"Shallow Throat" on the GOP Meltdown & the DEMS

muckraker10021 · May 16, 2006

This article sums up the current situation (May 16th 2006) quite nicely

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"Shallow Throat" on GOP Meltdown: Turn Up the Heat!


 by | Bernard Weiner |
May 16th 2006

With Tom DeLay facing criminal charges, Duke Cunningham in prison and Karl Rove about to head for court, I needed to talk to "Shallow Throat" about the deepening implosion of the Republican machine and how progressives and Democrats should react in the run-up to the November election.

The high-ranking GOP mole inside the Bush Administration didn't waste any time responding to my coded signal. He was on the West Coast, so we met off the beaten track amid the gorgeous high-desert rocks and wildflowers of Anza Borrego Park in Southern California.

"From the outside," I said as we walked on the sandy path, "it looks like chaos and desperation in the Bush White House and a confused, contradictory Republican Party in Congress, with lots of important officials under indictment or investigation."

"It's even worse on the inside," said Shallow Throat. "It's not just the wheels falling off the bus -- the whole damn engine is coming loose. There is virtually nothing, nothing, going on in the White House but the survival game -- which means getting through the November election without total defeat. Everything they do, everything they say, every move they make, is geared for its effect on limiting the damage."

"What kind of damage?" I asked.

DEMOCRATS = SUBPOENA POWER

"It could be a Democrat tsunami, taking everything in its path, or, thanks to the incompetence and timidity of your Democrat friends (pulling in their claws when they should be attacking everyday, in unison), it could mean losing only a dozen seats or so in the House and a relative handful of Senate seats. If the latter, the Republicans theoretically could still retain control, but it would be by a razor-thin margin and only in party label; there would be no Bush agenda enacted. But most of my fellow Republicans I've talked with are already anticipating losing the House, maybe by 30 seats or more, while maybe, if they're lucky, hanging on to the Senate."

"If the House goes into Democratic hands," I replied, "it would be death by a thousand cuts for Bush&Co. over the rest of their term in office. The Democrats would have control of committees and thus subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath; the Dems could start an impeachment probe, criminal charges could be filed based on what's unearthed, and so forth. For all intents and purposes, the White House would be under constant siege, surrounded by political enemies and endlessly on the defensive. Sort of what your side did to Clinton in his second term."

"Yes, it would be the beginning of the end for the BushCheney crew," said Shallow Throat, "and good riddance to bad rubbish, say I. Which brings me to Karl Rove, and why he and his bunker cronies are fighting for their political lives -- and to stay out of the federal slammer. Finally, the Rovester finds himself caught up in the legal tar-baby known as Plamegate. Couldn't happen to a nicer fella. Heck of a job, Rovey.

"Rove may be a bit busy in the next several months meeting with his lawyers, preparing his case, worrying. He knows where all the bodies are buried, but don't count on him copping a plea by ratting out his boss. Libby's holding firm with regard to Cheney, and so will Rove on Bush; after all, he, like Libby, knows that if worse comes to worst, they'll be pardoned before they ever have to serve a day in prison.

REPAIRING THE BROKEN "BASE" LEVEES

"And don't think Rove won't still be in charge of the midterm election campaign. He's had months to prepare himself for Fitz' indictment, so the electoral plan is already in place and running smoothly. It's the old tried-and-true strategy: hang on to the loyalists, and peel off just enough votes elsewhere -- by whatever means necessary, and you know what machinations I'm talking about -- to eke out a victory and claim another 'mandate' for more wars and shredding of our civil liberties.

"It's called rebuilding-the-base. That's why they're nominating all those Neanderthal candidates now for appeals court judgeships, why they're plannign to send the National Guard to police the borders and keep out all those dark-skinned immigrants, why they're playing patty-cake with the Christian Rightwing on all those social issues, why they're frightening conservatives about what might happen if the dreaded libruls take over. (And it explains why John McCain felt compelled to go to Jerry Falwell's college and debase himself; McCain wants to be President in the worst way -- and he got his wish.) Placate the base, baby."

"On the Democratic side," I asked, "is that why Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is promising that if her party takes over the House, the Dems won't move to impeach?"

