MICHAEL WALSH: The Playbook, the Press, the Plan, and the Patsies. “This week will be crucial to putting the Democrats back in their boxes. Let’s see if the GOP will take it.”

Our two-party system can only work if both sides are of good will, in common agreement on fundamental principles, and profess fidelity to the country as founded. In their lust for power and the “fundamental transformation” of the Republic into a leftist tyranny, the Democrats can no longer function within such a framework—just as they couldn’t in 1860-61, declaring war first on Lincoln and then on the United States of America itself. It took four long and bloody years for Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman to show them the error of their ways. And even then, a Democrat murdered the president.

Today’s Republicans are, in the main, made of lesser stuff. More patsies than potentates, they roll over at the first hint of trouble; indeed, the late John McCain (R-Ariz.) made a fetish of what he called “comity,” which in his definition meant surrendering to the Left and poking his finger in the eye of the Right. His love children, Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), would dearly love to inherit his mantle, but alas for the both of them, they’re self-retired short timers, and nobody cares what they think.

But Democrat memories, while long—they stretch back to Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s vice president, who shot Alexander Hamilton and founded Tammany Hall—are selective. They, like Iago, see themselves as victims, frustrated by the evil Federalists/Whigs/Republicans/conservatives from realizing their political program: free pie (in the sky) for all, but all power to themselves. It never occurs to them that, like Michael Douglas in “Falling Down,” they’re the bad guys.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.