If the Big Lie has a cojoined twin - a brother without which it cannot survive - it is the Big Deny. It seems like a broad spectrum of establishment folks are so innately used to things working in a particular way that they just can't accomodate themselves to the fact that Bush & Cheney operate in a completely different universe.

In DC, from time immemorial, folks have always known that the other side will play tough, perhaps even a little rough. But hey, at the end of the day, almost everyone is an honest broker, and if you compromise a bit, they'll compromise a bit and we'll get something done. After all, "we all want the same things," the received wisdom intones, "we just disagree on how to get there." Since we can't be too intransigent or too extremist because we'll pay for it at the polls, those disagreements have a way of being smoothed out.

To a certain type of person, this is an appealing vision, one which comes complete with its own siren song.

But from the moment Bush appeared on the scene, it was clear that, to the extent this worldview ever reflected reality, it was true no longer. Bush will lie totally and always; insist that maximalist Republican positions win out every time; disregard the law whenever desired; never compromise and never deal fairly. The new boss, in other words, is nothing, nothing like the old boss.

And yet, despite years and years and years and masses of evidence, most DC Democrats and most of the tradmed refuse to understand this. But I'll go one further - I think there are Beltway Dems who refuse to accept this. They are so accustomed to their Broderist vision of how things work that they are simply in denial that things just don't work that way any longer.

We accuse the tradmed of having a short-term memory, but it's almost deliberate with some establishment Democrats. They simply have to forget the past in order to avoid the brutal cognitive dissonance that awaits them should they ever confront the truth. Bush and his appointees have broken every single promise they've made - what normal, reasonable person would ever, ever accept a single promise from them again?

Yet here we are, with Michael Mukasey promising to enforce a hypothetical ban on waterboarding (a ban Bush wouldn't even sign into law - or maybe he would, because he probably wouldn't care either way). And Chuck Schumer wants to take this guy at his word - a guy who wrote in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages that he doesn't think we should have trials for accused terrorists. This from a former federal judge!

This is the only conclusion that makes any sense to me. How else could an otherwise smart, canny - and, let's not kid ourselves, rough-and-tumble - politician like Chuck Schumer let himself get had like this? He's getting had because he has to. Otherwise, the edifice he has spent decades living in would crumble.

Of course, there are still plenty of clear-eyed people out there. Afer all, smashing down the walls of that castle in the sky is exactly what we here in the netroots have always been about. Stay vigilant.