Huckleberry Outed
by digby
It looks like the cognoscenti are finally on to Huckleberry. I wonder if the administration’s caught on?
A Bipartisan Mirage — The slippery style of Lindsey Graham.
Graham embodies the crystalline hope of Obama’s new cooperative era in Washington. As a leader from the birthplace of the modern Southern wing of his party, he has dealmaking clout that the New England wing does not. Although they do it on background, White House insiders speak of him almost fondly. “Graham is a vision of the most bipartisan the GOP gets these days,” says a longtime Obama aide.
That’s the problem: if Graham is as bipartisan as it gets, the president and the Democrats are in deeper trouble than they realize. This, after all, is someone who served as a prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1998; someone who votes the GOP party line 92.4 percent of the time—exactly one tenth of a point less than Republican leader Mitch McConnell; and someone whose apostasies are often low-visibility votes for Justice Department -appointments—a great way, not coincidentally, for a member of the Judiciary Committee to acquire friends with benefits in the legal bureaucracy.
On big-ticket stuff, Graham rarely strays from his caucus. He voted against the stimulus package, wants to kill the financial-services bill—and now hopes to repeal health-care reform, his staff disclosed to me. “Lindsey is Lindsey, but we love his voting record,” says McConnell spokesman Don Stewart. Graham professes shock that his positions could come as a surprise to anyone: “I’m not a liberal Republican! I’m a conservative.”
And even if he wanted to, Graham couldn’t deliver GOP votes. He is tolerated more than admired in his own caucus. For now, the real energy is with his rejectionist brethren, led by the likes of fellow South Carolinian Jim DeMint. Graham has no room to maneuver on immigration, and only slightly more on energy.
Obama and Rahm Emanuel—another one of Graham’s phone pals—believe that the man can help them. Their colleagues aren’t so sure. “Most of the people in our caucus don’t see him as a reliable partner,” says a Democratic leadership aide. Now would be a good time for someone to tell the White House that Graham is more a mirage of bipartisanship than the fact of it—even if he has figured out how to be in two places at once.
It’s actually a bigger deal that Graham just being slippery. By fashioning their legislative policies with an eye toward getting Huckleberry’s help, they water down their opening bids on legislation and then are left with not only a failure but a weakened starting point next time the legislation comes up.
Some of us have known Graham was an unctuous phony since he and Mary Bono pretended to be sweethearts on the judiciary committee during the impeachment hearing while he questioned whether or not Monica ever reached orgasm, which would prove that Clinton committed perjury. (Seriously.) From the moment I heard him lugubriously wax on about his great personal reluctance at having to do that I knew he was one nasty piece of work. And he’s proved it over and over again. It’s only taken 12 years for Democrats to catch on to his dead-eyed, cornpone schtick, but I suppose it’s better late than never.
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