More Village Follies

by digby

What can be done about Howard Fineman?

SHUSTER: Howard, it used to be that the mere mention of Vice President Cheney would be enough to quell a conservative rebellion, what‘s the story there?

FINEMAN: Well, David, as “Politico” was saying, you know, there was a revolt there today. They don‘t believe Dick Cheney anymore. He has used up a lot of credibility.

The Republicans are the ones who followed Dick Cheney over the edge of the cliff, in the view of many of them, privately, on the war in Iraq. He‘s the one who said that there was a slam dunk war to be won in Mesopotamia. And a lot of Republicans don‘t like it.

Also, the Bush-Cheney White House has been pretty cavalier in its attitude toward Congress, including, if not especially, Republicans in Congress. They basically ignored them.

And there are two other points, David. A lot of the young Republicans in Congress are populist Republicans; they‘re not Wall Street Republicans. They‘re not old-fashioned Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger politicians who care about Wall Street, number one.

And number two, they‘re all people who don‘t like the idea of big government and they‘re aware of the fact that both because of the war in Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act, and now these big bailouts, the Bush administration has presided over the biggest expansion of federal power since the new deal and these Republicans that I mentioned don‘t like it and they blame Cheney for it.

How fascinating. if this is true then they really are the Eunuch Caucus because they didn’t breath a word about it when Bush was riding high. In fact, they cheered him all the way down the line and told anyone who disagreed to STFU.

This is blatant nonsense. Fineman is helping the Republicans avoid responsibility for what they’ve done by saying that the “real Conservatives” (like John McCain, by the way) were against all those icky “liberal” Bush and Cheney initiatives which they shoved down the throats of the Democrats and told them to like it. That’s rewriting history. There haven’t been any “Rockefeller Republicans” around since 1994. And every one of these Gingrich revolutionaries have been spouting the free market catechism on a loop.

But that’s not the end of his perfidious blather:

SHUSTER: Now, as far as the Democratic side of the aisle is concerned, is this the Democrats‘ chance to veto the kind of blank check authority that they gave the Bush administration on the Iraq war, something that Congress could never dial back again. I mean, does it look as if they might have learned their lesson?

FINEMAN: Well, I think that‘s the sentiment among many of the ones that I have talked to. But I think it‘s the wrong sentiment. I mean, they can‘t be fighting the last war here. Ironically, they should have had the backbone back then to oppose the war.

Now, if they decide they‘re going to scuttle any bailout bill just to teach Bush a lesson, I think, they‘ll be making a big mistake. And I think, at the end, that‘s not what‘s going to motivate them.

I think they want to do something here, David. But, I think, they want the protections for homeowners, they want to clamping down on the CEOs of the big banks and the financial institutions. They want the oversight. They probably won‘t get the equity stake they‘re talking about, I think Paulson will draw the line there but they‘re going to insist on a lot of these things before they weight this thing on through.

So if the Dems oppose this bill is payback for Bush. In fact, the only thing they are allowed to do is agree to what Paulson has already said he would do.

This is your Village in action. The only possible outcome is for everyone to agree to what King Henry wants. But the newly minted “populist” Republicans will be able to run as principled fiscal conservatives because everyone knows they have always hated Big government and disagreed with Dick Cheney’s approach from the beginning. The Democrats, however, need to roll over or risk being seen as petty obstructionists who are willing to take down the country for simple revenge.

The villagers are already disappearing the Bush administration and laying the groundwork for a “revival” of “real” conservatism.

I’ll say it again. These people are at the center of America’s political crisis.

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