juiciest story about a particularly mean-spirited Bible-banging GOPer who Flynt is going to nail this week... but I can't confirm it, and I don't want to spoil Larry's party in any event. Let's just say that it involves hot tubs and languages other than English being spoken.)

All of the networks and newspapers bought by conservative helpmeets such as Murdoch, Moon, Robertson and Scaife... all of the carefully-crafted plans of the "Stormfront" and Council of Conservative Citizens fans... all of the three decades' worth of plotting... is all about to get sent spiraling down a gold-plated drain of their own making.

Like I said: Ensorcelled lemmings rushing headlong to their doom.

And not a moment too soon.

-- Tamara Baker