"You got it," said Shallow Throat. "She is gambling that the activist Dem base will stay with the party while she tries to drive a wedge between the Rove thugs and nervous conservatives, who are ready to desert the GOP because they can't stand what the arrogant and thoroughly inept Bush/Cheney crew have done to their party and to the country. Rove's tactic is to build up fear in the citizenry in general and by telling the conservatives in particular that the Dems will go hog-wild with their power if they regain control of Congress, and now Pelosi is trying to calm those anxieties by promising to tamp down Democratic activism.

"But by appearing to take impeachment off the table, Pelosi has removed a key bit of her party's leverage before the fight has even begun -- Clinton used to do that also, and it drove his supporters to the brink -- and risks alienating the passionate Democratic base that is finding the impeachment issue a wonderful one with which to fire up its forces.

"YOU DEMOCRATS NEVER LEARN"

"Here the Dems have the first good shot in six years to do some real damage to the Bush&Co. machine, to start to build real momentum for wholesale change, and Pelosi is playing old-style, namby-pamby politics. There are a lot of Dems who will sit on their hands in November if Pelosi's type of Democratic politics is what's representing the party. At the least, she should give herself some wiggle room, say something like impeachment is not in the cards 'unless more evidence of presidential malfeasance emerges,' or something like that."

"Maybe," I replied, "Pelosi is angling for 2008. Everybody else wants to be on that ticket, so why not her, as a V.P. choice? If so, she figures she's got to move toward the center for November."

"You Democrats never learn," said Shallow Throat. "Your party is seriously considering Hillary Clinton as your 2008 nominee! (Or maybe it's Rove&Co. trying to pre-select Hillary as the candidate they'd most like to run against.) Not only is she a craven piece of walking ambition, who will trim her sails to the prevailing winds, selling out the base of the party with nary a qualm, but she also starts out with the most astonishingly high and passionate negatives -- a third of the voters won't even consider her. That's quite a handicap to take into a potentially tight race. There are plenty of solid, reasonable, electable candidates to choose from.

WHICH GEORGE IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY?

"The country has changed considerably since Hillary and Bill were in the White House. The polarization of politics is even more pronounced. Bush has used and abused the Constitution in setting himself up as an old-style monarch -- he's more King George III than President George the W -- who wants all power in his hands. It's like 'I can do whatever I want whenever I want and you can't do a bloody thing about it' -- that's what America's once-admired democratic republic has come to these days, hostage to a poseur with a self-esteem problem.

"The U.S. already is involved in two wars, and now Bush wants to add another one, in Iran -- possibly using nuclear weapons! The economy, and future generations, are burdened by humongous deficits to finance Bush's wars and tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy. Our air and water are becoming more unhealthy as the industrial polluters effectively write the legislation regulating discharges. The courts are becoming dangerously politicized and unbalanced. The Congress, already a rubber-stamp, is ignored by the Administration. The conglomerate-owned mass-media are beholden to the powers that be and rarely do their journalistic jobs. The Administration is like a take-the-money-and-run crowd, with corruption everywhere you look. Iraq is even more of a disaster than anyone thought was possible. The entire electoral process is corrupted and infinitely corruptible, to the point where millions believe their votes are not counted honestly or accurately, especially since one party's supporters control the vote-tabulating systems."

"So," I asked, "do you think it's still possible, or desirable, for the Democrats to take over the House in November? And how do they deal with the likelihood of vote-theft and electoral chicanery?"

"Desirable? Yes, for sure. Despite what I think of most Democrats, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate: Two-and-a-half more years of BushCheney wars, billions and billions wasted, reckless bungling, authoritarian mayhem, the Constitution further shredded. Sure, both parties tend to serve the same corporate masters, but the differences between them are significant indeed when talking about war and peace and respect for the Constitutional guarantees of due process of law.

"In short, the citizenry, on the left, in the middle and on the right, are angry, frustrated, crying out for a wholesale electoral house-cleaning. And yet your Democrat friends still remain essentially clueless as to the necessity to fight and fight hard -- in short, to become a true party of the opposition. One that will take serious, concerted action to challenge the corrupted voting system in this country, for example. So far, not much concerted noise is being made in that regard, though the issue finally is making its way into the mainstream media, and some lawsuits are pending. The bottom line is that we may be a bit late in many states to meaningfully influence voting reform for the November balloting -- still we have to pull out all the legal stops to do so -- but it's possible to get this issue debated and settled correctly before the 2008 vote for sure.

