Set Scooter Free Or The Country Gets It

by digby

Marcy finds a nice catch in the Libby letters today. Well, it’s not nice, exactly. It reads more like something Tony Soprano might have written and I’m not exaggerating:

I wanted to call attention to the Michael Horowitz letter in support of leniency for Libby. Horowitz issues a thinly-veiled threat to retaliate if Libby has to do jail time.

Disposition of the Libby case will have much to do with whether the country will further and gravely descend into “us v. them” feelings of bitterness and contention. As the Bork case led inexorably to the Clinton impeachment, so can the case before the Court profoundly criminalize and poison the country’s political process with calls for retribution on the part of many who will never believe–never–that Scooter merits criminal punishment or, God forbid, incarceration. It is an irony that Scooter would be the last to support such an embittering development, but the esteem in which he is held is such that any but the most Solomon-like disposition of his case could easily ensure this occurrence.

Gosh, I’m not sure who these people are who will never — never — accept that Scooter merits punishment and so will profoundly criminalize and poison the country’s political process with calls for retribution, but they sound like a bunch of lawless thugs. In fact, they sound like terrorists, what with their apparent willingness to take down innocent people in senseless acts of revenge and all. But no, apparently these aren’t thugs and terrorists — these are Republican politicians. Go figure.

This is one of my favorite right wing gambits: threatening to pitch such a sustained and over-the-top partisan tantrum that the whole country will regret not letting them have their way. For instance, this was the subtext of the Florida recount.

“You thought impeachment was bad… if Al Gore moves into Bush’s house we will make his life — and the country’s — so miserable they will rue the day he took the oath of office. We will never — never — accept that Gore won this election. Make it easy on yourselves, people. Do the smart thing. Let the Republicans have their way.”

(Here’s how it’s done, by the way.)

The media, of course, fed into this with all their hand wringing about how we needed to hurry up and decide because “god knows what will happen if we don’t.” Of course, we knew exactly what would happen: the right wing would have an epic fit that made the Clinton years look like utopia. I think for a lot of people it was a sense of relief that the Republicans would finally be appeased, (which is, of course, impossible.) Certainly, the punditocrisy sold that idea but instead of presenting it honestly, they wrote columns about how Bush was the right choice because he was a uniter not a divider, forgetting to mention that he and his cronies were the ones who created the divisions in the first place and threatened to deepen them if they didn’t get their way.

You can see why Democrats are gunshy with these people. They are thugs, as Horowitz’s letter, in surprisingly crude fashion, illustrates. (No wonder they didn’t want them made public.) They are saying straight-up that if Scooter has to go to jail they are going to the mattresses. The judge seemed to be unmoved — we’ll see what happens next.

But if the Republicans persist with this “thing of theirs” the Democrats should make them an offer they can’t refuse. I have a sneaking suspicion they are less Tony Soprano than cranky three year olds threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue at this point. The Mommy Party should give them a nice long time out.

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