Sniffling Kabuki
by digby
Following up my post below, is there anyone besides me who thinks that Huckleberry Graham’s grandmotherly lecture and the teary Mrs Alito’s exit seemed just a bit too pat?
Huckleberry, after all, served as Stripsearch Sammy’s coach for the hearings. I’m just saying…
.
Miss Manners
by digby
Does anybody but me get tired of listeing to Huckleberry Graham constantly lecture the senators about their manners? Every damned time he gets in one of these situations he pulls his Andy Taylor talking to Opie voice and drones on and on about good people not wanting to be in government because Democrats are so rude.
Wring your little lace hankie someplace else, Lindsay. This is important shit. Give a little weekly lecture to your thuggish Republican colleagues why don’t you? They could use a little Miss Manners.
Jayzuz. This cornpone sanctimony makes me want to hurl.
.
First Things First
by digby
There is some discussion about whether the Democrats should concentrate on accusing the Republicans of criminal behavior or putting forth a competing reform plan, which might imply that the system itself is at fault for the Republican abuses. I’m not sure that we have to choose so starkly, but I do think that tactically we need to make sure that this scandal is clearly framed as a Republican scandal before we produce any larger reforms. Right now the public is just starting to get a sense of what this scandal is about and we have an opportunity to exploit some existing images and archetypes to paint the Republicans as the criminals they are before we launch a national campaign to clean up the mess.
It pays to keep in mind that the 1994 Republicans didn’t put out their “Contract On America” until six weeks before the election. They’ve pretended that it won them the election but that’s a joke. (They did use bogus polling to give that impression.) What won that election was relentless criticism over the course of many months leading up to it. They built upon a reserve of discontent about a slow economic recovery by placing the blame for everything squarely on the “liberals” and the Democratic party. Their “positive” agenda was just gilding the lilly.
Whatever 10 point reform plans we produce, and we should produce them, the message has to be simple and straightforward: “The Republicans are crooks and we have to clean house to make sure they can’t do it again”
Newtie and Noonan and others have been out there furiously trying to convince the media that the problem is big government (and we know who loves Big Govmint, don’t we?) This is no accident. They use every opportunity, even when they are under the gun, to advance negative images against the other side and boldly use that negativitity to advance themselves. They are positioning themselves for a reform message that blames a Democratic value (government) for the Republicans’ problems in Washington. “Don’t blame us, the Big Government made us do it.”
They are saying this because they know very well that the most dangerous negative meme that haunts Republicans is the image of abuse of power and criminal behavior: there are words and phrases that bring this right to the surface like “slush funds,” “illegal wiretapping” and “bribery.” It’s all connected to a certain type of governance —- that we happen to be witnessing in real time. Again. Nixonian Republicanism.
The GOP has understood for years that they can gain great traction by piggybacking every criticism on existing negative images of Democrats (usually some version of effeminate, undisciplined cowards.) Here we have one of the most vivid negative examples of the Republican archetypes. The greedy little man on the Monopoly Box. We are fools if we don’t come at them with everything we have, focusing our fire on the corrupt political machine and the arrogant imperial presidency. In the wake of the faux GOP outrage at the trivial Clinton scandals, which are even fresher in people’s memories than Nixon, this could cripple them for a good long while if we handle it correctly.
I realize that some Democrats are feeding at the trough. We need to deal with that. But first things first. This is about a complex criminal political enterprise and there is simply no comparison between it and the rather workaday corruption of politicians generally, including Democrats. Their purpose was to build a permanent majority using whatever illegal and legal means at their disposal. And they planned to create an executive branch that operates entirely independently and is answerable only to an “accountability moment” every four years.
I think it’s a big mistake to treat this as just another in a long line of reforms that become necessary every few years. It simply was not business as usual.
Here’s a rather amusing example of GOP think on this from a commenter, who offered it up apparently without irony:
allow me to explain why the Abramoff scandal, like so many others before it, will prove to be more devestating to the Dems then it could possibly be to the GOP, much less conservatives.
The Dems bleat daily that they are the “minority” party. That they are the “loyal opposition.” Yet who actually does something when a scandal arises? Who opened the investigation into the Plame non-leak? Who is pursuing the leak of an NSA program that threatens national security and possibly civil liberties? Who addressed possible torture at Abu Ghraib? Who is set to clean house over the Abramoff tempest in a teapot that threatens to implicate some of the biggest names in the Republican Party, perhaps the very culture of Republican politics?
