April 28, 2006 PERMALINK
The '08 GOP Field Takes A Hit
(posted April 28 2:15 AM ET)
The already weak field of 2008 GOP presidential aspirants just got a lot weaker.
Republican elites not comfortable with Sen. John McCain’s early frontrunner status appeared to be pinning their hopes on Sen. George Allen.
Allen led a National Journal poll of “Republican insiders” last December.
Also last year, columnist George Will gave Allen a puff piece, clearly hoping to raise Allen’s stature.
Why? As Will put it, “The ideal Republican candidate can meld two Republican tendencies that are in tension -- social conservatism and libertarianism.
In other words, appeals to corporate cronies and fringe fundamentalists.
Will also slipped in that “there are no laces on Allen's cowboy boots, which go with the smokeless tobacco in the circular can in his pocket.”
In other words, Washingtonians think that’s enough to win the “guy you’d have a beer with” game.
But Allen hasn’t really accomplished anything as Senator, and so, does not have a national profile.
Most Americans don’t know his story.
Yesterday, the New Republic began telling his story.
It’s an ugly and creepy story.
There’s so much disturbing stuff that summarizing it can’t do it justice.
But one thing stands out. His disgusting attachment to the Confederate flag.
And Allen can’t lean on a “Southern Pride” argument, because he wasn’t born nor raised in the South. Neither were his parents (his mom’s French).
Yet, TNR reports, while attending high school in wealthy Palos Verdes, CA, he drove a car with a Confederate flag plate and wore a rebel flag pin for his yearbook photo.
That could be dismissed as youthful indiscretion if there was evidence that he renounced such symbols in adulthood.
But the opposite is true.
During past Allen campaigns, it was reported in the early 1990s Allen had a Confederate flag up in his living room and a noose dangling from a tree in his law office.
Allen had successfully sluffed off reports by saying he was merely a collector of flags and Western memorabilia, and that he did not display such items anymore.
But those explanations now ring even more hollow knowing his long-standing attachment to the rebel flag.
Furthermore, while being interviewed by the New Republic – before he knew reporter Ryan Lizza saw his yearbook photo – Allen tried to paint himself a super-sensitive on race issues by recounting scenes of racial strife while driving through the South as a kid.
As Lizza wrote, “Why would a young man with such a sensitive understanding of Southern racial conflict and no Southern heritage wear a Confederate flag in his formal yearbook photo?”
He did not get a good answer. Just a lot of stammering and lame excuses.
Perhaps this won’t derail Allen immediately, as it’s extremely early in the presidential race and not many people are focusing on it.
But “Republican insiders” can’t read the piece and continue to delude themselves about Allen's electability.
Certainly, other prospective candidates, angling to be the anti-McCain, will spread the piece around to potential donors and operatives, to say, “this horse can’t go all the way.”
Which means that those who haven’t felt comfortable with McCain will have to ask themselves:
Is there anyone else in this limp crop (Bill Frist, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, George Pataki, Newt Gingrich) to get excited about?
Or should we embrace McCain after his flip-flops on tax cuts and Jerry Falwell, which may help woo right-wingers now, but are eroding the “straight talk” persona he needs for the general election?
Not great choices.
(Other blog reaction to the Allen piece from Raising Kaine, TPMCafe, Where's George Allen?, Hullabaloo, Political Animal and America's Finest Blog.)
April 27, 2006 PERMALINK
Fox Gets Snowed
(posted April 27 2 AM ET)
Scott McClellan was not an effective communicator, but his job was to not communicate anything, so he fit the bill.
His job was to diminish the White House press corps. To frustrate them. To waste their time.
A press secretary’s job typically is to make sure reporters get what they need so they can provide their service to the public.
Bush preferred signaling to the corps that he could not care less about their (and our) needs – that he did not need their services in getting his preferred message out.
Having someone as inept as McClellan as press secretary signaled to them: this is how little I think of you.
And the corps was successfully neutered for a long while.
But they reached their breaking point when McClellan was caught flagrantly lying to them about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby’s involvement the Valerie Plame leak.
The briefings became more confrontational, and in turn, interesting.
That meant McClellan’s sweaty, defensive mug and his poor communication skills were getting on the evening news (and getting mocked by comics) far more than intended.
He had outlived his usefulness.
Enter Tony Snow.
