In the 1960's, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being "so far removed from common sense" and later said "We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner."
The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet. The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration [...]
No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles. Those who do are not respectable.
I think it's time to find out what conservative/libertarian organizations support WND through advertising, list rental or other commercial collaboration (email me if you know of any), and boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce any further support for WorldNetDaily.
That's commendable and worth doing if reasonable Republicans want to save their party. Sadly it's probably too late. We've all seen the polling on the birthers, and how it's penetrated the Republican base. We've seen how politicians react to that base, getting more and more insane and radical. And now, Jon Henke has seen that the RNC values that insanity over reason:
After I argued that credible organizations on the Right should not support the conspiracy peddling of WorldNetDaily, it was pointed out that the RNC appears to have rented access to the WND email list. So I emailed the RNC to inquire about it and encourage them to stop.
My question was: "Is the RNC really renting the World Net Daily email list?" This was the response from the RNC Press Secretary:
Nice to meet you. Pls note that we have already weighed in on the birther issue -- weeks ago. Thanks.
The Press Secretary then appended a NYT story in which this was their response:
“Chairman Steele believes this is an unnecessary distraction and that the president is a U.S. citizen,” said Gail Gitcho, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “He wants to move on and continue talking about real and immediate issues that are facing our nation, like health care and the economy. Chairman Steele has other issues to take up with the president having to do with policy, not a birth certificate.”
So, the sum total of the RNC's response was (a) Obama is "a U.S. citizen", but (b) we want to ignore this Birther story, (c) we're not saying whether or not we're working with the Birthers, and (d) we're just going to completely ignore the actual question you asked.
The right has gone over the moon. Because of how Washington and the media are wired, the true radicalism of their agenda isn't fully expressed. As John Cole said, the entire party has been taken over by crazy people.
That after months of tea parties and protests against Big Gubmint takeovers and socialism, the Republican Party would come out as the defenders of Medicare has got to be one of the most hilarious things I've ever witnessed. If the rank and file agitators had half a brain they'd recognize how they've been played for suckers.
Michael Steele tells me the Democrats want to dismantle Medicare. So my first question is simple: Why do Democrats hate Medicare?
The hypocrisy is shameless. I won't go through the history of Medicare, but for Republicans to say that you should trust us on Medicare is like Colonel Sanders guarding the chicken coop. I think most seniors know that, and these scare tactics will boomerang. I don't think people will buy it, since the guys peddling this stuff are the very people who have been trying to undermine and weaken Medicare for years and years. There was a budget alternative put forward by Paul Ryan this year that would have ended Medicare as we know it and given all seniors a voucher to get their health care on the private market. And they voted for it. So we know what they wanted to do with Medicare.
Actually, people don't know this story. Because Democrats haven't bothered to tell it.
Here's that alternative budget. The Ryan proposal would have converted the entire Medicare program into a voucher system, throwing seniors onto the individual market with a fixed amount of money to purchase their own plan. It didn't have insurance regulatory reform, to my knowledge, so all the voucher money in the world wouldn't have helped one senior get coverage from companies who would deny all of them based on a pre-existing condition.
Now, establishment Democrats may find this funny, but they haven't informed the public that, five months ago, 80% of the GOP caucus voted to eliminate Medicare and turn it into a private, voucher-based individual market without guaranteed coverage. They just expect seniors to know about some alternative budget vote.
How the hell would they know?
Was one ad created telling America what Republicans were willing to do to their health care? Was one flyer sent from the vaunted DNC voter file into targeted senior-heavy districts explaining this tale? Was any talking head discussing on television the goal of the GOP to eliminate Medicare, and their votes for it?
I mean, this was the kind of stuff Democratic strategists at least used to be good at. If you can't scare seniors to death over a vote to ELIMINATE MEDICARE, you cannot hope to win a health care fight. It's at least worth a try now, but it may be too late at this point; seniors are already nervous about cuts that would come in a new bill, and they no longer trust Democrats to do right by them. A well-timed push back in April could have shut down the resonance of the entire tea party movement. "Republicans want to eliminate your Medicare... Democrats want to strengthen it, for you and for future generations." Is that so hard?
