29 search results for "The Eunuch Caucus"

The return of the Eunuch Caucus

by digby

And no I’m not talking about the Democrats. I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

Like most political observers, I made a lot of wrong assumptions during the last campaign. While I always took Trump seriously and knew he could win, I was certainly convinced by the end of the campaign that Clinton had eked out a victory. But if I made one consistent error from the very beginning it was in thinking that members of the conservative movement actually had a core ideology, and that leaders of that faction would have too much pride to capitulate to an apostate like Donald Trump. At the very least I expected that a few of them would assume that a President Trump would fail spectacularly, and would cynically see a political opportunity in being one who saw it coming and stood tall.

There was a time when that assumption made a lot of sense. During the GOP primaries, when Trump was taking a meat ax to every one of his competitors, playing as dirty as anyone has ever played, it looked like a good bet that some of those people would find it hard to forgive him. Trump didn’t just blaspheme against the Bible, he went even further and violated Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment –” thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican” — with relish.

He didn’t just speak ill of them. He went after them like a 12-year-old bully in the lunchroom. Of Carly Fiorina he said “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” He laughed at Chris Christie saying he “acted like a little child” when President Obama came to help with Hurricane Sandy. He called Marco Rubio “little Marco” and Jeb Bush “low-energy.” He claimed that Ben Carson had a pathological temper and compared him to child molesters. He called Rand Paul ugly and said that he didn’t get his father’s appealing genes. At one of his rallies he claimed Lindsey Graham was “one of the dumbest human beings I have ever seen” and sent a tweet demanding that Graham “respect” him. He said Rick Perry should have to take an IQ test before being allowed into the debates. He said the way John Kasich eats is “disgusting,” and wondered whether people wanted that in a president.

And then there was Ted Cruz, the man who kept Trump close to him throughout the early primaries, under the assumption that when Trump flamed out he would inherit his voters. It didn’t work out that way and when it came down to the two of them, Trump turned on him so hard it left him sputtering. He called him “Lyin’ Ted” and tweeted out an insulting image of Cruz’s wife, comparing her unfavorably to his own wife, Melania the former model. Trump even accused Cruz’s beloved father, a Cuban immigrant, of being involved in the Kennedy assassination.

These are just a few examples of the puerile, crude and vicious personal attacks deployed by Donald Trump against his Republican rivals. Indeed, he rarely engaged with them on policy at all. He dispatched his rivals with insults and taunts on a level never before seen in a presidential campaign. And with rare exceptions they rarely descended to his levels, despite surveys which indicated that attacking him on his personal character was the most effective.

Still, one would have thought that between his rude personal insults and his conservative apostasy on issues like Social Security and foreign policy, it would have been difficult for these GOP officials to forgive and forget, much less jump on board the Trump train. After all, for years they have made a fetish out of being men and women of “principle” who simply could not compromise their deeply held beliefs even if it brought the country to its knees. But lo and behold, they have suddenly found their inner pragmatists.

Marco Rubio, safely ensconced back in his Senate seat, has made his peace with his former tormentor. So has Jeb Bush, who recently penned an op-ed backing Trump’s controversial choice for the EPA. Poor Chris Christie prostrated himself before Trump for months only to be ignominiously fired from his job as head of the transition. Nonetheless, he is reportedly waiting by the phone just in case Trump’s inner circle fails him.

And others who either distanced themselves from the Donald’s crudest behaviors during the campaign or even outright condemned him are now groveling before him. Paul Ryan slickly tried to have it both ways and now the two are BFFs, appearing together before audiences where Trump makes it clear that he expects Ryan to toe the line and Ryan, the leader of one house of Congress in an equal branch of government, gamely grins and goes along. Poor old Mitt Romney tried to patch things up by agreeing to a humiliating public ritual in which Trump pretended to consider him for secretary of state, only to reject him after he’d issued a laudatory statement.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been insinuating himself into the inner circle for some time and is usually quite careful about flattering the boss. But he made a mistake the other day by saying that Trump told him “drain the swamp” was just a “cute” campaign slogan and was forced to publicly admit that he “made a big boo-boo.”

I goofed. Draining the swamp is in, @realDonaldTrump is going to do it, and the alligators should be worried. #DTS https://t.co/nCHs61gpvepic.twitter.com/OCO7eaSKvk

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) December 22, 2016

But the saddest of all the Republican supplicants is Cruz, the man who actually took a brave stand before the whole country when he appeared at the Republican National Convention and refused to endorse the nominee. That took guts and many of us thought it showed that Cruz either had more integrity than we thought or that he had wisely surmised that Trump was going to destroy the party and he would be there to revive it as the one true conservative.

