Issue #1 is Bush. Issue #2 is everything else. Until Bush no longer has a Republican majority in the House and the Senate to rubber stamp nearly everything he wants, your opinions and ideas mean squat. No. Less than squat.
Make reining in Bush *the* issue. Republicans in Congress will do whatever Bush wants, but the country is fed up with what Bush wants. They’ve seen how much damage he causes. Only Democratic majorities in Congress can prevent him from wreaking even worse havoc on the country. Bush is the issue. And hoo boy! has Bush made the your job incredibly easy:
Remember: Bush really is incompetent. And the American public sees it now.
Remember: Bush really has governed above the law. And the the American public understands that now.
Remember: Bush has bogged this nation down in an insane war. And the American public understands that now.
Remember: Bush does not have a genuine plan to deal with Iraq, nor is he capable of creating and implementing one. People are dying because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And the American public understands that now.
Remember: Bush’s supreme callousness and negligence led to the hiring of the incompetents in charge of FEMA during Katrina. And the American public knows it.
Remember: This is one helluva unpopular president. The American public has very good reasons for disliking him and his policies so intensely. They are all but begging you to stand up and refuse to go along with his incompetent, extremist, and unlawful behavior.
This is just awesome. The US found some al-Zarqawi documents that prove that we are smokin ’em outa their caves and that we’ve gottem on the run! And Bush was right all along! Yeaaaah!
A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a “huge treasure” of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The document, purporting to reflect al-Qaida policy and its cooperation with groups loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, also appear to show that the insurgency in Iraq was weakening.
The al-Qaida in Iraq document was translated and released by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaida.
Now, “some” might say since the Bush administration has been proved to be planting propaganda in both the Iraqi and US press, since we’ve “found” many spurious documents in Iraq before, and since they are lying scumbags about virtually everything including whether the sun came up this morning — that we should be skeptical of such things. I am not one of those people. Clearly, the war is won and we can bring the troops home.
I think it’s really lucky, though, that al-Zarqawi was keeping such meticulous notes and blueprints. Why do you suppose he was doing that? Was he required to send regular reports back to headquarters? A potential book deal perhaps? Maybe he was a blogger.
Anyway, note to revolutionaries, terrorists and insurgents everywhere: my mother told me many years ago, “never put on paper what the world can’t see.” You might want to think about that. Coz’ look what your sloppiness has done. Now the infidel knows all your plans and that you know they are winning. Gawd, how embarrassing! Moral is going to be shit after this.
While the coalition was continuing to suffer human losses, “time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance,” the document said.
The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military’s program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants’ financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks.
[…]
According to the summary, insurgents were being weakened by operations against them and by their failure to attract recruits. To give new impetus to the insurgency, they would have to change tactics, it added.
Can you believe it? Why George W. Bush was right on every single thing! Boy, is my face red.
There’s a lot more at the link — example after example of how the insugency is being beaten down by the superior US battle plan. There can be no more doubts. We’ve turned the corner. When the evil mastermind himself writes on his blog that he is helpless in the face of your superior superiority and that he’s just about to give up because you are so much stronger and better and gooder — well, there can be no further doubt that the US has kicked some terrorist ass but good. It’s morning in America folks. The war is won!
Cool! It looks like Ed Helms, one of the funniest guys on tv, is set to play a bumbling White House counselor with a fear of flying in a 21st century remake of the Abrahams/Zucker masterpiece, Airplane! Man I can’t wait!
But who’s that guy next to Ed? It looks like it could be Moe Howard’s grandson. Better check the cast list…
This new Lieberman poll is an earthquake. Ned Lamont could win this thing. The word is that Lieberman is actually quite serious about leaving the party, but that’s not actually correct. Connecticut Democrats seem to be leaving him.
Naturally, this is just terrible. Who has ever heard of supporting a candidate in a primary to challenge an incumbent with whom you are unhappy? Why, it’s political terrorism, I tell ya!
“I think to be terrorized through the summer by an extremely small group of the Democratic Party, much less the voting population, is total insanity for a person who is a three-term senator,” Droney said.
Looks like that extremely small group of terrorists is on its way to becoming a majority of Democrats. How very untidy. Usurping a three term Senator simply isn’t done, you see. He’s been ordained by God.
Josh Marshall put it well in this post about the campaign from last week:
But what was Lieberman’s excuse [for refusing to back protecting social security]?
We went back and forth with him. I’d talk to his staffers and folks around him and work and work and work to get a straight answer, but just had the hardest time. It was always this statement or that that seemed to support Social Security but really left the door open to some compromise on phase out when you looked at it closely. On and on and on.
And what was the point of that? Certainly it wasn’t political, at least not in the narrow sense. Lieberman didn’t have anything to worry about in Connecticut. If it was ideological, what’s that about? It’s a core Democratic issue. Not a shibboleth or a sacred cow. But a core reason why most Democrats are Democrats.
