Harnessing The Power Of The Founding Fathers Spinning In The Graves

It's a perpetual motion turbine, really.  You can actually hear Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin pulling some serious RPMs over the latest cynical GOP stunt to appease the Teabaggers.  (John Adams and James Madison, being smaller men, rotate even faster).

Conservatives have published their "Mount Vernon Statement" -- which is modeled after the Sharon Statement of 1960 -- states that America's "founding ideas" are "under sustained attack" and have "been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics."

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The statement has been signed by a number of high-profile conservatives, including former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist (who wrote this piece for Fox News about why he signed the statement).

Norquist wrote that he and other conservative activists will "cheefully sign" the statement today "on land that was once part of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate."

Tony Perkins and Grover Norquist are giving the GOP marching orders. That'll turn out well.  My favorite part of the Mount Vernon Koolaid Statement:

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government's powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

If you've been paying any attention to the last decade, you know how hard I'm laughing right now to see Republicans talk about any of that without somebody in the back of the press gaggle yelling "Dick Cheney, assholes!"

[UPDATE 1:19 PM]  GOP Sen. Jim DeMint says anyone who doesn't support Mount Vernon "should be replaced."

Could you imagine the outcry if Democrats created something like this, and a Dem senator said anyone in Washington who didn't support it should be replaced?  it would be called a Socialist manifesto within seconds, and the calls on FOX and the WSJ for that senator's resignation would begin within hours.