But Cruz bailed along with the rest of them. He eventually endorsed Trump and is back to trolling as only he can. The man who nearly single-handedly shut down the government is warning that Democrats will become “obstructionists at a level we’ve never seen” because they’ve been “radicalized.” He is positioning himself as Trump’s Senate defender, the man who will fight the crazy lefties on his behalf. If he plays his cards right, the talk is that he might even get the nod for a Supreme Court appointment, which would be a smart move. He’d be a shoo-in since all his Senate colleagues would do anything to get rid of him.

Whatever happens, all of these once promising GOP luminaries and elder statesmen have made it clear. Trump can say and do anything and they’ll tug their forelocks and say, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?” It’s his Republican Party now and they just live in it.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

.

by digby

I’m just going to leave this here:

Privately, House Republicans complain that Trump’s infrastructure plan reeks of Obama’s stimulus package (though some argue that Trump, unlike Obama, is likely to rely on public-private partnerships, not just federal dollars, and is likely to be paid for). . . . 

Many are afraid to publicly oppose Trump because of his fondness for retribution and use of Twitter to publicly shame his critics. So now, they’re left crossing their fingers that his rhetoric doesn’t translate into actual policy proposals next year.

I used to call the congressional Republicans the Eunuch Caucus during the Bush years. Looks like they’re reverting to type.

.

Remember the Eunuch Caucus?

by digby

They’re still kicking. After promising all day to produce enough Republicans to shut down this farce and pass a clean CR without all the Obamacare bullshit, Peter King made a fool of himself.

Amazing to me how many House Rs sound like Dent and King behind scenes, yet when rule vote rally builds, they get cold feet and duck away
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) September 30, 2013

It’s an old story. Republicans are rarely (ever?) profiles in courage:

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Ongoing Adventures Of The Eunuch Caucus

by digby

Greg Sargent calls them WINO’s. Harold Meyerson dubs them Spineless Sages. I’m fond of my own moniker from back in 2006, the Eunuch Caucus. They all add up to the same thing — congressional GOP jellyfish who wring their hands and rend their garments about the war and other failures of the Bush administration and yet can never seem to actually vote against anything the administration wants or for anything they don’t. The worst cases, like McCain, Graham and Warner make a big show of being “elder statesmen” or “mavericks” and then turn around and engineer legislative atrocities like the Military Commissions Act.

This is one reason why I really hate calling the Democrats spineless. It’s true that they sometimes are, but compared to their single cell invertebrate comrades on the other side they are super-heroes. The Republicans laid down for Dick Cheney’s Unitary executive like a bunch of cheap hookers during fleet week with nary a thought for the constitution or even their own prerogatives. As I wrote back in ’06:

I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans’ abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles (“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse”) now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush’s political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.

I’ve watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminineces Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.

And it continues to this day, even as their great leader has nearly destroyed their party and ruined the country.

Never make a bet that Republicans will do the right thing. You can’t even count on them to act in their own self-interest — witness their just tanking the immigration bill that will probably sink their chances of a real majority for many years to come. Their only purpose in government is to steal from the taxpayers, help their rich friends, cover up their leaders’ crimes and destroy Democrats. That’s it. That’s all they do. 

Now even Karl Rove is rendered impotent by the Frankenstein monster he created. The mere threat of a Tea Party challenge (funded by the Kochs) has the little beggars cowering in their little boots. It’s always something with them that keeps them from standing up to absurdity, wherever it’s coming from. Peter King could only muster himself and Charlie Dent and four fringe dwellers upset that it didn’t go far enough.

Meanwhile, lest Democrats get it in their head that a clean vote will be Big Victory and we can all start dancing around like a bunch of drunk kids on prom night like we always do when the wingnuts pull one over:

That’s a real winner isn’t it? But hey, if we’re lucky we’ll get this “clear CR” and then the White House can start negotiating on the debt ceiling and we can cut all the “entitlements” too.

.

*This post will stay at the top of the page today. Please scroll down for newer material.

Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: The Eunuch Caucus

by digby

Merry Christmas Eve everyone. Thank you so much for your support for this year’s holiday fundraiser. If you’re a last minute Christmas shopper, this one’s easy:

A few years back I wrote the following post on the opening day of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing’s on the FISA controversy. People found it amusing because they assumed at first glance at the title that I was speaking of the Democrats. We were all feeling terrible frustration about the first year of President Bush’s second term and the Democrats’ ongoing inability to do anything to stop it.  My point of view was that it wasn’t the Democrats who were weak, it was the Republican congress which bent over backwards to accommodate the president’s wishes, despite the fact that his agenda wasn’t exactly good for them or the institution — or the country.

Considering what’s happening now, I thought it was an interesting blast from the past:

Monday, February 06, 2006

The Eunuch Caucus

by digby 

I’ve been digesting this morning’s hearings and I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans’ abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles (“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse”) now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush’s political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.  

I’ve watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.  

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey Eminences Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.  

Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave. 

Update: Oh, and don’t get excited about Huckleberry Graham’s “tough” questions. This is his schtick. Going all the way back to the impeachment hearings, he has done this. He hems and haws in his cornpone way how he’s “troubled” by one thing or another until he finally “decides” after much “deliberation” that the Republican line is correct after all and he has no choice but to endorse it. 

They just love the taste of his boots.

by digby

There was a time when you would expect Senators to be less stupidly partisan than your average congressman like, say, Louis Gohmert.
No more:

These aren’t hearings, they’re interviews, and they’re always done this way. Also, 48 Republicans are allowed to participate and some chose not to. These rules were set by your buddy, Boehner.
Ok, Good talk 👍🏼 https://t.co/Rp6Xmj1Ci1— Brian Ray (@brianrayguitar) October 26, 2019

What if, just what if, the Obama administration, including the leadership of the Justice Department and FBI unlawfully coordinated with the DNC and the Clinton campaign to “go after” an opposing presidential campaign? No problemo?— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) October 25, 2019

John Kennedy is allegedly a highly accomplished academic who went to Oxford. His cornpone act is just that. But he is clearly also a dishonest hack. Good to know.

And Cornyn was on the Senate Sect Committee on Intelligence that just released a voluminous report elaborating in detail on the Russian interference in the election. He signed it personally as did every Republican on the committee.

So he’s just giving Trump a nice clurpy bootlick with this tweet.

I used to call the Republican congress during the Bush administration “the Eunuch Caucus” (which I now understand is an insensitive term that I wouldn’t use today.) I only bring it up because it’s important to remember that modern Republicans are always suck-ups to their presidents in a way that is almost sickening to watch. There is nothing unique about them doing it now except for the fact that Trump has abandoned virtually every tenet of conservative ideology in favor of a pure cult of personality and it has changed nothing.

They just love the taste of their Dear Leader’s boots, no matter who it is.

Trump says it’s impossible for him to lose

by digby

I’m sure everyone remembers this little bit of snotty, in-your-face, 6th-grade brazenness:

With similar narcissistic defiance, Trump now says that if the Republicans lose next month, it’s not his fault. But he takes full credit if he wins.

Trump said he would not bear any personal responsibility for a poor showing from Republicans in the 2018 midterms, he said in a rare interview with the Associated Press this week.

“The midterms are very tough for anybody the opposite of president, for whatever reason, nobody has been able to say,” Trump said.

[…]

Republicans are starting from a huge advantage. The congressional map this year favors Republicans — particularly in the Senate, where Democrats are defending 10 seats in states Trump won. But even in the House, Republicans’ landslide wins in the 2010 midterm let the party redraw the lines for congressional districts, giving them an advantage.

The generic ballot shows Democrats with an average 7 point lead, where voters are asked whether they prefer a Democrat or a Republican, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. But Democrats will need to do at least that well to have any hope of retaking the house thanks to gerrymandering.

Despite all that, Trump is making things very difficult for Republicans, and there are many signs that this will be a wave election for Democrats. Trump doesn’t seem to recognize this reality. Instead, he is already praising himself for his electoral successes.

“I think I’m helping people,” Trump said. “Look, I’m 48 and one in the primaries, and actually it’s much higher than that because I endorsed a lot of people that were successful that people don’t even talk about. But many of those 48, as you know, were people that had no chance, in some cases.”

Trump talks about one big disadvantage: He’s not on the ballot, he said.

In a particularly telling musing from the president, he said some “people” have been telling him they could never vote in an election without Trump on the ballot.