Not the “loyal opposition” … but rather the Bush Administration.
Teh public knows this. Or is growing to know this with each passing day. They, the voting public, will be left to wonder, if the “loyal opposition” cannot even muster the courage to bring such scandals to the light of day, then for what are they good for?
Americans are already starting to realize that if a “loyal opposition” cannot even do its job of defeating the party in powers’ corruption and misgovernance (examples of which are legion, apparently), then how can we possibly entrust them with the real job of governing the nation?
Rather, American voters will know they would be wiser to turn to the REpublican Party, which has made some partisan, ideological and hubristic missteps, yes – even engaged in a pattern of criminal behavior it would seem. All those sins, yes, but still the GOP is not so grossly incompetent or lacking in power that it would allow what it has done over the past few years to pass, if it had been the Democrats who had done it.
Truly, the Dems attack the Abramoff scandal at their peril.
William G. Henders |
It’s hard to know if he’s serious. But he could be. It’s a twisted Rovian view in the extreme. No matter what, attack the Dems for being chickenshit. Works like a charm.
I think that we can all agree that ten point plans don’t win elections. We have to bring to the surface people’s almost palpable discomfort with Republican governance, as measured in the president’s approval rating, the right track/wrong track numbers and everything else. We have to make people willing to admit to themselves what they already know and we need to do it in clear no nonsense terms — or that fellow’s mind boggling strategy might just work.
.
Spinning Out
by digby
Bush needs to cut down on the coffee. He’s so wound up this morning he looks like he’s going to spin off the stage. There is something wrong with this man.
I appears that he is taking Rove’s advice over his “younger staffers.” He’s adopted the super aggressive swagger attitude favored by his guru:
President Bush warned Democratic critics of his
Iraq policy on Tuesday to watch what they say or risk giving “comfort to our adversaries” and suffering at the ballot box in November. Democrats said Bush should take his own advice.[…]
Tuesday’s … sharp message represented an attempt by the president to neutralize Democrats’ ability to use Iraq — where violence is surging in the wake of December parliamentary elections and messy negotiations to form a new coalition government — as an election-year cudgel against Republicans.
Bush acknowledged deep differences over Iraq among casualty-weary Americans, just 39 percent of whom approve of his handling of the war, according to AP-Ipsos. Without specifically mentioning Democrats, the president urged campaigning politicians to “conduct this debate responsibly.”
I’m always touched when Republicans show such concern for Democratic electoral prosepcts. I know they only have our best interests at heart.
.
K.I.S.S.
by digby
Samela writes in the comments:
I think the simplest story that reveals the difference between what people perceive as ‘big-business influence through lobbying” (which they relate to both parties) and the Culture of Corruption swirling around the Republicans is the one involving the Magazine Publishers of America.
Back in 2000 the magazine industry hired Abramoff as a lobbyist (he was then at Preston Gates Ellis) to help stem a proposed rise in postal rates. Now, most people can understand why the magazine industry would not want higher postal rates: it affects the bottom line of their business. Aside from printing, postage is one of their biggest costs. No one, of course, likes higher postal rates (and no one particularly wants magazine subscription rates to rise). But sometimes they are necessary to keep the postal system running. Nonetheless, it would seem perfectly legitimate for the MPA to hire a lobbyist to try to put their case before congressional members. One would assume the USPS would similarly be trying to jawbone legislators to present their side of the story, arguing FOR the need to raise postal rates. Senators and representatives should then duly consider the arguments from both sides and come to a decision about whether rates should rise or not.
This is not what happened. Mr. Abramoff was paid $525,000 by the MPA to seek a postal rate reduction in Congress. Did he make a heckuva case for them? Not exactly: he asked the MPA to give an additional $25,000 to a Seattle-based charity (slush fund) he’d helped found–and then he used that money (as well as another $25K from elottery) to help pay the salary for the wife of Tom Delay staff member Tony Rudy. It’s called money laundering and bribery.
It’s okay for lobbyists to collect money from clients to argue their cases before legislators. It’s even okay (though problematic) for businesses or interests who have a stake in congressional legislation to try to elect the people they think can help them by donating to their campaigns, within the law. (Though I’d like to see changes in those laws.) What’s not okay is money laundering and bribery. That is what a number of Republican Congressmen and their staffers are involved in here …. but no Democrats, to our knowledge.
The Democrats may be too tied to corporate contributions, and it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. But we have thus far not seen any widespread shakedown, extortion, bribery, money-laundering schemes to which high-level Democrats or their staffers were party.
