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What with all their ideological posturing these past eight years, you’d think Republicans in the U.S. Senate would stay loyal to their party, and to their president, to the end. Uh, not so when faced with losing elections and their own grip on power, turns out.

Could it be that the GOP leadership on the Hill is loosening control over their minions, to allow those imperiled lawmakers to actually vote FOR their constituencies in a last-ditch, white knuckle attempt to fool voters into thinking that 1. Republicans have the people’s best interests at heart and 2. Aren’t soulless cash whores who vote however corporate interests tell them to?

A real test of what’s happening in Washington could come soon as lawmakers take up the oil speculation bill. (Quick aside: Isn’t it tragically comic how little discussion you’ve read in the mainstream media on oil speculation during the past five years? Any of you out there wonder why that is? Any of you wonder why Congress is poised to finally act on speculation, only after you, the people, started waking up to why gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon?)

Also, who wants to bet me that Democrats will also eventually act in this same, reckless fashion once they’ve been in power as long as the Republicans have, long after the media worship of then-President Barack Obama officially crosses over into creepy (if it hasn’t already), long after the same arrogance that afflicted Bush & Co. infects the other side of the aisle - and long after the Democrats’ ideology is shown to be just as vacuous as that of the GOP? Hmmm? Any takers?

(H/t to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the art)