“I’m not running,” Trump said. “I mean, there are many people that have said to me, ‘Sir, I will never ever … I will never ever go and vote in the midterms because you’re not running and I don’t think you like Congress.’”

You’d think that the Republican candidates would be a little bit miffed at this but they appear on stage with him regularly and lick his boots like he’s some kind of demi-god. The entire party is banking on Trump’s allegedly massive popularity to keep them in power.

Or, it’s just that he has that boot on their neck, promising to treat them like garbage the way he treats Flake, Corker, McCain and they are simply cowards who would rather bow down than take a chance on losing their seats?

This is not a new phenomenon. People love to talk about the spineless Dems and how useless they are, but they are nothing compared to the groveling sycophants of the GOP. I used to write about this all the time during the Bush years. I called them the Eunuch Caucus which is an insensitive, gendered term, which I regret. So I will now refer to them as Tiny’s Obedient Servants.

.

The Overseer

by digby

The new congressional overseer was all over the TV this morning, with a message for the President:

Issa, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggested the administration needs to move faster. [on Wikileaks]

The California Republican said Sunday that if President Obama is not treating the unauthorized disclosure as terrorism, then Holder needs to go after the leak as a criminal matter. “Otherwise the world is laughing at this paper tiger we’ve become,” he said.

Now that’s funny. If anyone is laughing at America it’s because it elects clowns like Issa to positions of great power:

Issa also criticized Holder for not doing more to investigate ACORN’s use of federal funding and punish members of the New Black Panther Party who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008, one wielding a nightstick.

The latter case drew the attention of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which voted last month to approve a report criticizing the Justice Department for its handling of the matter. A voter intimidation case was dropped in 2009 against all but one of the defendants. The Justice Department has denied wrongdoing, saying the charges were dropped because the facts in the case did not support intimidation claims.

George Will later excitedly reported on This Week that Issa was going to hold 560 hearings:

This is because Republicans believe that such is the contempt for the electorate after the election that just passed as demonstrated in the lame duck session, that the Obama administration will try and do everything it can by regulation rather than legislation. You mentioned the Net Neutrality, the taking of more public lands into new classification by the Interior Department the EPA proceeding with carbon limits. All of these are challenging congress on the question of “who rules?”

Now that’s really funny. Everyone told me that the lame duck session was a model of bipartisan compromise and here I find out that Republicans view it as a result of contempt for the electorate and are going to do everything they can to impede the president on anything he tries to do going forward. Who could have predicted?

For some reason Will’s words reminded me of this from 2006:

The Eunuch Caucus

by digby

I’ve been digesting this morning’s hearings and I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans’ abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles (“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse”) now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush’s political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.

I’ve watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminineces Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.

They were very clear about “who rules” back then — and it wasn’t them.

FYI: Will also said that the message of the election most definitely wasn’t bipartisanship. It was to stop Obama. I’m fairly sure that’s what most Republicans think. The president thinks it was “work together to get things done.” The only way that works out is if Obama agrees to pass the GOP agenda. On the other hand, even that won’t be good enough for the Republicans, will it?

.

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.

.

Boxed In?

by digby

BLITZER: On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, there’s growing frustration among Democrats finding themselves boxed in when it comes to the war in Iraq and unable to change U.S. policy despite their majority in the House and Senate.

Let’s go to our Congressional correspondent, Dana Bash.

She’s watching all of this for us — how frustrated, Dana, are the Democrats?

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very, Wolf.

The frustration among the Democrats really is palpable. In fact, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that he tried so hard to find Republican votes on Iraq, he even called GOP Senator Larry Craig. And Democrats are also discouraged because their like-minded anti-war group knocked them right off message. [what message was that? — ed]

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

BASH (voice-over): On the Senate floor, the war debate turned from Iraq policy to raw politics.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MINORITY LEADER: General Petraeus or MoveOn.org — which one are we going to believe?

BASH: Republicans forced through a measure condemning this controversial ad — “General Betray Us” — from the anti-war group MoveOn.org. Democrats accused Republicans of hypocrisy and trying to change the subject.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CA), FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: We’re going to be pretty busy in the United States Senate if we turn into the ad police.

BASH: But Democrats privately admit the ad hurt them and may have contributed to the quandary they still find themselves in. After nine months in power, Democrats still cannot find enough Republicans to change Iraq strategy.

SEN. GORDON SMITH (R), OREGON: The counter-productiveness of MoveOn.org had the effect of freezing all of my colleagues.