Sometimes I think this isn't a political party but an elaborate episode of Candid Camera.
I've gotten plenty of "Special DNC Survey on the Economy" letters over the years. They're essentially fundraising fishing expeditions. I doubt anyone at the offices care about what you fill out on the survey, or if you fill it out at all. They just want some cash. So I wouldn't be surprised if the surveys that the parties insert into these letters aren't checked for accuracy. That combined with the general craziness of the GOP leads to survey questions like this:
Republicans' wholehearted embrace of the paranoid style in modern politics would naturally lead them to the notion that their party members would get discriminated against in medical treatment. They've called Democrats everything up to and including Satan incarnate. Why wouldn't they think they're trying to kill them?
The RNC's alibi is that "the question was inartfully worded." Um, how would the wording of "The government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system" change anything?
I don't want to just put this out into the world irresponsibly, but looking at these warning signs I truly fear that something bad will happen in the next couple years.
Nobody wants to kill health care reform. OK, I guess Bill Kristol does. But nobody else. They're just very concerned with the speed of the legislation, and some of the provisions and they just want to take the time, do it right, we can do it bay-bee.
You'd expect the RNC to weigh in on the side of the status quo. But Michael Steele is so clueless about the topic of health care that, as you can see from this compilation, he would probably be stumped if you asked him what a doctor does.
Later on, he didn't understand the individual mandate, only the central issue in the most intensely watched primary campaign in American history. He has found his metaphor, though, calling it a reckless and risky "experiment," both in his remarks and in this new ad, which I think makes the point that Barack Obama is experimenting on children.
ORSZAG: This is the biggest canard that is floating throughout this debate. The fact of the matter is right now politicians and insurance companies are making decisions. We're saying we want doctors to be making decisions, and I think that will lead to a higher-quality, lower-cost system over time.
WALLACE: But when you say they're making decisions, they would be saying, you can have this treatment, you can't have that treatment.
ORSZAG: Do you think that politicians are currently rationing care, are insurance companies currently rationing care? There's no set of decisions that this commission would have that is not currently resting with either members of Congress or insurance companies.
WALLACE: So they would be rationing care.
ORSZAG: No! Because I don't think we're rationing care today, and similarly they would not be in the future. What they would be doing is setting reimbursement rates and moving towards a higher-quality system.
These arguments from the right are both silly and transparent. They are designed not to advance any debate about health care or create some alternative set of proposals. They are, as Orszag said on a different Sunday show, designed simply to kill any bill. They not only want to break health care, but break Obama, as Jim DeMint very clearly stated. Delay equals defeat in this case.
Which is why it's so disconcerting to see Democrats engage in the same tactics. For example, Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana criticized the expansion of Medicaid in the bill because it would leave an unfunded mandate for the states, but under the House bill, at least, the federal government picks up ALL of the costs for that expansion, at no cost to the states whatsoever. Schweitzer may consider this a slippery slope, and in that case, he should advocate for taking state participation out of Medicaid entirely. But instead, he's chipping away at Congress' bill, as are other governors of both parties, and eventually that tactic leads not to getting the policy right, but burying it.
If moderate Democrats have legitimate concerns with the bill, they have every opportunity to address them, but they seem more concerned with shooting arrows at it, which will only destroy the bill, and probably their political future as well.
But the question isn't whether Republicans understand the power of successful opposition. It's whether Democrats understand the dangers of failure. And that's most true for the Democrats who are most likely to weaken the effort: The Democrats who are cool to health-care reform because they fear the conservative tilt of their state are the Democrats who will lose their seats if Obama loses his momentum and the Democratic majority begins to lose on its major initiatives. Legislative defeats will not threaten Henry Waxman's seat. But it will imperil Mary Landrieu's. And Ben Nelson's.