It’s an easier story to understand than the baroque Indian tribe one (though smaller in scale). But it’s been going on a long time, and DeLay and his staffers were at the very heart of it.
And yeah…. the Republicans are famous for defending their own until the fire gets too hot. The Democrats let go of Trafficante the moment his shenanigans hit the fan (it might even have been before), disavowing him. The Republicans have been trying to defend DeLay even AFTER his indictment. They got him to relinquish his leadership role, but they have in no way repudiated him formally.
samela
There you have it.
.
How Can He Be Even More Right? A Modest Proposal.
by tristero
George W. Bush’s latest thoughtful speech was, as usual, boldly audacious. With his demand that responsible debate over Iraq must be limited entirely to arguments over exactly how much praise he deserves, The President’s speech will go down in history as among the most remarkable utterances ever.
The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see [sic] it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.
In other words:
Is the Bush administration doing (1) a heckuva job; (2) a heckuva great job; or (3) a totally heckuva great job? And how can we help The President be more right?
Before we can answer that second question, we need to understand exactly why The President refuses to consider the topics he mentions as worthy of responsible discussion.
Of course, we didn’t invade Iraq because of oil. Why this isn’t obvious to everyone is one of the mind-boggling mysteries of our epoch. Briefly, all we’re trying to do is grow the Iraq economy. Now, everyone knows the world is in a post-industrial phase, where it’s high tech that rules, not Big oil-gobbling Iron. Therefore, it’s vital to Iraq’s infrastructure that they make use as soon as possible of their most abundant resource – sand – and become the major player they deserve to be in the international chip market.
All we’re doing is expediting that process by purifying the sand. We’re simply eliminating all that putrid-smelling retro petro-pollution from their valuable natural mineral resource and shipping the smelly sludge – at our own companies’ expense, mind you – back to the US. This is not about oil but about transforming a volatile region into a Land Of Milk and Honey. And Sand. Because of The President’s actions, I can predict with near certainty that within five years Iraq will become the pre-eminent Silicon Desert of the Middle East.
As for Israel, it simply must be recognized that any critic who mentions Israel in the same sentence with Iraq is not only thoroughly irresponsible but clearly an out and out anti-Semite. Now I admit, Pat Robertson may have been overstretching a bit, but only those who refuse to acknowledge cause and effect fail to see the connection between Sharon’s recent stroke and the unremitting criticism he received in the past few months by all those here in the US who refused to support the Iraq war.
Now regarding the alleged misleading of the American people, I submit that The President never did such a thing. The proof, as if any is needed (he is after, all The President, and doesn’t need proof), can be found in this very speech of 10 January, 2006. Notice how carefully and repeatedly The President distinguishes between “Saddamists” and “foreign terrorists.” He’s telling us he’s known all along that there’s a difference and that he’s never confused them. Furthermore, notice how he fearlessly deplores the utterly unprecedented abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi security forces. This also subtly alludes to the moral axis of The President’s actions in Iraq. After all, where else could those murderous Iraqi security police possibly have learned to perpetrate such horrors if not while suffering under the obscene guidance of the monstrous Sons of Saddam – Uday and what’shisname?
But The President goes even further in clearing our mind of dangerous clutter. Little noticed by the punditocracy – at least so far – The President makes it very clear he has secret evidence American troops never blew up innocent wedding parties. Those were suicide bombers disguised as American planes and Blackhawks.*
But we digress. Back to that second question: How can The President be more right? Okay. I’ll tell you and I’m not going to mince words. And I don’t care who wants to turn me in for saying them!
I think the Big Problem is that everyone thinks The President is wrong and they won’t trust his judgment. I think it’s wrong that these people are wasting The President’s time by making him worry that he’s only doing a heckuva job. I think responsible debate should be limited to whether The President is doing a heckuva great job or better. If this proposal is adopted, The President by definition would immediately be more right! And that’s what we, and he, want.
I think if irresponsible opponents weren’t clogging The President’s time with so many questions and empty scandals that his presidency has begun to resemble a New Orleans sewer, The President would have been able to sign the necessary emergency orders for more upper body armor for our troops. Now, let me be crystal clear about this: Because The President couldn’t find time to sign that order, the critics of the The President’s performance are responsible for much more – way much more – than aiding and comforting our enemies. The irresponsible critics of The President are systematically killing our soldiers. And I don’t care who knows it.