Imagine that. One ad in the NY Times and these Republicans decided that they couldn’t vote to end the war. I’d say that’s quite a statement about their morals and principles.

As Yglesias points out here, the entire Village is infuriated at MoveOn, beside themselves at how this group of lazy, stupid, amateur interlopers ruined everything. You see, if MoveOn hadn’t run that ad at least a dozen Republicans would have been able to vote against the war and Johnny would be marching home again, right now! Except, of course, that’s nonsense.

The Eunuch caucus never planned to vote with the Democrats and the Democrats know it. Those Republicans who have the slightest tinge of integrity are all leaving politics. (And there aren’t that many.)

There is a much grander strategy at work, with MoveOn being the Michael Moore sideshow of the moment for both sides to kick around like a beach ball in the grandstands:

BASH: Republican Gordon Smith supports the Democrats’ troop withdrawal deadline, but he is lashing out at Democratic leaders for ending negotiations with Republicans looking for common ground on Iraq.

SMITH: I knew of a lot of senators whose said are you going to give me something that I can vote for this time?

And I was working to that end. But that effort — the plug was pulled on that by the Democratic Senate leadership.

BASH: But the Senate Democratic leader insists he could not convince Republicans to support Democrats’ withdrawal time line and says he won’t compromise just for compromise sake.

“Our principle is that we need to change the course the war in Iraq, not to have an amendment that we say will pass,” said Senator Harry Reid.

Here’s the dirt in simple language: The Democrats know that Ze Party will never let these vulnerable senators off the reservation. They will not vote for anything that will actually end the war, or even create the slightest glimpse of daylight between them and Bush. Rove’s minion, Ari Fleischer has been very clear about what is expected: they must stick with Bush or suffer the consequences. They are committed whether they like it or not. They may say they want a “compromise” but I would bet you a hundred bucks that there is no such deal that could ever get their votes. (Look at what happened with the vaunted elder statesman, John Warner, on the Webb Amendment — and he isn’t even running again.)

Reid and the leadership know this, too. And, frankly, they are more than happy to let the Republicans cling to their loathesome 29% president as they all go over the cliff together. Sadly, they think they are helping them by fanning the flames of this phony MoveOn puppet show so that the wavering wingnuts will definitely cling to the codpiece. It’s a very, very cynical strategy.

That’s why they’re talking about a possible 60 votes next year. They figure these Republicans are tying themselves so closely to Bush they will not have time to untangle the knots before the election.

But, let’s not forget in all this cynical strategery (aside from the inconvenient fact that real people are dying) the Democrats still need to convince the American people that they can be trusted with the reins of power. Pretending to be weak and powerless — or helping the Republicans smear their own allies — doesn’t exactly get them there. As Robert Borosage wrote today:

We’ve seen this before. This is a patented right-wing ploy. They grab on to a random event, inflate it into a national scandal, intimidate the media, and chuckle as Democrats fall for it. The Republican attack squad in 2004 turned a butchered joke by Sen. John Kerry into a measure of Democratic hatred of the military, and the entire Democratic establishment turned on Kerry. They’ve libeled Moveon for years because one of thousands of participants in a 30-second ad campaign contest submitted an entry comparing Bush to Hitler. Now, they get 22 Democrats in the Senate and the supposedly independent Republican moderates to line up and waste time passing a resolution condemning Moveon for its newspaper ad. They do this only to prove one thing – that Democrats are too spineless to stand up even for their allies. That they will cut and run at the first sign of fire.

Yes. And it’s one of the reasons why so many people viscerally loathe Democrats. They allow themselves to be mau-maued over and over and over again, and whether they do it for some purpose or just because they get out-maneuvered, it has helped create the image of cowardice that is far, far more dangerous for them than being affiliated with a an aggressive, in-your-face activist group. It plays right into the Republicans hands for the timorous Dems to scurry like scared little creatures every time a GOPer says boo. So they say “boo” a lot.

This has killed Democrats for years and, not incidentally, paved the way for this ridiculous war in the first place with the Bush administration’s non-stop assault on dissent from very beginning. It’s always something with these people:

In a press conference Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., defended fellow Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., who criticized the Bush defense budget and conduct of the war on terrorism. Asked whether he thought the success of the war had been overstated, Daschle replied:

“I don’t think the success has been overstated. But the continued success I think is still somewhat in doubt. Whether we continue to succeed depends on whether we get the right answers to the questions Senator Byrd was posing yesterday. … I will say that at this point, given the information we’ve been provided, I don’t think it would do anybody any good to second-guess what has been done to date. I think it has been successful. I’ve said that on many, many occasions. But I think the jury’s still out about future success, as I’ve said.”