"In short, the 2006 election could be stolen yet again -- unless there is such a huge groundswell of anti-Bush voting, and demands for transparency in the vote-tabulation process, that the Republicans wouldn't even dare fiddle with the results. But even there I wouldn't put it past them to try anyway; they're that desperate.

"BushCheney are destroying checks-and-balances, the separation of power, the independent Judiciary, the Congress as the true law-making body. Bush claims the right to torture, to break the law, to spy on millions of his own citizens, to lie the country into war -- wake up and smell the coffee, guys! It's time to gear it up and give those guys fits. Enough is enough. They're not walking over us anymore.

"Given how Bush has botched and alienated nearly everyone in the country and the world, the 2008 election could well be a pushover for a populist Democrat, who promises change, honesty, moderation, a return to competent rule, and unwavering respect for the Constitution.

"For these reasons, and no other, I, a born and bred Republican, will support the Democrat Party in November of 2006. Or else risk getting Jeb in 2008."


Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits <a href="http://www.crisispapers.org" target="_blank">The Crisis Papers</a>. For comments:
<a href="mailto:crisispapers@comcast.net">crisispapers@comcast.net</a>

muckraker10021 · May 17, 2006

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The Incredible Shrinking President

<img src="http://www.motherjones.com/radio/2006/04/phillips_265x339.jpg" width="125" height="159">
by Kevin Phillips

Kevin Phillips Bio

May 16th 2006

George W. Bush’s job approval just hit 29% in one national poll, and the incredible shrinking presidency keeps making new lows. In some Northern states, the man’s job numbers are down in the teens.

Two months ago, it was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/time-to-recall-bush_b_18036.html">suggested in this space</a> that the prospect of having a lame-brain lame duck in the White House for nearly three more years suggested that serious consideration be given to possibilities whereby he might be replaced.

This has taken on even greater gravity in the last few days because of the rumors swirling about the imminence of the special prosecutor indicting White House political chief Karl Rove for perjury related to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Were such an indictment to come, Bush might be hard-pressed to survive, and with the same scandal lapping at the shoes of Vice President Dick Cheney, it’s likely that any retirement-cum-resignation would have to be a double one. Democrats might be secretly thrilled by the possibility of having a crippled, muddied President Cheney for two years, but such a succession would never fly with the public.

I realize that this is still pure speculation, by legal yardsticks entirely premature. However, the succession aspect is extraordinary. Under the Constitution, the resignation of Bush and Cheney would hand the presidency to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, at present Dennis Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach, well liked but manifestly less than qualified for promotion. Wise Republicans, however, would be aware of a critical anomaly: the person elected as Speaker of the House does not, as a matter of law, have to be a Member of the House. If Bush and Cheney were obliged to resign this summer, the House GOP could elect as Speaker a plausible interim president and have the presidency devolve on him. Someone like Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, the respected Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, comes to mind.

On the other hand, were Cheney at least as soiled as Bush, he could resign first and Bush could name some Lugar-like figure (who would clearly be confirmed) as vice-president in place of Cheney. Then if Bush resigned, an ethically acceptable Republican successor would be in place before any November Democratic takeover of Congress.

For such things to unfold against the backdrop of this year’s midterm Congressional elections would be little short of tumultuous. The notion that the next president would be chosen through or by Congress would dominate the autumn debate. It might ensure a Democratic landslide – but it might also give dispirited, Bush-weary Republicans a rallying point.

On top of which, two other contemporary circumstances – Bush’s 29% approval and the crumbling consumer confidence that has eroded the stock market indexes – suggest that economic developments between now and November could also increase the likelihood of a Democratic takeover of Congress. Come January, that would make California Democrat Nancy Pelosi the next House Speaker, and she would become the next president in the event of Bush and Cheney resigning or being forced out of office in 2007.

Still, the Democrats could easily replace Pelosi with a national figure in the same way that the Republicans could replace Hastert. They could even make former president Bill Clinton Speaker on a few days’ notice. Although he has already served two terms, the Constitutional prohibition against a president being elected to more than two terms would probably not apply to a former president taking the Oval Office by devolution in a line of succession.