In the end it just seemed like a desire to be in the mix for some illusory compromise or grand bargain, an ingrained disinclination to take a stand, even in a case when it really mattered. There’s some whiff of indifference to the great challenges of the age, even amidst the atmospherics of concern.
This of course doesn’t even get into everything on Iraq or the pussy-footing over running the Pentagon for President Bush.
I think the most generous read on Lieberman is that he’s just out of step with the parliamentary turn of recent American politics which I myself, Mark Schmitt and many others have discussed. But I think that’s too generous. The whining in Washington that it’s somehow an affront that Lieberman’s hold on his senate is being threatened is entirely misplaced, a good example of what’s wrong with DC’s permanent class.
Exactly. The establishment would obviously like to do away with primaries. They would prefer to simply tell the plebes for whom to vote and just take their money. But, that’s not the way it’s going to work anymore. It’s not just that politics have taken a parliamentary turn, which is quite true. It goes to the heart of why so many Americans don’t trust Democrats to lead: the spineless factor. It’s why the Democratic terrorists are going to take the radical step of trying to elect someone who doesn’t publicly kiss George W. Bush on the lips every chance he gets.
You don’t have to look any further than Joe Lieberman to understand why the entire world thinks Democrats are a bunch of chickenshit losers. We’re tired of being associated with someone who can’t even stand a fair fight in the Connecticut Democratic party without whining like snivelling schoolkid and threatening to take his ball and go home. Why should anyone trust such a gutless tool with the reins of government? I know I don’t. The party is on notice that this just won’t be tolerated anymore by leading Blue State Democrats.
Here’s the plan. First, the Democratic terrorists are going to kick Lieberman’s ass. After that, they are going to kick the Republican party’s ass. And finally they will kick bin Laden’s ass. We didn’t create this hard core political environment, the Republicans did, with the help of self-serving Dems like Lieberman. Now somebody has to clean up all these messes. The crazed Democratic terrorists who are willing to cast aside all morality by ruthlessly supporting a primary challenger (who is not a travelling Deadhead, but rather a middle of the road self made millionaire) seem to be the only ones who are willing to do it.
Schumer said that the DSCC “fully supports” Sen. Joe Lieberman in his primary bid, and he refused to rule out continuing that support if Lieberman were to run as an independent.
There were degrees of independence, Schumer said. “You can run as an independent, you can run as an independent Democrat who pledges to vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader.”
Uhm, no. You don’t get to leave the party to avoid losing in a Democratic primary and then expect Democratic party financial support to run against the Democratic candidate. That’s just nuts. And it’s so disrespectful to the Democratic voters of Connecticut I can’t honestly believe he has thought this through.
If they do this, it will cause a full on backlash against the Democratic Party by the rank and file and the party elders like Shumer have no one to blame but themselves. Frankly, this arrogant dictatorial attitude would be a little bit easier to take if the party hadn’t given away the fucking store for the last quarter century and gotten exactly nothing in return. The last time I checked these people haven’t won anything in a long, long time. Why we are supposed to keep putting our faith in their greater capacity to win is beyond me. Certainly, the unmitigated gall of these goddamned losers lording over the voters like this is going to kill this party. A little humility is called for here.
This is probably going to be an interesting site. I haven’t had a chance to read it over very carefully (except to note that Elain Kamarck is openly suggesting that we run the Dukakis campaign again because it might work this time.) But I think it’s probably going to be a useful insight into the thinking of the strategic workings of the Democratic party.
I can’t help but wonder, however, why anyone would think that calling the thing “The Democratic Strategist” was a great idea? Talk about bad branding. If there is a more ridiculed and disrespected phrase in the party at the moment, I can’t think of what it would be.
Somehow, I have a feeling this wrong choice says something important. I can’t quite put my finger on what it might be …
Ana Marie Cox’s latest dispatch from YKOS online cautions all you funny little bumpkins who have never been to a political bash before to be careful of being co-opted by the elite. She’s been a real “journalist” for almost five minutes now so she understands how to handle being handled. You, on the other hand, are putty in their hands. Word to the wise.
But Cox is very confused about something else. She writes:
Many marveled that Warner would spend so much on bloggers — bloggers! — especially given that the progressive Internet movement has yet to claim a significant general election victory. But from publicity perspective, the campaign got a significant bang for its buck. “Think about it,” said a Warner staffer, “If we threw this kind of thing for the DNC [Democratic National Committee], it would be just another party.” As it was, the event’s buzz reverberated throughout the community and into the mainstream media.