He also suggested Thursday that it was necessary for the United States to find Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders for the war on terrorism to be considered a success.

Daschle’s comments are noteworthy–Democratic criticism of the conduct of the war has been extremely mild to date. But the points he made are well within the bounds of legitimate debate.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., however, fired back almost immediately by attacking Daschle’s right to criticize the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war. “How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field,” Lott stated. “He should not be trying to divide our country while we are united.” Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., called Daschle’s remarks “thoughtless and ill-timed.” Meanwhile, Rep. Thomas Davis, R-Va., head of the Republican House Campaign Committee, claimed Daschle’s “divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country.“

That fainting couch is threadbare and its springs are sprung by now. But they’re still hauling it out and the Democrats are still falling all over themselves apologizing for saying things that are perfectly right and perfectly obvious. It’s hard to believe, after all that’s happened, that they are still getting away with this crap.

I actually suspect the Dems have convinced themselves that they are being very clever by fanning the MoveOn flap and pushing the Republicans further over the cliff with Bush. But what’s really happened is that the larger narrative — the “Democrats are a bunch of lily-livered wussies” narrative — has been advanced once again.

I guess we’ll have to see if Bush’s massive unpopularity can trump the voters’ instinctive loathing of chickenshits in the next election. What an inspiring political moment this is.

And once again, the Democrats obscenely shat upon their most loyal, energetic, true believing activists, who work for very little (if anything) and devote their lives to progressive politics. Nice. (Did you notice all the Republicans dutifully burying their noses in the backsides of the NRA psychopaths today? Just a little illustration of how differently the two parties feel about their most ardent supporters.)

Charles Piece puts it best:

22 Democratic senators form[ed] a eunuch chorus — resolutely got pissed off at a newspaper ad. This last, while infinitely more trivial, will be infinitely more significant, for a number of reasons:

1) It manages to put the Democratic majority in the Senate on record as whacking around some of the party’s most dedicated activists and most enthusiastic donors.

2) It gives a win to a rodeo clown like John (Box Turtle) Cornyn.

3) It gives the elite political press another chapter in the story it’s been chewing on for the past 20 years — that the Democrats are nervous about their left-wing base, which will enable the cats ‘n kittens to ignore the fact that the Republican base, which has been driving the crazy train since the turn of the century, holds positions embraced in many cases by a whopping one-third of the population. (Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani were down in Florida this week, for pity’s sake, proudly pandering to the lunatic dead-enders in the Terri Schiavo case as though that wasn’t one of the biggest political fiascos of the past 20 years.) It prevents them from being forced to write about gutted civil liberties and exhausted soldiers, neither of which most of the elite political press give a rat’s ass about.

4) It was utterly unnecessary. First of all, it’s pointless to respond every time someone flings poo out of the conservative monkeyhouse. It’s what happens in a monkeyhouse. You duck and walk away to go watch the penguins. Secondly, it has been argued that the MoveOn ad was a “tactical” mistake. In what way? What tactical advantage did the Republicans gain from it? Every damn poll since General Petraeus set all the dogs and ponies to dancing shows that nothing he said moved the needle an inch in terms of support for the war. The country, you should pardon the expression, had MOVED ON. Certainly, Republican poo-flinging wasn’t going to change that. The country hates the war, hates this president, and isn’t particularly fond of his party. It hates the Democratic Congress because that Congress doesn’t hate the war, the president, and his party enough. The “controversy” existed only in the minds of useless political hucksters. Now, though, with the assistance of damned near half their caucus, the Democrats have managed to make a tactical blunder out of this affair a week later, cheesing off valuable friends, being laughed at by what is a despised minority party everywhere except Washington, D.C., and currying favor with a political elite that will never, EVER, give it any kind of credit for its abject self-abasement. It is an altogether remarkable feat.

What kind of strategy is that? I get forcing the Republicans to embrace Bush, but why in the world did they think they get any points for helping him destroy MoveOn — and from whom? If they’d have fought this back, or even abstained with a clever wink and a nod, they could have shown the nation (not to mention their own supporters) that they understood that the country and the Democrats are aligned on this war and that the Republicans are no longer in the drivers seat. Instead, it now looks like they’re supporting Bush and Petraeus.

