Banana Republicanism

Senator Lindsey Graham: "The idea for prosecutions is coming from the hard left."

Well, let's hear it for the "hard left." Because accountability for torture is not in fact all that outrageous a concept. Indeed civilized nations ought not to use torture at all.

That this opinion seems to have become "controversial" is mostly the result of banana Republicanism. And in this respect, even while Graham's assertion is absurd, he's not nearly as bananas a Republican as, say, Senator John Cornyn (R-Arkham Asylum), who is upset that Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder holds the absurd view that waterboarding is torture just because it is, and wants him to swear not to prosecute anyone who did that sort of thing or anything similar.

"I liked what President Obama said -- we need to be looking forward and not backward," he said this afternoon. "We've got huge problems facing this country ... I want some assurances that we're not going to be engaging in witch hunts."

Cornyn paid little heed to the political risk of holding up new leadership at the Justice Department just to stand behind Bush advisers who gave the legal go-ahead for torturous tactics that were used at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. I asked how he would proceed if Leahy moves forward with a committee vote on Holder before his prosecution query is answered, and Cornyn said he would place a Senate "hold" on the attorney general nominee if he has to.

He can rest assured that nobody will be hunting witches. The nation I believe will be satisfied with prosecuting torturers.

And you gotta love this:

A Senate GOP aide describes Holder's predicament as the result of playing it coy on prosecutions while being direct on his view of waterboarding. (The New York Times saw a similar undercurrent in its analysis of the confirmation hearing.)

"Holder put himself in a position of legal and rhetorical checkmate when he unequivocally described waterboarding as torture yet refused to tell the committee whether he would prosecute members of the intelligence community," the GOP aide said. "Holder can't have it both ways."

Sure he can. The GOP is the minority party. And while I have as little faith in Harry Reid as anyone, he's not going to honor Cornyn's hold over the wishes of the wildly popular new president. Actually I sort of hope he does, because that would get him canned as majority leader.

Anyway, all you need to know about the Republican party is that the first fight they're willing to pick with the new administration is quite literally based on the moral principle that nobody should be prosecuted for torture. That's actually quite a radical, dare I say extremist position to be taking, except of course from the point of view of an apparatchik for a vicious totalitarian regime or a member of the Washington Post editorial board.