Now, the Doomsayer Democrats object to certain wiretaps made without authorization. I say if they don’t like them, here’s a plan that will end the “illegal” wiretaps debate immediately. Disconnect the critics’ telephones! And while we’re at it, deny ’em ADSL. Let them rant over a 28.8k AOL connection and see how well they like it.
Bottom line: The President couldn’t be more right. After all, he wouldn’t be The President if that wasn’t so. That’s self-evident, just like it says in the Constitution. Or somewhere.
*Don’t let yourself be misled by the irresponsible rantings of mere eyewitnesses who swore they were American planes. They weren’t and I have a reason why they were mistaken.
Now, of course I have only the greatest sympathy for a bride whose husband was turned into viscous red goo in the middle of their vows, but, to be perfectly blunt, such an hysterical woman does not a reliable witness make. Indeed, probably very few men would either, in her position (not as the bride of another man, of course, nor did I mean to imply by “her position” anything smutty, it’s just that I meant…oh, you get it, I don’t need to explain).
Corrupt Reformers
by digby
I admire Rich Lowry’s intellectual integrity in pointing out that no matter how much the Republicans might wish to portray the Abramoff scandal as bi-partisan it just isn’t. But his prescription just won’t do.
You see, this graft and corruption has been going on in plain sight for a long time and GOPers had their mouths so full of pork they apparently couldn’t say a word about it until a Republican Justice Department public integrity section stumbled over Jack Abramoff. The Republican party has no standing to reform itself now. It’s like the mafia saying they promise to clean up their act once Sammy the Bull blew the whistle.
The Abramoff scandal is about corrupt lobbying and money laundering, which was coordinated at the highest levels of the party, run by the majority leader of the House of representatives. But that’s just one of many corrupt GOP practices. There are the perjury and obstruction cases in the CIA leak investigation. And the SEC investigation into the majority leader of the Senate. There are the numerous payola and propaganda schemes. Bribes on the floor of the House. Crooked Pentagon appropriations and missing billions in Iraq. Dirty tricks in New Hampshire. Hiding the real cost of the prescription drug program (and Billy Tauzin being on Pharma take when he got it passed.) The list goes on and on.
(Here are just a few of the alleged GOP ethics abuses from the Washington Post. Here’s an even longer one. And here’s Think Progress’ indispensible compendium of Abramoff criminals.)
This Republican party is crooked. And despite what George Will says, it’s not because of big government. Government spending has exploded under the allegedly “small government” Republicans while delivering less and less to average Americans. They have proven that they are completely full of shit on that issue and anyone who votes for them on that basis is an idiot. Judging by their performance the only things they actually care about are padding their own pockets and protecting their own power. If there are a hoard of “reform” Republicans out there who have been objecting to this pillaging of the treasury, they haven’t exactly been speaking up. All I’ve heard is “praise God and pass the contributions.”
I expect Republicans to take potshots at Clinton and his supporters whenever possible so I don’t usually respond, but this statement is too self-serving to let pass:
Republicans must take the scandal seriously and work to clean up in its wake. The first step was the permanent ouster of Tom DeLay as House Republican majority leader, a recognition that he is unfit to lead as long as he is underneath the Abramoff cloud. The behavior of the right in this matter contrasts sharply with the left’s lickspittle loyalty to Bill Clinton, whose maintenance in power many liberals put above any of their principles.
That might be an apt analogy except for the fact that Democrats defended Clinton out of the principle that a rabid partisan witchunt into a president’s sex life was beyond the pale.
By contrast, both the Republican president and the invertebrate Republican congress have engaged in or silently acquiesced to blatant graft and corruption for years while the Democrats impotently screamed into the void. The party was keeping the seat warm for months while the majority leader remained under indictment. They changed the rules so that an indicted leader could keep his seat until the public outcry forced them to retreat, for crying out loud, and then they launched a grassroots campaign to defend him:
Conservative leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
The move follows a meeting last week among DeLay, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the chief deputy majority whip, and nearly two dozen conservative leaders, including David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation.
Perkins, Keene and Feulner called the meeting, according to participants.
“It was a rallying cry to our conservative community that we are under assault. We need to fight back. We’re going to have a challenging year with the judicial issue bubbling up in the senate and the impact it may have on our ability to get things done,” said Cantor, who said he described to the group how Democrats and liberal groups have waged a coordinated battle to raise doubts about DeLay’s conduct.