(But then again, maybe they do… It surely seems true that they loathe the Democratic base as much as the Republicans do.)

Regardless of their motives, they just showed the entire country that the Republicans can still — after all that’s happened, after sliding in the polls to less than 30% approval — turn Democratic party leaders into quivering bowls of jelly by simply heading for the fainting couch for the 4,336th time.

All I can say is that this latest one has resulted in my rapidly losing interest in defending them against these same wingnuts. It’s a two way street, you know?

At the end of that segment I posted earlier, Jack Cafferty said what I think might be the perception of the average person to this ridiculous posturing and tired political theatre:

BLITZER:

Let’s go back to Jack.

He’s got The Cafferty File — Jack.

CAFFERTY: It really is pretty disgusting what goes on down there sometimes, isn’t it?

Update: Michael Kinsley has written a good piece today on the Vapor Pageant. As I wrote yesterday, everyone knows exactly what this is, Democrats, Republicans, media and the public. Nobody believes a word of it. And yet it goes on, like some sort of S&M spectacle for which the only purpose is to allow these politicians to act out their respective psychological needs to punish and be punished. It’s bizarre.

Update II: Meteor Blades asks the Dems a question.

I’m guessing the answer is “nothing.”

.

The Pied Piper of Crawford

by digby

The bizarre and dishonest National Intelligence chief, Michael McConnell, is back up on the hill pushing for a permanent expansion of the warrantless wiretapping law he browbeat the congress into passing last August. Only this time making sure that his former (and future?) employers, the telcoms, are granted immunity from any liability for illegally spying on their customers and handing the information over to the government without a warrant.

He’s very reassuring:

The National Security Agency has not conducted wiretapping without warrants on the telephones of any Americans since at least February, the nation’s top intelligence officer told Congress on Tuesday.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told the House Judiciary Committee that since he took office that month, the government has conducted electronic surveillance only after seeking court-approved warrants.

That’s nice. Why then did he and the administration feel it was necessary to ram through that bill last August? I don’t suppose the fact that he very, specifically and explicitly said “wiretapping without warrants on the telephones of any Americans” might lead one to believe that he is once again doing a little misdirection is he? After all, he is known to be an outright liar.

Is that too harsh a word? I don’t think so:

Congress agreed to give President Bush and the nation’s intelligence agencies extra authority to spy on Americans just hours before lawmakers left for a month-long recess in August. In the legislative session’s final week, news emerged of an impending plot by foreign terrorists to attack the US Capitol, and Republicans pointed to the reports as justification to expand the administration’s powers.

“That specific intelligence claim, it turned out, was bogus; the intelligence agencies knew that,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) said at a forum on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act organized by the Center for American Progress in Washington. However, lawmakers did not learn of the claim’s unreliability until “the day” they approved the FISA expansion, she said.

If they aren’t spying on Americans then they don’t need a law giving them permission to do so. It’s that simple. They should not renew that bill.

This allegedly independent Michael McConnell, who stabbed the Democrats in the back last August by reneging on the deal he’d made after the White House yanked his chain and then ran around screaming “the terrorists are coming to kill all of you in your offices RIGHT NOW if you don’t support this bill” is a bad actor. He’s a liar and a kook and the congress ought to steer clear of him. This administration has cried wolf so many times, it’s completely pointless to believe anything they say. Just follow the constitution.

For some reason, the Democrats are reportedly thinking of giving this immunity to the telcoms, which means, as Greenwald points out today, that there will no longer be any forum in which to uncover just what in the hell has been going on these last few years. That’s very depressing. (What else is new?)

Jane Harmon, to her credit, seems to have had an epiphany on these issues and is far more skeptical than she used to be. And if you don’t want to believe a hawkish Democrat, there’s always the conservative Bruce Fein who pointed out the obvious:

“Unchecked spying invariably leads to abuses in collection for political purposes, not national security purposes,” Fein said. The danger inherent in giving Bush — or any president — authority to spy on Americans without oversight is that “it will be hijacked to advance a political agenda.”

You would think that, facing a probable Democratic president, other Republicans would be worried about such things. But they aren’t. They just keep following their Dear Leader over the cliff like he’s the Pied Piper of Crawford. They don’t care about the presidential race. They don’t even seem to care about preserving themselves.