Snow is the biggest name to become press secretary since TV cameras began airing White House press briefings live.
Granted, as the guy who got demoted from hosting Fox News Sunday, his star power is strictly B-List.
But B-List is good enough in the star-deprived Beltway to instantly make Snow the face of the White House.
Snow is spinning himself as the press corps’ new best friend, and he’s already getting favorable press clips as a result.
But you don’t need a big name to make nice with reporters, or to foster transparency.
You need a big name to get people to pay attention to your message.
So that’s what we can expect from Snow: a more aggressive daily messaging operation.
In hopes that can make people forget the colossal policy failures crashing down all around the White House.
That’s why Bush didn’t care that Snow has occasionally criticized him from the Right.
It was more important to get someone high-profile and smooth on TV, than someone who had never uttered anything controversial.
So it’s not Bush who looks bad in this move. It’s Fox News.
Sure, you may understand that Fox is a right-wing outlet, but don’t think that the “Fair and Balanced” shtick doesn’t work.
While Fox’s audience is disproportionately conservative, 51% say they are Democrats or independents, and 40% of its audience describes themselves as moderate or liberal.
But having a prominent member of the Fox family effectively walk down the other end of the office to formally shill for Bush, takes a shine off of Fox’s attempts to present itself as a legit news operation not co-opted by the Beltway elite.
April 26, 2006 PERMALINK
Bad Foreign Policy = High Gas Prices
(posted April 26 2 AM ET)
Dubya must not think gas prices are going to come down soon.
Otherwise he’d probably just ride out the spike by freshening up some old talking points.
Throughout his first term when gas prices shot up, he’d just whine about the lack of “refining capacity” and push his energy bill (tax breaks for Big Oil).
But he wouldn't flinch from saying that the bill would do nothing to lower today’s prices.
(He finally got that bill last August. And he was right, it did nothing to lower gas prices.)
Now, with gas prices really getting out of hand, along with his poll numbers, Bush is feeling the need to posture and pretend he’s going to seriously investigate his Big Oil buddies.
Of course, he’s not proposing to rescind their share of the $14.5 billion in tax breaks from last year’s bill – money which they clearly don’t need and aren’t using to help consumers.
But this issue goes beyond the behavior of Big Oil executives, and the Republicans who enable them.
The GOP’s reckless foreign policy is to blame as well.
Their actual policy goal is to exert control over lands rich with natural resources, and ensure that we’ll control the flow of energy, to ourselves and others.
They have even claimed that their foreign adventures would lower gas prices.
Yet in reality, their policy stokes instability across the globe, making supplies less secure, rattling the markets.
For example, they’ve destabilized the Arab/Muslim world by invading Iraq and preparing to attack Iran.
They’ve worsened relations with Venezuela, our fourth largest oil importer, simply because they don’t care for the leftist ideology of the nation’s elected leader – harming stability in our hemisphere.
And in Africa, because they have failed to lead the world to address genocide in the Sudan, violence has spilled over into neighboring Chad, another significant oil importer.
Certainly, high gas prices are not the primary reason to oppose the current foreign policy.
But it is a manifestation of how the policy isn’t working, evidence that it is making our economy and our security less stable.
April 25, 2006 PERMALINK
Mary McCarthy: Start of CIA Purge?
(posted April 25 1:30 AM ET)
The firing of CIA analyst Mary McCarthy was first reported as related to the W. Post story, which revealed a network of secret prisons the Bush Administration was maintaining in Europe.
But yesterday, McCarthy denied any involvement in the prison story.
CNN cited an unnamed CIA official saying McCarthy was fired for a "pattern of behavior."
And the W. Post reported, "Though McCarthy acknowledged having contact with reporters, a senior intelligence official confirmed yesterday that she is not believed to have played a central role in The Post's reporting on the secret prisons."
So what's really going on here?
Two things of note:
First, on Sunday, the W. Post (via David Corn and Political Animal) reported:
The White House ... has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials.
McCarthy donated to the Kerry presidential campaign, and was close to Rand Beers, who left the Bush Administration and joined the Kerry effort.
Second, CNN reported yesterday:
Officials said the investigation into leaking to Dana Priest of The Washington Post, and other journalists, is ongoing. "It is not over yet," said one.
This doesn't look like an investigation into a single leak.