Warner was the first Presidential hopeful to commit to coming to Yearly Kos. Jerome Armstrong, the co-author of “Crashing the Gate” with Yearly Kos namesake Markos Moulitsas, is the governor’s Internet consultant and unofficial blogger liaison. Clearly, the Warner campaign has great hopes for leveraging what convention-goers call “the netroots.” Yet to judge by Warner’s actual speech, the netroots are just another constituency, a Democratic special-interest group to be placated by a campaign promise or two. Aside from a warm-up that referenced the night’s festivities, Warner delivered his time-tested stump speech to the crowd, its paeans to the need for education and national security indistinguishable from what he might say to the Milwaukee teacher’s association or the Charleston VFW. This lack of special treatment—or absence of pandering—is either a sign of respect or confusion.
(Note that “many” marveled. Not the vague and ill defined “some” that that George Bush uses all the time, but “many.” How many, I wonder? And who? Were they really, really cool insiders who know about this stuff, or the hillbillies from Mud Holler who don’t know nothin’ bout no big time politickin’? Just curious.)
But that’s not why I highlighted this paragraph in her otherwise fairly uninformative and ennervating piece. Cox’s observations about politicians pandering to the netroots as a special interest show she misunderstands the meaning of both special interest and pandering.
A “special interest group,” by definition, has a special interest. Like the environment. Or gun rights. If Warner or any other candidate saw the netroots as a special interest group, what’s the special interest? Net neutrality? Free broadband? Censorship?
I’m not saying that we don’t have an interest in keeping the net free from government interference etc., but that’s just a basic necessity to keep doing what we’re doing. Our “special interest” is progressive politics — which is a pretty broad definition of “special.” We care about all the same stuff that Democrats everywhere do and we are perhaps even more interested than most in hearing the whole program, how it’s presented and what the priorities are, because we are a communication medium and we will be spreading the good news if we hear it. So, it’s wrong to say that Warner made a mistake in not tailoring a speech to the Netroots. There is simply no way to pander to our special interest because we have no special interest. The netroots are just grassroots progressives organized in a new way.
She goes on to claim that Dean, on the other hand, did pander to the conventioneers as a special interest group by giving a partisan speech. If the Chairman of the Democratic party is considered to be pandering when he gives a rousing pep talk to a group of hard core grassroots Democrats then let the panderfest begin. It’s part of the job description. (I’ll make sure to let the broadcasters know that when Bill Cohwer gives a halftime pep talk to the Steelers next season, they should refer to it as pandering.)
Cox spends the rest of her column observing that bloggers yearn to be mainstream journalists, but don’t have the skills. She may not know much about how politics work, but Cox’s current gig at TIME magazine as their ex-blogger expert shows her to be uniquely qualified to comment on that particular subject.
Update:
Cox was reportedly distraught that her notebook went missing during the convention. Somebody found it.
In comments to a previous post, NY Expat was correct that I had not read Kos’s description of a “Libertarian Democrat” worldview. Having now read it, I find it a brilliant example of framing a set of political beliefs in an attractive way. What Kos is describing, of course, is not so much a brand of libertarianism as it is a moderate form of contemporary liberalism (somewhat more moderate than my own, by the way, but certainly respectable and defensible).
If this kind of relabeling helps attract more voters, I’m all for it. Nevertheless, actual libertarianism – with its radical emphasis on the elimination of government regulation, coupled with a frankly naive attitude towards the obvious potential for such policies when implemented to create a profoundly illiberal society – remains a political philosophy which most liberal Democrats will find rather unhelpful. Liberal Democrats need to articulate a genuinely serious set of commonsense proposals to help this country regain its democracy and its stature, so majorly battered by the present Republican “mainstream” and other extremists on the right.
It is unclear to me what positive ideas libertarianism can offer to liberalism that are unique. For example, if affirmative action and Social Security are such cancers on the nation, what does a libertarian believe would be sensible improvements. Mere elimination of these programs will not responsibly address the underlying issues that led to their proposal in the first place.
Josh Marshall has a nice response up to Jonah Goldberg’s plaintive cry of “where can Rove go to get his reputation back?”
As Andrew Sullivan aptly quips, maybe Rove can go look for it in South Carolina. More to the point, let’s not forget the salient facts here. The question going back three years ago now is whether Karl Rove knowingly participated in leaking the identity of a covert CIA operative for the purpose of discrediting a political opponent who was revealing information about the White House’s use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
That was the issue. From the beginning, Rove, through Scott McClellan, denied that he did any of that. There weren’t even any clever circumlocutions. He just lied. From admissions from Rove, filings in the Libby case, and uncontradicted reportage, we know as clearly as we ever can that Rove did do each of those things.
So he did do what he was suspected of and he did lie about it.
These things may not have risen to a level of criminality, but they were low-down political dirty tricks at the very least. We know this. And we know that Rove has done whisper campaigns about judges being pedophiles and governors being lesbians and war heroes being cowards. He plays a form of despicable hardball politics by character assassination. He makes no bones about it. These things are not illegal. But they are despicable and loathesome, nonetheless.