Bill Kristol is right that defeating Obama's health-care plan is a first step for Republicans who want to pick off vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 midterms. But the converse is also true: Passing health-care reform is the first step for vulnerable Democrats who want to save their seats.
In the end, I'm not sure that those moderates really want universal health care. So they concern troll it and ask for delays and we eventually spend another couple decades with a broken system and no progress. I'm hopeful that isn't the case this time, as Obama steps to the front of this debate. But at this point, turning away from the sausage-making is probably best for my heart.
The RNC tried to get out in front of Obama's speech today by dredging up an old quote Obama made about the Constitution being "flawed." Right, um, guys, he was talking about slavery.
FACT: Obama Explains The Constitution's "Fundamental Flaw" Was Slavery. The out of context video the RNC links to contains audio from a September 6, 2001 program called "Slavery and the Constitution" on WBEZ Chicago. On the show, Obama explained that the "fundamental flaw" was "Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the framers." In addition, the framers did not "see...it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth." [WBEZ Radio, accessed 5/21/09]
Aside from it being hilarious to watch Michael Steele circle the bowl and have his power shrink with every misappropriate statement and bad decision, I don't see the problem here. The Chairman of a political party should NOT have unilateral authority over spending. In California, this has led to some horrible outcomes, like the state Democratic Party funneling millions of dollars to legislative leaders instead of spending them on elections. Accountability and transparency are DESIRABLE outcomes, and I applaud those RNC members for ensuring a little more of that. Yes, Steele looks like an idiot, but a top-down bureaucratic structure inevitably corrodes the process. I'd rather that he made all the decisions.
Michael Steele, last seen arguing that nobody could have anticipated the swine flu, so it's OK for Republicans to have cut flu preparedness money out of the stimulus (because the duty of government is to not anticipate anything), now may get a leash put on him by the party officials who elected him, to their eternal regret:
A battle over control of the party's purse strings has erupted at the troubled Republican National Committee, with defenders of Chairman Michael S. Steele accusing dissident RNC members of trying to "embarrass and neuter" the party's new leader.
Randy Pullen, the RNC's elected treasurer, former RNC General Counsel David Norcross and three other former top RNC officers have presented Mr. Steele with a resolution, calling for a new set of checks and balances on the chairman's power to dole out money.
The powers include new controls on awarding contracts and spending money on outside legal and other services.
If I were a member of the party, I'd want this, actually. Here in California, we saw a grassroots candidate, Hillary Crosby, win the race for Democratic Party Controller over just this issue, the ability to provide meaningful checks to the party over where money should be allocated. To see it in the national Republican Party, which has always been top-down, is striking, and a symbol of just how little control Steele has. His first 100 days have been atrocious, and the party appears to be slinking quietly away from him.
You get the feeling that Michael Steele doesn't want to be the head of the RNC anymore. There's too much pressure, he seems to be unable to make a media appearance without angering someone, and he just doesn't fit very well with the job. I can think of no reason other than deliberate self-sabotage to explain why he would espouse a pro-choice position in a national magazine interview.
How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your Catholic faith but by the fact that you were adopted? Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that--I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it... Uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.
Explain that. The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.
Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion? Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.
I don't think you can be the head of the Republican Party and say what's in that above quote. Especially when you're not exactly setting the world on fire in other areas. The NY-20 special election could be decisive for Steele; while he isn't likely to be upended, he may just have to step down if he loses that one, which should be a layup in a pretty Republican district. And now all of the experts are rating the race a toss-up.
Michael Steele hasn't even been the chair for two months. And he's become a bad joke. I'm hoping that he never leaves that perch, but then again, I do not have the best interests of the party at heart.
...Steele is now massively backpedaling on the abortion comments. Meanwhile, Josh Marshall determines that Steele made these comments three weeks ago, which means he hasn't wanted to be RNC chair for longer than I thought.
But Howard Dean Was A Dangerous Choice To Lead The Party...
