It's hard to imagine a political party having a worse year than the G.O.P. did in 2006. A run-down of the carnage:
- Vice-President Dick Cheney shoots a hunting partner in the face with a shotgun while attempting to murder a quail. To make matters worse, the White House fails to inform the press about the matter for several days, and acts as though such an incident is somehow no one's business. Guess no one ever filled them in on that whole principle of the government serving the people.
- Virginia Senator George Allen calls an Indian-American man "Macaca" during a campaign rally. Macaca, it turns out, is a derogatory term for people of color. Allen first denies knowing what the word means, then claims he made it up. More accusations of racism surface as election day nears, including one that Allen, while in college, stuffed a severed deer's head into a black family's mailbox. Damn. Even Andy Dick's never done anything that fucked up.
- Florida Congressman Mark Foley is discovered having icky e-mail exchanges with teenage pages. Male pages. Making Mr. Foley not only a perv, but a gay perv. You know, like Newt Gingrich, but not smart enough to avoid getting caught.
- Election Day 2006 will go down in history as a bloodbath for the Republicans, with the party losing its long-held majorities in both the House and Senate. Among the biggest names to be ousted are the aforementioned George Allen, once a presidential hopeful but now merely a steaming pile of Macaca, and Rick Santorum, a known piece-of-shit gay-basher who himself had presidential aspirations. Perhaps now the Republicans have learned a lesson about putting lilly-white church-going homophobes at the head of their party. Or perhaps not.
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces his resignation days after the Republican party's sound thrashing on election day. Not many people in America are sad to see the arrogant fucker go. And people in Iraq rejoice in the streets. Nice to be loved, ain't it Donny?
- Number of U.S. Soldiers killed in Iraq in 2006 (so far): 772.
- President George Bush continues to suffer near-record-low approval ratings, and is declared in a Washington Post editorial to be the worst president ever.
