Well... apparently she was one of the prime prototypes for today's Roadblock Republicans, anyway. And nobody on the obstructionist-elephant end of things typifies Mme. Marie's cold, hard, uncaring arrogance than the Bush Brigade's official mouthpiece, Dana Perino (aka "Spokesperson Barbie" around the water cooler in these parts.)

It was bad enough when Dick Cheney displayed the true depths of his warm, fuzzy, totally-huggable self last week in an interview with Good Morning America's Martha Raddatz in which he basically just shrugged and blew off the American people as irrelevant, annoying little people who didn't know enough to bend over and kiss the rings of their mighty White House sovereigns on command.

Here's Cheney's take on the disastrous debacle in Iraq that he helped create out of whole cloth over five years ago, as excerpted from this transcript of the interview in question:

RADDATZ: So there are no consequences, it just goes on until -- as long as it lasts? You let the Iraqis go and go and go, even --

CHENEY: What if we quit two years ago or three years ago?

RADDATZ: So it could be 10 years?

CHENEY: I don't know how long it's going to take. I do know we have to get it done. And if it takes a long time, that doesn't make it any less worthwhile. ... It's hard to go into a country that has never experienced democracy and expect to be able to flip a switch and have it turn overnight. But it is turning. They do have a democracy today. They have basic --

RADDATZ: Two-thirds of Americans say it was not worth fighting.

CHENEY: They ought to go spend time, like you and I have, Martha. You know what's been happening in Iraq. You've been there as much as anybody. There has, in fact, been fundamental change and transformation, and improvement for the better. I think even you would admit that.

RADDATZ: Let me go back to the Americans. Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ: So -- you don't care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there. ... You can't, say -- get up some morning and say, gee, the polls are critical of what we're doing, and quit. It doesn't work that way.

RADDATZ: Are you certain of victory?

CHENEY: I am.

Wowzers. What a breathtaking display of advanced imperial hubris on the vice-president's part. The American people don't like our unjustified, unethical, unwinnable war in Iraq, you say? So? Who cares what they think? Too bad for them, we're the ones in charge here and we're gonna stay the course over there for as long as we bloody feel like it. L'état est nous, you pesky peons, and don't you ever forget it!

Still, it is Dick "Ready, Fire, Aim!" Cheney that we're talking about here, after all. So his grouchy, growly, "I am your father, Luke" is so familiar to us all by now that we pretty much expect nothing less, and certainly nothing more, from the likes of him anyhow.

But it's not just Darth Veep. He's not a rogue representative of the whole Roadblock Republican mindset, merely one of its more publicly obstreperous proponents. It's a total top-down type of arrogance that seeps through at every level of this administration and its cronies in Congress.

Which is why, when Spokesperson Barbie was being braced about Cheney's Sun King routine by the legendary Helen Thomas at her White House press briefing the next morning, she opted to skip a couple of thrones farther down the extinct French royal line so she could play her very own "Let them eat cake" riff about it by way of a reply:

PERINO: It's one of those days I have nothing to start with.

Q: So? (Laughter.)

PERINO: It's one of those days, I had a feeling.

[ ... ]

Q: ... So is the Vice President saying it really doesn't matter what the American public thinks about the war?

PERINO: No, I don't think that's what he's saying, and obviously I haven't spoken to the Vice President since he's traveling today and was in Kabul visiting with President Karzai a the request of the President. But what he went on to say is that President should not make decisions based on polls. And we fully recognize that people across America are unhappy with the war; possibly they didn't agree with the decision in the first place. They might have been unhappy with the conduct of the war. They might have disagreed with the President's decision to send in more troops, which was a very unpopular decision across the board.

But what the President has said is that while people might not like the decisions that he makes, he has to do what he thinks is right for the country, and he cannot try to chase an opinion poll and try to make things better that way. He has to act on what he thinks is right, and that's what he's done.

[ ... ]

Q: The American people are being asked to die and pay for this, and you're saying they have no say in this war?

PERINO: I didn't say that, Helen. But, Helen, this President was elected...

Q: Well, what it amounts to is you saying we have no input at all.

PERINO: You had input. The American people have input every four years, and that's the way our system is set up.

Q: Every four years. ... Supposed to be a government for the people, of the people, by the people?

Well, apparently when it comes to the Bush administration and its loyal lock-step GOP minions in the House and Senate it might supposed to be that kind of government, but except for what it actually ain't as far as they're concerned.

Judging by the above quotes, it would seem that according to the RR's, the only time the American people get to have any kind of input into what our country does and how it's being done is once every four years, and even then there's no guarantee that the people they pick out of a very stacked deck are going to keep any of the promises they made to get elected anyway.

Arrogance. Sheer, unbridled, Roadblock Republican arrogance. L'état est nous. Let them eat cake. We're the sovereigns and they're our subjects. To hell with the voters. So?

Well, fortunately for us, presidents and vice-presidents do have to run for office again every four years. Representatives have to do it every two years, which is annoying enough. Senators get to go as long as six years before having to face the voters again, plus they don't have term limits either, which makes the bad ones even more difficult to dislodge than the folks in the White House are.

Difficult, that is, but not impossible. If enough of us decide it's time to take our country back from those at the top who so obviously don't give a damn about listening to the will of the people, then we can clear the roadblocks, boot out the bad Republicans, and replace them with good Democrats and get this country moving again.

Which is kinda the whole point of you being here reading this now, yes?


That level of absolute, endemic arrogance on the part of the RR's is even more breathtaking to watch than it is to read, as this YouTube video from the fine folks at Talking Points Memo just goes to show ya...