Michael Steele has had just about the most disastrous first couple months as the head of the RNC that I've ever seen. Almost from the very beginning, where he had to cooperate with the FBI over allegations of payments from his 2006 Senate campaign account to his sister, he has had an ethical cloud swirling around him. Now local news in Baltimore has found more problems:
RNC Chairman Michael Steele is under fresh scrutiny for more suspect expenditures from his 2006 Senate campaign. WBAL News reports that, at the end of his 2006 campaign. Steele made $64,000 in questionable payments to a firm named Allied Berton, LLC.
The firm’s website indicates that Allied Berton was “in the business of trading commodities, such as minerals, metals, coffee and sugar.” The purpose of Steele’s payments to the company, however, was listed as “political consulting.” Further, “At the time the campaigns made the payments, Allied Berton’s right to conduct business had been forfeited by the state for failing to file the proper paperwork.”
All told, Steele, former Governor Bob Ehrlich, Ehrlich’s running mate Kristen Cox and the Maryland Republican party paid over $400,000 to Allied Berton.
And these are just the ethical issues. The Steele-Limbaugh flap has emasculated the RNC chair. His statements have been increasingly bizarre. And he simply hasn't done his job.
Steadily becoming a dependable punch line, Steele has brushed back Rush Limbaugh, threatened moderate Republican senators, offered the “friggin’ awesome” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal some “slum love,” called civil unions “crazy” and promised more outreach to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” via an “off the hook” public relations campaign.
He even threw a shout-out to “one-armed midgets.”
That’s in just 30 days on the job — and that’s just the PR part.
On the organizational side, Steele does not have a chief of staff, a political director, a finance director or a communications director. Last week, one of the two men sharing the job of interim finance director was forced to resign.
For now, “the fourth floor,” as the RNC’s executive suite is known, is being run by a pair of consultants.
“There’s frustration that there’s no discipline, no planning,” said a well-known Republican consultant. “He’s risking being overexposed by accepting every interview, which makes gaffes more likely.”
I think there's a growing segment of the Republican establishment who wants to throw this guy over. He's been an unmitigated disaster. All part of the death spiral of Minority Leader Limbaugh and the GOP.
(David Plouffe really sticks in the knife in that op-ed.)
Michael Steele is having a great first month. Aside from creating an "off the hook" party message to appeal to the hip-hop generation, and aside from cooperating with the FBI, his latest public appearances have gotten him in trouble with people he must have figured weren't listening.
GALLAGHER: Is this a time when Republicans ought to consider some sort of alternative to redefining marriage and maybe in the road, down the road to civil unions. Do you favor civil unions?
STEELE: No, no no. What would we do that for? What are you, crazy? No. Why would we backslide on a core, founding value of this country? I mean this isn’t something that you just kind of like, “Oh well, today I feel, you know, loosey-goosey on marriage.” […]
GALLAGHER: So no room even for a conversation about civil unions in your mind?
Then, on Fox News, Steele signaled his support for primary challenges and blocking campaign funds for the three GOP Senators who supported the stimulus package. Unaware that those GOP Senators might actually hear him, he got an earful from them and their allies. He has since backtracked, but only when he's not talking to a member of the conservative establishment, when he intimates all over again.
Steele must think that any interview he gives is only a conversation between him and a host, that nobody else can hear. He must think it's a pre-broadcasting era.
I seem to remember that it was Howard Dean who was going to provide journalists with endless copy for his vituperative comments and slips of the tongue. Haven't seen that article about Steele. Hm.
This endless trial in Minnesota over their US Senate election is really working out well for the Republicans. Norm Coleman's lawyers get to make any wild charge they want, contradicting themselves over what ballots should count and what shouldn't, and in the meantime, the winner of the election, Al Franken, isn't seated as the 59th Democratic Senator, making it harder to break the obstructionism and making the Senate more reliant on the Axis of Presidents Nelson and Collins. It's a great little racket they've got going. So they decided to keep funding it.
The Republican National Committee has transferred $250,000 to the Minnesota GOP to help pay legal fees in Norm Coleman’s ongoing recount battle against Al Franken for the Minnesota Senate seat.
