How can you ask "Where's the outrage?" without harking back to Bob Dole.

I'm seeing an opinion piece in The Washington Post with the headline "Trump was outrageous in Michigan. So where’s the outrage?" and it doesn't mention Bob Dole, who used to be famous for asking "Where's the outrage?" Answer Bob Dole first, and then it might make sense to ask the question about Trump.

On October 25, 1996:

So they gathered up their FBI files, they took them down to the White House, and there they've been. They say, "Oh, nobody looks at these. We just brought them over to see what the boxes look like," you know, whatever. And what happens? Where's the outrage in the media? Where's the outrage? There's no outrage. There's no outrage.

And October 26, 1996:

.... A lot of you people in the audience may not know about there are FBI files. That doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. You have an FBI file. What about the 900 people, innocent people, just because they're Republicans, had their files taken away [audio gap]. They tricked the FBI. They tricked the Secret Service. They took them to the White House, and then they said, oh, nobody ever looked at them. We just brought them down here, I guess, to look at the boxes. Well, I know that Mrs. Yeutter's file was in that group. Here's one right here. Nice innocent person. Her only crime was being a Republican. Now, that will not happen in a Dole White House. That is an outrage. That is an outrage.... How long do you think the American people are going to take it? Wake up, America. Wake up, America! Wake up, America!...  What would happen if any Republican president would have done two of these things? Why, there'd be outrage all across America. There would be outrage....

But we have a Republican President now, so where's the outrage? There's plenty of it in the media, but media people want more, because we have a Republican President now. But the people are sleeping through it. Wake up, America! Wake up, America! Why won't America wake up, WaPo wonders. America is sleeping because it has outrage fatigue. I'm too tired myself to do anything more at this point than show you my Google search results:

ADDED: Here's Howard Fineman in Newsweek on November 3, 1996:

Last week [Dole] was King Lear in a Brooks Brothers suit. Old grudges surfaced, and new ones. His predicament was the liberal media's fault. "The country belongs to the people, not The New York Times,'' he thundered in Dallas. Democrats were "rushing'' immigrants with criminal backgrounds onto the voter rolls. "They want to get them ready for Election Day,'' Dole said. Society was at fault for ignoring the ever-lengthening list of ethical and legal questions surrounding Clinton. "Where's the outrage in America?'' Dole demanded in Houston. "Where's the outrage?''

Having voted to legalize marijuana, Coloradans now vote to tax it.

Heavily.

Well, of course. You legalize it so you can tax it. To repurpose an old Obama-and-marijuana quote: That was the point.



Obama's appearance arrives at 0:57, after which a commenter (Howard Fineman) opines: "One of the reasons Barack Obama is so popular, especially among younger people, is that he seems so real, he seems to acknowledge the reality of things. It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it. And that's one of the things that they hear. He seems to be willing to be honest."

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing. I'm old. I was old back in 2006 when that clip came out. Yes, I voted for him, but not because I believed he was a new kind of honest. And now, in 2013, watching that, what I hear — on the sound wavelengths that penetrate my old head — is the word "seems," screeching out of Fineman's word montage: He seems so real... he seems to acknowledge... He seems to be willing to be honest.

"Seems" and "willing."

Willing... like: Okay, I'll go along with this looking-honest bullshit for you folks for a while. So follow me, little puppies. I've got a new kind of reality kind of thing to kind of like show you. Can you, like, you know, hear it, kids?

And I got a big laugh out of Kathleen Parker, at the very end saying, "The thing people can't stand is the lies." I then rewatched the clip and lingered over the part where they showed Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with marijuana and "didn't like it" and "didn't inhale." I found that very refreshing.

That's the kind of honesty I like right now. It was a lie, and you knew it was a lie when he told it. There was none of this feeling of oh, wow, look at the reality, man. What felt real was: There's a politician that will smile and lie straight to our faces. He's a liar.

Those were the days.

"Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys."

Bragging and threatening, Christine O'Donnell-style. Wait. Did she really say that? Howard Fineman, in HuffPo, says that 2 "top GOP insiders" told him she said that. I'm skeptical, especially about the verbatim quote. What sort of top insiders hurt their party's candidate so badly?

If there really are such people and O'Donnell has to deal with them, maybe it's good that she has the balls to push them back like that. Who are they? What was the whole context of the discussion? Hey, remember when it was oh-so-horrible to take quotes out of context?

And isn't it funny, now that the Democrats are over-the-top desperate, that the GOP is desperate too? Could somebody please remain calm and sane? We're going to need some folks left with enough mental stability to govern. It can't be the tea partiers, can it? They've always been so crazy and angry. I read it in HuffPo.

