“‘The staff were absolutely horrified by what seemed to be the Bush administration’s disdain for a clear-cut case of corruption at the bank,’ said one official.” Paul Wolfowitz’s tenure at the World Bank looks to enter its final hours after the Bank’s Board turns down an attempt by the White House to save face and the Dubya administration begins cutting its losses.
Category: GOP
Falwell’s that Ends Well.
Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007. My thoughts on this are basically the same as on Strom’s passing in 2003, and once again I’d refer everyone to Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obit. Of course, it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead…still, I’m sure countless people and pets around the world passed yesterday who are more deserving of eulogy than this contemptible, hypocritical bigot. Let’s just hope, for Falwell’s sake, that God is more compassionate and forgiving than he ever was.
Cartoon Corruption.
“Renzi — now, was that the guy with the skeezy land deal? Or the woman Paul Wolfowitz promoted?” To help keep track of them all, Slate offers a handy illustrated guide to GOP scandals.
The Simi Valley Ten.
Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Republicans? Perhaps it was because I was feeling mighty under the weather when catching up with it on TiVo, but last Thursday’s GOP debate was more than a little underwhelming. Of the top tier, Mitt Romney probably acquitted himself the best: He seemed a bit blow-dried and canned, sure, but we were at the Reagan library, after all, and he didn’t do anything to hurt his standing as a front-runner with money to burn. Frankly, John McCain‘s act seemed stale to me: The “Gates of Hell” notwithstanding, he seemed to possess little-to-none of the from-the-gut, truth-to-power charisma that propelled him through 2000. (And his pained, convoluted stance on Iraq — everything got screwed up for years but now we’re hunky-dory — doesn’t make a lick of sense.) Rudy Giuliani proved once again that he’s a better candidate in theory than in practice, and I don’t see his half-hearted shrug over Roe V. Wade playing too well to the conservative cheap seats. (Let’s not forget, three of these ten folks — Brownback, Huckabee, Tancredo — wouldn’t even admit to believing in evolution.) Speaking of which, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback seemed like the two among the rest with the best shot to jump up a notch, particularly as either could conceivably become the favorite son of the Dobson wing of the party. Ron Paul’s ardent libertarianism was a surprising X-factor in the debate, and I thought it was kinda fun to have him around. (He also came across better, IMO, than the Dem’s official monkey wrench, Mike Gravel.) Jim Gilmore, Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter? Meh. If I were Fred Thompson, I wouldn’t be dissuaded from a run by this lot. I mean, the GOP field already looks like one of those WaMu ads with the gang of disgruntled bankers (Indeed, an Obama-and-GOP Youtube remix seems inevitable) — why not add one more to the mix?
Probably the most telling fact of the evening was the dog that didn’t bark: Dubya. Watching these ten prominent Republicans squirm and equivocate every time anyone mentioned the president and his current policies tells you everything you need to know about 2008 — After eight years of GOP mismanagement and corruption, the election is the Dems to lose.
The “Go Obama” Party?
“‘I disagree with Obama on the war but I don’t think it is a test of his patriotism,’ Martin says. ‘Obama has a message of hope for the country.‘” Come on aboard, you won’t hurt the horse: Disillusioned Republicans wander over to the Obama bandwagon, including “Power and Weakness” author Robert Kagan. “In an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was ‘pure John Kennedy’, a neocon hero of the cold war…’Personally, I liked it,’ Kagan wrote.” And, really, after seeing what the Republicans have to offer at the first debate last week, can you blame him or anyone else for defecting?
DeLay cries foul.
“We have cooperated with everything. We’ve given them everything, including computers; they’ve taken computers that I had here. They’ve gotten everything that’s got anything to do with my life.” A deposed Boss DeLay decries his treatment by the FBI, taking particular umbrage at the investigations into his wife Christine: “She did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.” Underpaid? Christine DeLay, it may be remembered, was paid $500,000 in PAC funds by the DeLay campaign, $3,300 a month for three years in funds apparently skimmed from the US Family Network, and another half-million in a retirement account set up by former DeLay staffer and lobbyist Edwin Buckham.
Digging Deeper…
“I continue to hope that the Department will cooperate with the Committee’s investigation, but it is troubling that significant documents highly relevant to the Committee’s inquiry have not been produced.” On the prosecutorial front, Patrick Leahy subpoenas Karl Rove’s e-mails (or at least what’s left of them), and the Justice Department begins its own inquiry into Monica Goodling, to ascertain whether political bias played a part in her hiring decisions. The plot thickens…
Deconstructing Harvey.
“But reading Mansfield has real value for understanding the dominant right-wing movement in this country. Because he is an academic, and a quite intelligent one, he makes intellectually honest arguments, by which I mean that he does not disguise what he thinks in politically palatable slogans, but instead really describes the actual premises on which political beliefs are based. And that is Mansfield’s value; he is a clear and honest embodiment of what the Bush movement is.” Glenn Greenwald eviscerates Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield after the latter pens an op-ed for the WSJ entitled “The Case for the Strong Executive — Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need for Energy.” See the problem in that title? It kinda jumps out at you.
Blue Skies Ahead? | The Other Side of the Aisle.
“‘A Democratic candidate could go out there and muck it up and raise questions about his or her competence or judgment,’ says Andy Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. ‘But the landscape really is tilted in a Democratic direction.’” In USA Today, Susan Page lists five reasons why 2008 is looking Democratic. But, don’t tell these guys: The Republicans go at it tonight at the Reagan Presidential Library, 8pm, MSNBC.
Rove down the Hatch?
Following up on recent news that Karl Rove’s political behavior was being looked into, the WP describes how White House officials gave 20 private political briefings to government agency officials on the 2006 midterms, likely to push them into helping out struggling GOP candidates. “Such coercion is prohibited under a federal law, known as the Hatch Act, meant to insulate virtually all federal workers from partisan politics.“