A spokesman for the RNC, Alex Conant, said the committee had made Coleman’s legal battle “a priority because we think he has a case and because we think he deserves to return to the Senate.” The money was transferred last month.
“We certainly appreciate the RNC’s commitment to Minnesota as we are continuing full speed ahead,” said Minnesota Republican Party spokeswoman Gina Countryman.
While the RNC cannot legally earmark funds for specific purposes, RNC sources said the deposit was made under the presumption that it would benefit Coleman’s campaign.
Later in the article it is noted that Coleman has raised $5 million dollars since the election to fund this gambit.
It's amusing to see the RNC baldly say that they "deserve" the seat up there, but that's not what's going on. It's just easy to keep making motions and keep calling witnesses while key legislation gets blocked in the Senate. And yes, one Senator does make a difference. Greg Sargent writes today:
One wild-card in the whole looming battle over the Employee Free Choice Act that’s gotten too little attention is this: When will Al Franken be seated as a Senator?
Labor officials say they’re reluctant to really kick off the battle over Employee Free Choice — a measure to make it easier to unionize that is labor’s top priority — until Franken is officially a member of the Senate.
Indeed, Minnesota’s other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, confirmed yesterday during an event in the state that the Senate has decided not to move on Employee Free Choice until Franken is seated, the Minnesota Post reports. If the House of Representatives pushes for the Senate to vote first on the measure, as expected, this could hold up the fight that much longer.
$250,000 or $5 million is a small price to pay for the Big Money Boyz to keep workers from forming unions. And in addition to gumming up the works for months upon months, they get to delegitmize the electoral process, as well as Al Franken's claim to the seat. It's a really nice investment for them. Better than anything in the stock market these days.
This reminds me of my dad coming to my room to "hang" with me and check out what "the kids" are into:
Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”
The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.
Does Clifton Davis from That's My Mama write Steele's lines? "Off the hook?" "We are going to cut the capital gains tax, can you dig it to the max, jive turkeys?!?!?" If you want an RNC Chair to relate to youth, it might be good to offer them, and I know this is crazy, policies they like, instead of references ripped off from "The Taking of Pelham 123."
I think this article was written so TBogg could make fun of it.
Michael Steele, who is cooperating with federal investigators (something you don't want in an RNC Chair) over post-election payments from his failed Senate run for work that was never completed to his sister, who happens to be Mike Tyson's ex-wife (something you REALLY don't want in an RNC Chair), is going on TV a lot to be the chief messenger for Republicans on the economy. This is a problem because he doesn't know what he is talking about.
Yesterday, Steele spoke to ABC's George Stephanopoulos about the Republican position on the economy, and inexplicably, stuck to the same position, arguing, "What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work."
When Stephanopoulos responded, "But that's a job," Steele added, "No, it's not a job. A job is something that -- that a business owner creates."
Stephanopoulos, looking confused, asked, "So a job doesn't count if it's a government job?" Steele stuck to his guns, insisting that hiring someone to perform a service isn't an actual job because government contracts "have an end point." Apparently, a job is only a job if it's indefinite.
Stephanopoulos, still confused, said, "I guess I don't really understand that distinction." So, Steele kept digging, arguing, "If you've got a government contract that is a fixed period of time, it goes away. The work may go away." Stephanopoulos reminded Steele that "we've seen millions and millions of jobs going away in the private sector just in the last year." (If the possibility of a job "going away" is the standard for having a real "job," then we're all unemployed.)
Add in there the fact that he's in possible trouble with the law because he paid off his sister 11 months after she DISSOLVED her company (because the work went away, I guess) and you'll see the confusion. Also the fact that he was paid for a number of years as the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, which is, you know, a government job.
Just ran into new RNC Chairman Michael Steele who watched President Obama's town hall in Indiana and wasn't impressed.
The Obama-backed stimulus, he said, "is just a wish list from a lot of people who have been on the sidelines for years.. to get a little bling, bling."