This looks like the beginning of a political purge of career public servants at the CIA -- those whose loyalty is to the facts and the people, not to the White House's political agenda -- with the leak as a handy excuse.
For Iraq, independent CIA agents were strongarmed into submission.
For any future military action (Iran anyone?), with the White House's credibility now shot, they can't afford to have any dissenting voices in the intelligence community.
So perhaps, they're planning to kick them to the curb ahead of time.
If that is the case, McCarthy is the very tip of the iceberg, a warning shot to other agents, because she was scheduled to retire this month.
Don't be suprised to see more agents getting fired, or pressured to resign.
April 24, 2006 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted April 24 12:30 AM ET)
On Saturday, Jawad al-Maliki was nominated to be Iraq's Prime Minister, breaking a months-long stalemate.
Immediately, Sec. of State Condi Rice called it an “important milestone” since “the Iraqis are now well on their way to the formation of this government of national unity.”
Well, you say, that’s pretty darn exciting news. And fortuitously timed for the White House.
What better way to push aside all that negative stuff about staff shakeups, generals against Rumsfeld and disastrous poll numbers.
So, you might guess that on Sunday, the Bushies were out in full force, talking up the big news, how we’ve turned the corner, democracy is taking root, and the country is stabilizing.
Uh ... not exactly.
Oddly, top White House officials chose to sleep in Sunday.
Headlining duties on the top 3 shows were ceded to Democrats and critics: Sen. Ted Kennedy on Meet The Press, Sen. John Kerry on ABC’s The Week, and the anti-Rumsfeld retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste on CBS’ Face The Nation.
(Though Dubya’s Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, gave a low-key interview on CNN’s Late Edition.)
In turn, the messages from the Sunday shows that found their way into the mainstream media cut against the White House.
Democrats nailing the White House on its double standard for leaks, and for failing to capture Bin Laden.
As well as GOP Sen. Arlen Specter and Dem Sen. Carl Levin, on CNN, creating momentum for a windfall profit tax on oil companies, to pressure them to lower gas prices.
Why would the Bushies pass up this chance to spin the war and shift the media focus?
LiberalOasis can only speculate, but perhaps for once, they held back -- seeing no political gain in stoking false hope, raising expectations they would not likely meet.
They probably do not expect the formation of a government – one of dubious legitimacy, as it is being formed several months after the actual election -- to actually decrease the violence.
(Reuters reports that there is still no plan for dealing with sectarian violence.)
They are probably also aware that – as Informed Comment and Needlenose explain – Maliki, who has not been approved by Parliament yet, has only tenuous support.
So, they cannot bank on the “unity” government being fully forged just yet.
And if it gets fully forged, they cannot bank on it staying forged for long.
When even the Bushies realize that nothing good can be expected around the corner, and can’t even be bothered with giving the situation a good spin, you know how bleak the situation is.
(UPDATE 4/24/06 12:15 PM ET -- Perhaps this has something to do with it. Think Progress relays a Time report on the new "recovery plan": "...the 'riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan' is Bolten’s strategy to reclaim Bush’s 'security credibility' — take the focus off Iraq by rattling sabers at Iran")
QUICK HIT
More GOP Hesitancy on Iran?
The GOP chair of the House Intelligence Cmte Pete Hoekstra muddied the right-wing attempts to beat the Iran war drums, admitting that we don’t really know what is happening in Iran.
From Fox News Sunday:
CHRIS WALLACE: Congressman, how close is Iran to actually developing a nuclear weapon, or don't we really know?
HOEKSTRA: I'd say we really don't know. We're getting lots of mixed messages.
Obviously, we're getting lots of different messages from their leadership, the stuff that they are saying in public.
It all points out the fact we need to do much better in rebuilding our intelligence community, reshaping it, transforming it, making sure that we give ... policymakers the information that they need so that we can make better decisions...
WALLACE: But, Chairman Hoekstra, I mean, almost everyone agrees this is the major foreign policy issue or challenge facing this country today, and you're saying we really don't know what's going on in Tehran?
HOEKSTRA: Hey, sometimes it's better to be honest and to say there's a whole lot we don't know about Iran that I wish we did know.
And we as public policymakers need to know that as we're moving forward and as decisions are being made on Iran, we don't have all of the information that we would like to have.
And that's nothing more than being honest, being honest with the American people of saying in some of this stuff, we wish we had the information, but right now we don't.