Several of the conservative leaders who met last week are planning to launch a grassroots campaign targeted at conservatives in the districts of House Republican lawmakers whose support for DeLay may be wavering.
This man is a corrupt thug who ran a corrupt political machine. Everybody in Washington knew it. Republicans celebrated it and bragged about it publicly. For them to now go all Claude Rains about it is just funny.
It’s possible that the voters will not care or will not hold Republicans responsible for this corruption. But these are early days in the 2006 election cycle and many more shoes are going to drop over the next few months. I wouldn’t want to place a bet that Americans won’t laugh at any Republican claiming the mantle of reform come election day. It’s going to be very easy to find pictures of Republicans kissing the ring of Tom DeLay.
Update: Read this great post by Tom Watson (via Wolcott)on this topic.
.
Wallflowers
by digby
I feel so dirty. My Alito the freeper post is linked on both The Corner and Free Republic. Seems bedwetters don’t like my armchair analysis of the chickenhawk pathology one little bit.
Here’s Jonah:
I DUNNO… [Jonah Goldberg]
Byron – Seems to me the cops at the ’68 convention proved their “manhood” without going to Vietnam or joining the croud chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!” and echoing Che Guevara’s call for “two, three, many Vietnams.”
Also, it’s kind of funny listening to liberals argue that getting laid “a lot” makes you a man.
Addendum: I posted too fast. I meant to say it’s kind of funny listening to liberals argue that there are only two paths to becoming a man — getting laid “a lot” and going to war. And here I thought they didn’t like social Darwinism.
He actually wrote the words “getting laid a lot makes you a man” and then came back with an oops “I posted too fast.” You can’t make this shit up.
Of course if he’d read the post in question he would know that I didn’t actually say that there are only two paths to manhood, but that’s just nitpicking. He’s right. There is a tried and true path to manhood for right wing chickenhawks: they can host Kaffee Klatches for mama, Linda Tripp and Michael Isikoff and then make a whole career out of it.
The best freeper comment is this:
This Freeper will gladly meet Mr. “Digby”, anytime, anywhere, for a little test of “physical courage”. Hygiene-challenged, hairy little socialist creeps who throw like girls ought not write checks their skinny butts can’t cash. I know: when the phone doesn’t ring…I’ll know it’s him. Chickenhawk? Chickensh!t.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.
Here’s a thread to vote on Alito’s freeper handle over at MYDD. I’m thinking “wallflower”.
.
Freeping The Court
by digby
I watched the Roberts hearings and couldn’t help being impressed by the guy even though I knew he was way too conservative for me. He was obviously intelligent, confident and smooth and I ended up thinking that anybody who was smart enough to keep a good distance between himself and the Federalist Society might just be smart enough to see through their more ridiculous theories. That’s probably wishful thinking, but still.
By contrast, I just had a chance to see Alito’s opening statement and I have to say that I think he came off as an asshole:
And after I graduated from high school, I went a full 12 miles down the road, but really to a different world when I entered Princeton University. A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed.
And this was a time of great intellectual excitement for me. Both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas. But this was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn’t help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community.
This is the same guy who wanted to keep women out of Princeton. Presumably, they wouldn’t have “felt comfortable” there. But that’s not what made that statement so revealing. It’s this notion of smart and privileged people “behaving irresponsibly.”
I think it’s fairly certain that he’s not talking about branding frat boys’ asses or getting drunk and stealing Christmas Trees. He’s talking about anti-war protestors, feminists etc. And like so many campus conservatives of that era, he sounds like he’s still carrying around a boatload of resentment toward them.
Roberts apparently came out of all that unscathed. Confident in his own abilities and social prowess, he didn’t appear to have this puny, pinched view of liberalism as a threat to decency and morality. (He may have it, but it didn’t show — or he was smart enough to hide it in his hearings.) Alito is one of those other guys. You know the ones:
The only political aspirants among those three groups who failed to meet the test of their generation were the chickenhawks. And our problem today is that they are the ones in charge of the government as we face a national security threat. These unfulfilled men still have something to prove.
And, I suspect because their leadership of the “conservative” movement has infected the new generation, we are seeing much of the same pathology among younger warhawks as well. This is why we hear the shrill war cries of inchoate bloodlust from these quarters every time the terrorists strike. It’s a primal scream of inner confusion and self-loathing. These are people whose highest aspirations and deepest longings are wrapped up in their masculinity, and yet they are flaccid failures. They are in a state of arrested development, never having faced their fears, never becoming men, remaining boys standing in the corner of the darkened hallway watching Bill Clinton emerge from a co-ed’s dorm room to lead a rousing all night strategy session — and sitting in the bus station on the way home for Christmas vacation as Chuck Hagel and John Kerry in uniform, looking stalwart and strong, clap each other on the back in brotherly solidarity and prepare to see what they are really made of. They have never been part of anything but an effete political movement in which the stakes go no higher than repeal of the death tax.