Ah, the Republican Party - where even the black people characterize black people as welfare kings and queens looking for a handout.
You Don't Want Your Leader Cooperating With The FBI
I don't think it's ever good for a political party when the chairman you just elected last week is in the papers saying he will cooperate with the FBI. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said Sunday that he would provide records from his 2006 U.S. Senate campaign to the FBI in an effort to speed an apparent investigation into allegations of improper campaign spending.
Steele confirmed that his sister was recently contacted by FBI agents looking into allegations that his campaign paid a company she owned more than $37,000 in 2007 for campaign work that was never performed. The allegations were made by Steele's former campaign finance chairman in an attempt to gain a more lenient prison sentence after he was convicted of fraud in an unrelated case [...]
"I want to clear up my good name. This is not the way I intend to run the RNC, with this over my head. We're going to dispense with it immediately," he said.
I seem to remember a lot of stories when Howard Dean first won the DNC chair about how he was going to be a wreck for the party (as opposed to soundly winning two election cycles and growing the party in every state), especially because he would make some unfortunate statements and get in the newspapers sullying the image of the party all the time.
I haven't paid much attention to the RNC Chair's race because I don't think it matters at all who gets to play second-fiddle to Rush Limbaugh for the next four years. But it is kind of amusing that there's no consensus at all. After three ballots there is no favorite, and the guy who led after the first ballot, current Chair Mike Duncan, just dropped out of the race. This is supposed to be a "win" for those who want "change" in the party, but change to what? The guy who passed out the "Barack the Magic Negro" CD dropped out earlier. Katon Dawson, the South Carolina party chair who belonged to a whites-only country club, is still in it. Then there's Ken Blackwell, who stole Ohio for Bush in 2004 and lost by the biggest landslide imaginable in 2006; Michael Steele, who got pummeled in his race for Senate in Maryland and who claimed that protesters threw Oreos at him without any evidence; and the state party chair in Michigan, the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country and growing fully hostile to Republicans.
Let me just take a moment to endorse Kenneth Blackwell for RNC Chairman. Sure he helped steal Ohio for President Bush in 2004, but he is also an expert in something near and dear to the heart of Republicans everywhere, something that they are deeply, deeply committed to as a party, something that they should totally campaign on in 2010 and 2012 if they want to have any chance of ever winning an election again.
That something? Sex between men and boys!
For your viewing pleasure (I hope not that kind of pleasure), here is Ken Blackwell debating then-Congressman Ted Strickland during the 2006 Ohio Governor's race. Ken Blackwell of course won that race and is now the very successful Governor of Ohio. Actually he got pathetically trounced, but--
That's right, Kenneth Blackwell seems to know a helluva lot about the North American Man Boy Love Association (commonly known as "NAMBLA" to Republicans), so he's obviously a shoo-in for the chairmanship.
Also, creepy clown-faced pseudo-politician Steve Forbes is supporting him.
And yesterday, Blackwell said that the Republican Party should try to defeat Obama's proposed economic stimulus package because if the Democrats help create jobs, it could hurt the Republicans' electoral chances down the line.
This is just the public face that the Republican Party needs: against creating jobs for Americans, and obsessed with sex between men and boys. I wholeheartedly endorse Ken Blackwell for RNC Chairman.
(Speaking for me only of course. D-Day might prefer the racist guy).
I think that you can find a fair amount of consensus across parties and ideologies that the country is in a mess. There are two wars, an economic crisis, rapid climate change, rising ranks of the unemployed and uninsured. So to see one of the two major national political parties grappling with whether it's OK to send out a parody song called "Barack the Magic Negro" isn't just a sad commentary on racial sensitivities. It suggests that conservative Republican "leaders" are simply living in an alternate universe, without any appearance or recognition of reality whatsoever. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter who is elected as Chairman of the RNC. This episode shows how sorry they really are.
Hopefully they'll move on to more pressing issues like nipple rings and whether or not cousins of illegal aliens should be allowed in national parks.