As Marshall points out, Fitzgerald gave up on charging under the leak statute early on. This has always been about perjury and obstruction. Whether Rove cut a deal or Fitz just couldn’t make a case for those two crimes is unknown. What is not unknown is whether Rove is a lying, scumbag piece of shit. He is.
And when the the Libby trial happens next winter, I suspect it will be spelled out in uncertain terms just how low these people are willing to go.
[Rove] also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times reported on July 18 that top White House aides were in a state of mania around this time two years ago, “intensely focused on discrediting” Joseph Wilson after he wrote his now-famous New York Times op-ed piece.
Hamburger’s and Wallsten’s sources tell them that Karl Rove’s animus toward Wilson was so intense that curiosity arose within the White House about it. When asked about this, Rove reportedly said, “He’s a Democrat.”
I’m sure that many Republicans feel that this was just great. It shows that Karl has the biggest balls in town. But I suspect there are others who aren’t quite so enamored of this petty political crapola when it comes to serious issues like why went into Iraq.
As I wrote earlier, Karl’s testimony should be very interesting.
You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. Karl Rove must have heard that he was off the hook — and the first thing he did was head up to New Hampshire to raise money for the most crooked state GOP operation in the nation:
MANCHESTER, N.H. –Presidential adviser Karl Rove is the keynote speaker Monday night at the state Republican Party’s annual dinner — which Democrats say is to raise money to help the party pay legal fees in a phone jamming case.
State Party Chairman Wayne Semprini acknowledged Friday he would like to raise enough money so the suit “represents a very small portion of our budget.”
But he said the case has nothing to do with Rove’s appearance.
“He won’t say boo about phone jamming,” Semprini said. “There’s absolutely no connection between his being here and phone jamming. Period. This is our annual dinner.”
Democrats are suing Republicans to find out who knew about the phone jamming done Election Day 2002 that tied up a Democratic and nonpartisan effort to get out the vote and provide rides to the polls. Three Republican operatives have been convicted in the plot.
Democrats and New Hampshire Citizen Action plan demonstrations to coincide with Rove’s speech to draw attention to the event and the phone jamming case.
Semprini blamed the case on a “rogue employee who did a real dumb thing.”
“As a party, we’re paying a price,” he said, but added that the state party won’t go out of business as a result.
Not that anyone has any regrets. Here’s the rogue employee whom I quoted last week:
In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.
“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody.”
Karl couldn’t have said it better himself. And I’m sure that Karl will make sure that Mr Raymond is taken care of. He did his time so more important Republicans didn’t have to. That’s how it works.
So Rove’s not going to be frog marched out of the white house any time soon. At least not for Plame. But c’mon. It’s pretty clear that he cut a deal, don’t you think? His lawyer says that Fitzgerald “does not anticipate seeking charges.” Yeah, unless he fails to live up to his agreement to testify. He went before the grand jury five times, and it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. He saved his own neck at Libby’s expense — and maybe Cheney’s.
This post from Chicago’s Archpundit from last October says it all, I think, about Fitzgerald’s techniques:
In his high profiles cases that I’ve followed, Fitzgerald is not the kind of guy to shoot all of his ammunition at once. He’s strategic in what he brings at any given time with the seeming strategy to leverage current indictments to move up the food chain.
[…]
The last U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois was a guy named Scott Lasser who was generally seen as an honest guy, but most of his public corruption trials involved alderman and other assorted small fry. Lasser always seemed to be complaining behind the scenes that he couldn’t get anyone to talk. The reason is obvious from the outside, Lasser looked to build a case and do it at one time. He never exhibited a pattern of building cases slowly and then moving up the food chain. He wasn’t corrupt by any account, but perhaps not very imaginative.
Peter Fitzgerald brought in a Patrick Fitzgerald to change that sense of helplessness. Fitzgerald had worked a number of different kind of cases, but the big ones were two terrorism cases involving the first World Trade Center bombing and the African Embassy Bombings. What isn’t mentioned as much, but is probably as critical to how he tries white collar crime, is he participated in several mafia related prosecutions including one of the Gambino trials.
What does all this mean assuming indictments come down tomorrow? It means that most likely, they won’t be the last and the purpose of them may not be simply to bring justice and an end to the investigation. If Fitzgerald thinks he needs to crack someone to get the top banana, he’ll use all the pressure he has available to get Libby or Rove or someone else to flip if that is where he feels the law will take him.
As far as the great Vizier Rove’s ability to pull naother rabbit out of the hat in November goes: we’ll see. He’s always been overrated. After all, he’s called “Bush’s Brain.” That’s worked out really well hasn’t it?
And the good news is that Libby’s trial is going to be a barn burner if Rove testifies against him.
Update II:Jeralynn at Talk Left spoke to Rove’s lawyer who said categorically that there was no deal. Rove is apparently completely in the clear. Long live the man behind the curtain.