Will it happen? Probably not. But over the last half century, only two prior presidents’ job ratings have dipped below 30% – Nixon before he resigned and Carter before he was defeated in the 1980 election. The replacement of George W. Bush, if necessary, stands to be a little more complicated.</td>
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muckraker10021 · May 21, 2006

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The Rove Da Vinci Code

<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/ts-rich-75.jpg">
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 21, 2006

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.h...Q2FfcQ2FJaQ3EQ7DQ3EJQ7DQ2FfcQ5CQ3EQ5DBQ3CBUjM

IF we're to believe the reviews, "The Da Vinci Code" is the most exciting summer blockbuster since, well, "Poseidon." But the "Da Vinci Code" marketing strategy is a masterpiece: a perfect Hollywood metaphor for the American political culture of our day.

The Machiavellian mission for the hit-deprived Sony studio was to co-opt conservative religious critics who might depress turnout for a $125-million-plus thriller portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a fraud. To this end, as The New Yorker reported, Sony hired a bevy of P.R. consultants, including a faith-based flack whose Christian Rolodex previously helped sell such inspirational testaments to Hollywood spirituality as "Bruce Almighty" and "Christmas With the Kranks."

Among Sony's ingenious strategies was an elaborate Web site, The Da Vinci Dialogue, which gave many of the movie's prominent critics a platform to vent on the studio's dime. Thus was "The Da Vinci Code" repositioned as a "teaching moment" for Christian evangelists - a bit of hype "completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine," as Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun and current Hollywood screenwriter, explained to The Times. The more "students" who could be roped into this teaching moment, of course, the bigger the gross.

Ms. Nicolosi remains a vociferous opponent of the film. On her blog she chastises Sony's heavenly P.R. helpers for coaxing "legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham." But you do have to admire the studio's chutzpah, if the word may be used in this context. It rivals Tom Sawyer's bamboozling of his friends into painting that fence. The Sony scheme also echoes much of the past decade's Washington playbook. Politicians, particularly but not exclusively in the Karl Rove camp, seem to believe that voters of "faith" are suckers who can be lured into the big tent and then abandoned once their votes and campaign cash have been pocketed by the party for secular profit.

Nowhere is this game more naked than in the Jack Abramoff scandal: the felonious Washington lobbyist engaged his pal Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, to shepherd Christian conservative leaders like James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the Rev. Donald Wildmon and their flocks into ostensibly "anti-gambling" letter-writing campaigns. They were all duped: in reality these campaigns were engineered to support Mr. Abramoff's Indian casino clients by attacking competing casinos. While that scam may be the most venal exploitation of "faith" voters by Washington operatives, it's all too typical. This history repeats itself every political cycle: the conservative religious base turns out for its party and soon finds itself betrayed. The right's leaders are already threatening to stay home this election year because all they got for their support of Republicans in the previous election year was a lousy Bush-Cheney T-shirt. Actually, they also got two Supreme Court justices, but their wish list was far longer. Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist who invented Focus on the Family, set the tone with a tantrum on Fox, whining that Republicans were "ignoring those that put them in office" and warning of "some trouble down the road" if they didn't hop-to.

The doctor's diagnosis is not wrong. He has been punk'd - or Da Vinci'd - since 2004. Though President Bush endorsed the federal marriage amendment then, there's a reason he hasn't pushed it since. Not Gonna Happen, however many times it is dragged onto the Senate floor. The number of Americans who "strongly oppose" same-sex marriage keeps dropping - from 42 percent two years ago to 28 percent today, according to the Pew Research Center - and there will never be the votes to "write discrimination into the Constitution," as Mary Cheney puts it.

The real Republican establishment - including Laura Bush, who has repeatedly refused to disown the many gay families at this year's White House Easter Egg Roll - senses the drift of the culture. "Will & Grace" may have retired to reruns last week, but it's been supplanted by a gay "Sopranos" tough guy who out-brokebacks Jack and Ennis.

The religious right's hope for taming that culture is also doomed, however much Congress ceremoniously raises indecency fines in an election year. The major media companies, heavy donors to both parties, first get such bills watered down, then challenge the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement in court.