Today they inexplicably covered the president’s ass once again allowing him to avoid having to veto a piece of legislation that would allow the troops a decent interval between deployments. (I won’t even mention that also endorsed torture and indefinite imprisonment again today. They actually like that one though. They just wish they could use it on everybody.) What’s odd is that he’s not running again and they are. And they know they have a big problem.

Joan Walsh writes:

Rep. Jack Murtha says Republicans are telling him they won’t buck the party’s rabid pro-war base until after primary season. Does that sound familiar? Back in the spring, GOP leaders were telling reporters they’d give the president until this September — the traditional start of the political season — to turn things around in Iraq, and if he hadn’t, they’d demand a course change. September came, and that didn’t happen, so why should we expect things to be any different after the primaries? As Chris Matthews noted on “Hardball” today — I was on the Hardball Panel — with 60 to 90 Americans dying every month, the cynical Republican inaction guarantees another 600 to 900 dead American soldiers, at minimum, before GOP leaders have the guts to stand up to their isolated, pro-war base next summer. And I have no reason to believe they’ll grow a spine by then.

No they won’t. They are still so far under Bush’s thumb that they are willing to lose their seats rather than buck this loathed leader and the ever shrinking neanderthal base that still loves his misbegotten war.

But then, that’s an old story, isn’t it? Atrios wrote today that someone had once said that depending on moderate Republicans to do the right thing is a fools errand. I couldn’t agree more. There have been many examples of GOP congressional perfidiousness over the past few years, but none so disgusting as the Republican caucus so afraid of an historically unpopular president that they will willingly let people die and throw away their own political careers to spare him having to veto popular legislation. It’s almost inhuman to see them so afraid to stand up for themselves and their constituents.

A while back when I was watching the first warrantless wiretap hearings, I wrote a post about these people that I was reminded of today when they sold their beloved military down the river one more time so that George W. Bush could save face. Yes, they really are even worse even than the Democrats who aren’t exactly setting the world on fire with their daring-do. They are the biggest bunch of cowardly whiners this country has ever produced:

The Eunuch Caucus

I’ve been digesting this morning’s hearings and I am dumbstruck by the totality of the Republicans’ abdication of their duty. These men who spent years running on Madisonian principles (“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse”) now argue without any sense of irony or embarrassment that Republican Senators are nothing more than eunuchs in President Bush’s political harem. They have voluntarily rendered the congress of the United States impotent to his power.

I’ve watched this invertebrate GOP caucus since 2000 as they submitted themselves to this lawless administration again and again, shredding every bit of self respect, every figment of institutional pride, every duty to the constitution. The look in their eyes, which is somehow interpreted as strong and defiant by the equally servile media, is actually a window to empty little men who have given up their manhood to oblige their master. The only reward they seek is unfettered access to the taxpayers money for their own use.

We are looking at fifty-five of the most powerful people in the country. Collectively the Republican Senators represent almost a hundred and fifty million citizens. And they have allowed a callow little boy like George W. Bush along with his grey eminences Karl Rove and Dick Cheney to strip them of their consciences, their principles and their constitutional obligations. What sad little creatures, cowardly and subservient, unctuously bowing and scraping before Karl Rove the man who holds their (purse) strings and dances them around the halls of congress singing tributes to their own irrelevance at the top of their lungs. How pathetic they are.

Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.

Oh, and don’t get excited about Huckleberry Graham’s “tough” questions. This is his schtick. Going all the way back to the impeachment hearings, he has done this. He hems and haws in his cornpone way how he’s “troubled” by one thing or another until he finally “decides” after much “deliberation” that the Republican line is correct after all and he has no choice but to endorse it

.

And now these mindless lemmings are willing to follow this 29% president over a cliff.

Why? What makes Republicans so servile that they can’t even exercise the tiniest bit of personal conscience or even self-preservation?

And what in God’s name makes them think this country will put up with these silly, time wasting antics when people are dying?

Update: Sidney Blumenthal discusses the new Draper book on Bush that speaks to why these Republican sheep are so eager to cover for him even at this late date:

Bush’s deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, “You looked mad,” he shot back, “I wasn’t mad! Tell them that!”

At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: “KARL!” Rove, according to Draper, was Bush’s “favorite punching bag,” and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. “Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president’s support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a ‘Big New Thing.'” Other aides played on Bush’s self-conception as “the Decider.” “To sell him on an idea,” writes Draper, “aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision.”

But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: “Thank you for the privilege of serving today.”

Dear God.

.