In other words, he’s a freeper. I say filibuster the creep.
.
Welcome Back Newtie
by digby
As much as I love having Newtie back on the scene reprising his former role as a fake Republican reformer, I can’t help but wonder how he hopes to explain the fact that he was officially reprimanded as Speaker for his unethical behavior by a special counsel . I realize that this happened almost ten years ago, so it’s ancient history, but it was quite the circus at the time:
The House ethics committee recommended last night that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) face an unprecedented reprimand from his colleagues and pay $300,000 in additional sanctions after concluding that his use of tax-deductible money for political purposes and inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented “intentional or . . . reckless” disregard of House rules.
The committee’s 7 to 1 vote came after 5 1/2 hours of televised hearings and the release of a toughly worded report on the investigation by special counsel James M. Cole. The recommendation, which followed a week of partisan conflict that has split the House into warring camps, sets the stage for a resolution of this investigation into Gingrich’s actions.
Gingrich earlier admitted he had violated House rules and was prepared to accept the committee’s recommendation for punishment. If the full House votes as expected on Tuesday, Gingrich would become the first speaker to be reprimanded for his conduct and would begin his second term politically weakened and personally diminished.
[…]
Cole said he had concluded that Gingrich had violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. He said the committee members were reluctant to go that far in their conclusions, but said they agreed Gingrich was either “reckless” or “intentional” in the way he conducted himself.
[…]
Cole made clear he had concluded that Gingrich’s activities were not random acts but part of a pattern of questionable behavior. “Over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities,” he said.
Newtie was always loosey goosey about ethics, even as he excoriated the Democrats. (He did it just recently, saying that people expect the Democrats to be corrupt.) And like all Republicans, his hypocrisy knew no bounds:
How sweet a victory it must have been when Newt Gingrich ran former House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) out of town because he made $55,000 off the bulk sale of his book to lobbyists. The trick was turned by Gingrich’s insistence that an independent counsel be appointed. As Gingrich put it back in 1988: “The rules normally applied by the Ethics Committee to an investigation of a typical member are insufficient in an investigation of the Speaker of the House, a position which is third in line of succession to the Presidency and the second most powerful elected position in America. Clearly this investigation has to meet a higher standard of public accountability and integrity.” Gingrich’s words must haunt him now, when his own far more lucrative and questionable book deal has been added to complaints filed with the House Ethics Committee alleging his improper use of political-action-committee and nonprofit-foundation money.
Gingrich has attempted to squiggle out of the book controversy by giving up the $4.5-million advance from HarperCollins, the book publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch…he had met secretly with Murdoch — Mr. Multinational himself, a man who built his media empire by hustling legislators on three continents — Nov. 28, three days before he began negotiating the book contract. But when the book deal was announced in December, Gingrich’s press spokesman, Tony Blankley, told reporters he didn’t know whether his boss had ever met with Murdoch. Why didn’t Gingrich step forward then and admit to the meeting if there was nothing to hide? Why was it only after the New York Daily News broke the story that he confessed?
The truth leaked out when a Murdoch spokesman the next day conceded that an NBC lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Fox network, based on the foreign-ownership issue, was discussed. And two days later, we learned from Murdoch’s Washington lobbyist, Preston Padden, who was also at the meeting, that this was not a chance courtesy call but rather was planned to counter NBC’s lobbying.
This week, Gingrich was dissembling once again: “They said something to me about, ‘We are in this big fight with NBC,’ and I said fine. I mean, I don’t care. I never get involved in individual cases like that.”
And then, of course, there’s this:
In August 1999, Gingrich revealed that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair for the past six years with a House clerk twenty-three years his junior, Callista Bisek. Critics noted that Gingrich’s adultery had taken place while he was leading moral attacks against Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. Because of the similarity of the situations, critics charged Gingrich’s attacks on Clinton had been grossly hypocritical
Still, despite his checkered past, we really shouldn’t be surprised that Newtie is the Republicans’ front man on ethics and a likely candidate for president. At this point he’s about the cleanest they’ve got.
.