The mogul most ostentatiously supportive of Republican causes, Rupert Murdoch, may perennially fan the flames of a bogus "war on Christmas" on Fox, but he's waging his own, far more lethal war on the Christian right by starting a companion TV network this fall to match MySpace.com, his hugely popular and hugely libidinous Internet portal. Mr. Murdoch's new gift to America's youth, My Network TV, "will showcase greed, lust, sex," according to The Wall Street Journal. Conservatives fretting about his fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton don't even know what's about to hit them.

But for all these betrayals, Dr. Dobson and Company won't desert the Republicans come Election Day. If Mr. Rove steps up his usual gay-baiting late in the campaign, as is his wont, maybe the turnout of those on the hard-core right will eke out a victory for the party that double-crossed them not just on cultural issues but also on secular conservative principles (like fiscal responsibility and immigration-law enforcement). If so, they'll promptly be Da Vinci'd yet again. A Republican retreat on stem-cell research is already under way. If there's electoral fallout from the South Dakota Legislature's Draconian abortion ban - the Republican governor's job-approval rating fell from 72 percent to 58 percent in a single month after he signed it - the pro-life checklist in Congress will suffer as well.

Whatever happens in November, the good news is that the religious right leaders most stroked by Mr. Rove, many of them past 70, may no longer command such large blocs of voters anyway. As Amy Sullivan writes in the latest New Republic, Mr. Rove has reason to worry about "another group of evangelicals: the nearly 40 percent who identify themselves as politically moderate and who are just as likely to get energized about AIDS in Africa or melting ice caps as partial-birth abortion and lesbian couples in Massachusetts." The bad news is that no sooner does the religious-right base show signs of cracking in a youthquake than the Democrats trot out their own doomed Da Vinci strategy.

This idiocy began the morning after Election Day 2004, when a vaguely worded exit-poll question persuaded credulous party leaders that "moral values" determined their defeat (as opposed to, say, their standard-bearer's campaign). Their immediate response was to seek out faith-based consultants not unlike those recruited by Sony, and practice dropping the word "values" and biblical quotations into their public pronouncements. In the House, they organized, heaven help us, a Democratic Faith Working Group.

As the next election approaches, they're renewing this effort, to farcical effect. The Democrats' chairman, Howard Dean, who proved his faith-based bona fides in the 2004 primary season by citing Job as his favorite book in the New Testament, went on the Pat Robertson TV network this month and yanked his party's position on same-sex marriage to the right. (He apologized for his "misstatement" once off the air.)

Not to be left behind, Senator Clinton gave a speech last week knocking young people for thinking "work is a four-letter word" and for having TV's in their rooms, home Internet access and, worst of all, that ultimate instrument of the devil, iPods. "I hope that we start thinking some very old-fashioned thoughts," she said. (She also subsequently apologized, once her daughter complained, joining the general chorus of ridicule.) However "old-fashioned" Mrs. Clinton's thoughts, don't expect her to turn back Mr. Murdoch's campaign cash in protest against his steamy new TV channel.

The one New York politician even more disingenuous in this racket is Rudolph Giuliani. He outdid John McCain's appearance with Jerry Falwell by campaigning last week for Ralph Reed in the lieutenant governor's race in Georgia. Any religious conservative who mistakes "America's mayor," an adamant supporter of abortion rights and gay rights, for a fellow traveler is in desperate need of an intervention, if not an exorcism.

But that hypothetical, easily duped voter may no longer exist. Like the Bush era, the cynical Rove strategy of exploiting faith-based voters may be nearing its end. For proof, just take a look at the most craven figure in American politics: the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. To flatter the far right, this Harvard-trained surgeon misdiagnosed Terri Schiavo's vegetative state from the Senate floor, and justified abstinence-only sex education in AIDS prevention by telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he didn't know for certain that tears and sweat couldn't transmit H.I.V. But increasingly it's not only liberals who see through him. One of his latest stunts, a proposed $100 gas-tax rebate, provoked Rush Limbaugh to condemn him for "treating us like we're a bunch of whores."

When senators as different as Mr. Frist and Mrs. Clinton both earn bipartisan ridicule for their pandering, you have to believe that there's a god other than Karl Rove watching over American politics after all.

"Shallow Throat" on the GOP Meltdown & the DEMS

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