Before you out-of-touch, America-hating leftists start raising your fists in triumph at the Republican meltdown of these past couple of weeks, keep one thing in mind:

The left isn’t even part of the dialog. This is largely between the Republican establishment and… um… the Republican establishment. It’s a big tent, and right now they’re having a free-for-all tag-team deathmatch inside. We’re somewhere just off the fairgrounds, running a deserted little booth where you can win cheap stuffed animals for tossing a ring around a beer bottle.

Still, it’s a lot of fun just to hear the screams fiiltering through the warm, cotton candy-scented evening. The Arrogance Smackdown has been pretty exciting. The conservative establishment thinks it can put the President of the United States in a sleeper hold over judicial nominees! But look out - President Bush has grabbed a folding chair named Harriet Miers (who coincidentally looks like she’s taken a couple of folding chairs to the face) and BAM! Huge blow to the horse he rode in on!

As a sideshow, longtime Dark Lord but recent colander Karl Rove appears to have sprung another leak. What do you do when your conservative intellectuals are hopping mad at you? Reassure the other half of that bizarre Faustian bargain, the religious right. Sadly, Rove forgot that people have started doubting that he can still choke a man from across a room just by pinching two gloved fingers together. So now the Senate’s going to put James Dobson under oath so we can watch him scanning the interior of the Capitol dome for incoming lightning bolts.

With all this pornography for liberals coming into our homes, you might have to Tivo the misadventures of DeLay and Frist. But don’t for a moment believe that this has created affection for Democrats. It’s only created an opening, and the left has proved to be pretty adept at missing those and running directly into walls, whether or not the conservatives have painted a realistic-looking tunnel on ‘em.