"Obama: He staked everything on this and, like the long distance runners from his fatherland, he made it (barely) across the finish line."

That's Newsweek's Howard Fineman, making a racial remark, which he probably thinks is okay, since he likes Obama.

"Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected...."

"The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words 'I' and 'my.' (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story."

The mainstreamers are starting to regret the way they led the poor man on.

"I just said I've always wanted to sleep with a man with gray hair."

Apparently, Howard Fineman's hair is setting the tone.

What can the Democrats actually do about Iraq?

The NYT reports:

[Nancy Pelosi], along with the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, informed the president that they were opposed to increasing troop levels.

“If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it,” Mrs. Pelosi said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.”

Oh, he's going to have to justify it. Strong words, eh? Or will they -- can they -- actually do something about the funding?

She also suggested that Congress should deal with financing for the current war and for the proposed increase as separate issues. “If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now,” she said.

Whether lawmakers are prepared to advocate legislative steps to withhold funds from an expanded mission is unclear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that as a practical matter, there was little that lawmakers could do to prevent Mr. Bush from expanding the American military mission in Iraq.

“You can’t go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece,” Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “He’ll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to.”

“As a practical matter,” Mr. Biden added, “there is no way to say, ‘Mr. President, stop.’ ”

That's an interesting contrast between the two legislators, one of whom is running for President in '08. Let's look at the full transcript of Biden on "Meet the Press." Here's the key part (boldface added):

MR. RUSSERT: You said the other day that this is President Bush’s war, and there’s...

SEN. BIDEN: It is.

MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s really little Democrats can do. Why not cut off funding for the war?

SEN. BIDEN: I’ve been there, Tim. You can’t do it.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

SEN. BIDEN: You can’t do it. It’s—what—because it made sense in the Constitution when you said you could cut off funding when you had no standing army. We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and play around and say, “You can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece and”—he—able—he’ll be able to keep those troops there forever constitutionally if he wants to.

MR. RUSSERT: Why not have legislation then that would cap the number of troops in Iraq?

SEN. BIDEN: Because it’s very difficult to—it’s constitutionally questionable whether or not you can do that. I think it is unconstitutional to say, “We’re going to tell you you can go, but we’re going to micromanage the war.” When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces, when you authorize them, to be able to use the forces. And so, look, what we have to be doing here is the president—the only way this is going to change, Tim, and I’ve been saying—I’m a broken record on this—is when a majority of Lindsey’s colleagues, Republicans, say to the president, “Mr. President, enough. We are not going to support you any more,” that’s when the president will begin to change his policy. That’s when we begin to listen to bipartisan groups. That’s when we bebin—begin to listen to the majority of the expert opinion in this country.

So it's up to the Republicans to do something about the war? Nothing the Democrats can do at all. It's the same situation as before the election, and yet -- in Pelosi's words -- "this is new."

I'm picturing no change in funding the war, even if Bush goes through with his surge. We'll have some hearings and investigations, but they will be primarily for the purpose of shaping the Democrats image in preparation for the '08 election. And that's what you got out of the big '06 elections on the issue that the elections were supposedly all about.

ADDED: Here's Howard Fineman:

Even as they decried the "surge" and declared that it is "time to bring the war to a close," Democrats offered reasons for staying out of Bush's way. Obama took the safest ground. "I cannot in good conscience," he said, "cut off funding for our troops that are already there." He and others will insist that future requests be included in the regular budget. Sen. Joe Biden, whose Foreign Relations Committee will launch hearings on the war this week, said that Congress's role is simply too limited to be effective. "It's all about the separation of powers," he said. Last month he told Bush: "This is your war, Mr. President, and there's nothing we can do to stop you."

The Democrats may not really want to. Party leaders (especially Nancy Pelosi) fear being branded as "weak on defense" if they kicked off in Congress with antiwar maneuvers. Rather than do that, said Biden and Sen. Chris Dodd, the best strategy for now is to try to dig out the facts and educate the public. Only Republicans have the leverage to pressure Bush to change course, Biden said.

In the meantime, Democrats know a classic "wedge issue" when they see one. With 21 Republicans up for re-election, Democrats would be happy to witness full-scale GOP infighting, which could catch the Republicans' '08 front runner, Sen. John McCain, in the crossfire. Democratic strategists say it would be politically foolish to help Bush by crafting a bipartisan war policy. "Why should we try to come up with a compromise policy with him?" asks Mike Ward, a former congressman who was back at the Capitol for opening-day festivities. "If we do that, we take ownership of the war. Why would we want to do that?"

Fineman answers that question in the way that I think I lot of folks who voted for Democrats will. What happened to the outrage? Exactly what you should have expected!