I'm trying to avoid the more hyperbolic outer reaches of the cable news talkers on the Blagojevich mess, but there are a few new developments in the case that merit a word or two. First, while impeachment proceedings are moving forward in the Illinois House, Democrats appear to have deep-sixed the idea of a special election, and I think that's a mistake.
At the Capitol, (House Speaker Mike) Madigan canceled plans to consider a special election to fill Obama's seat, saying Democrats are split over the best way to fill the vacancy. The move sparked harsh criticism from Republicans.
"Why is it, when the whole world is watching, you can't change your ways at least for one day and let democracy rule?" asked Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Greenville.
The GOP happens to be right. The people should be allowed to decide on this - it's consistent with democracy and reform. In a perfect world nobody would get appointed to serve in the US Senate. Let them battle it out with the voters. In addition, I don't think it necessarily follows that the Blagojevich scandal would even threaten whatever Democrat made it through a primary - presumably those most impacted by the connection to Blago wouldn't get through the primary to begin with - but I'm not in Illinois, so I can't be certain. What I DO know is that seeming to fear voters is the quickest way to get booted on your keister when this seat is inevitably up for a vote. There's polling out showing that 66% of Illinois voters favor a special election. Not listening to them is a bigger impediment to a new Democratic Senator than putting it to a vote.
Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson Jr. appears to have been moonlighting as a narc when he wasn't in the Congress:
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (CNN) — Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — who was cited in a criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich — has been an informant for at least a decade with the U.S. Attorney's office, and has informed on the embattled governor of Illinois, though not in the case currently under investigation, Jackson spokesman Kenneth Edmonds told CNN Tuesday.
In addition, two sources close to Jackson told CNN that, in 2002, Blagojevich — then running for governor of Illinois — solicited a $25,000 campaign donation from Jackson, which he did not get.
At the time, Jackson's wife, Sandi, was a candidate for the job of director of the state's Lottery Commission, a post she did not win, the sources said.
After Blagojevich took office, in early 2003, he told Jackson something to the effect of, "You see what $25,000 would have done?" the sources said.
This will do wonders for his image, which was tarnished by being named "Candidate #5" in the initial complaint.
Finally, I'm not sure what to make of Newt Gingrich's condemnation of Mike Duncan and the RNC for going after made-up Obama-Blagojevich ties.
I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
The recent web advertisement, “Questions Remain,” is a destructive distraction. Clearly, we should insist that all taped communications regarding the Senate seat should be made public. However, that should be a matter of public policy, not an excuse for political attack.
In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.
Digby thinks that Newtie has learned his lesson from pushing the Clinton impeachment and almost losing the majority, and that the press is doing the GOP's job for them so there's no need to pile on. I think it may be simpler than that. Duncan is in the running for RNC chair and Gingrich may simply favor a different candidate. Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele is on the record saying that Newt supports him. He may just be taking Duncan down a peg, and putting the failures of the past two election cycles on him. I hardly think that Gingrich is avoiding slash and burn politics.
I'm sure the fangs are out on the right over this:
John McCain sideswiped the Republican National Committee on Sunday for the intense focus it has placed on Barack Obama's relationship (however thin) to Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Saying he was confident that information would be made public regarding the president-elect's contacts with the embattled Illinois governor -- who is accused of putting up Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder -- McCain urged his Republican colleagues to keep their political priorities in order.
"I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary," said the Arizona Republican. "You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody -- right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don't know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama's campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me."
On the issues McCain is a pretty doctrinaire Republican, as he showed in the campaign. But the reason he infuriates the right the way Lieberman infuriates liberals is because he's willing to go on large stages and undercut the official party line, and bash Republicans. He didn't dare do this for two years when he was trying to get elected President, but now that's over and McCain is back, largely for the same reasons as Lieberman - it keeps his face on TV and he gets some glory from the Beltway chattering class. In this sense he can be a real asset to Obama, though it's purely for selfish reasons on McCain's part.
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