Musing's musings

The ignorant tight-ass club

That's a line from the third episode of the second season of The West Wing. It comes at the end of one of Jed Bartlet's famous rants, directed at a prim and proper female radio host who was obviously modeled after "Dr." Laura Schlessinger.

But as I was watching the episode on DVD tonight, the thought struck me that it's a fairly accurate description of what the modern Republican Party has become in the last couple of decades. The GOP and its candidates like to refer back to the glory days (well, in their minds, anyway) of Ronald Reagan; sometimes they even go as far back as Lincoln. But all the while, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has been under siege, and is now in thrall to, people that neither Lincoln nor Eisenhower would likely have pissed on had they been on fire. Don't believe me? Consider this, from a letter that Lincoln wrote to his best friend Joshua Speed in August 1855:

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty, --to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

The Know-Nothings, by the by, got their start as a precursor-cum-competitor of the Republican Party. I'm sure the founder(s) of the Know-Nothings would be smiling, to see so many of their nativist, racist doctrines being embraced so tightly by the Republicans of today--as exemplified, for example, by retiring former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's decision to endorse the candidacy of dairy magnate James Oberweis Überweiß to replace him. Überweiß has run for statewide office several times before--and lost rather spectacularly each time--and I tend to suspect that at least one of the reasons he hasn't been able to win election in this state is because he's absolutely batshit crazy when it comes to scarybrownpeople (who, he believes, are coming up in droves from Mexico and points southward and taking the jobs of "real" Amerkins). I can't imagine that sentiment plays terribly well in places like Aurora, where the Hispanic population is (a) significant and (b) on the rise. But neither, it seems, can one expect to win the Republican nomination these days--at any level--without mouthing the hateful shibboleths about illegal immigrants, border security, and the like.

Fat Denny has left the building!

It's official: Dennis Hastert is resigning his seat in Congress effective 10:59 p.m. tonight. The resignation was allegedly timed so as to make it possible for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to schedule the necessary special election to replace him on the same day as the regularly scheduled primary, February 5, 2008.

This is going to put the campaign to find candidates for that election into high gear. There are four candidates for each party's slot, though I haven't heard anything either about or from Joe Serra, the fourth Democratic candidate. Don't care to, either, since I'm in John Laesch's corner. Speaking of John, if you've got some spare coin that isn't doing anything and you want to send a real progressive to Congress to replace a tool of the corporate interests, do please consider sending it John's way. (And no, I'm not on the Laesch campaign staff. I just like the man and what he stands for.)

Do, please, let the door hit you in the arse on the way out

Think Progress and Big Orange, both quoting Roll Call, are reporting that Dennis Hastert will announce his resignation/retirement from Congress tomorrow. His departure will be effective before the end of the year, and will force a special election to fill his seat until the 2008 general elections.

This was widely rumored to be likely after the Republicans lost control of Congress and, despite some wishful thinking in Left Blogistan to the contrary, it really does seem likely to me that the biggest motivating factors in Hastert's decision are his declining health and a profound discontent at having to give up the speakership--especially to Nancy Pelosi. Many of us had hoped that Hastert, who was strongly implicated in the Mark Foley coverup, would be forced out when that scandal broke, but it didn't happen.

Doesn't matter. The important thing, for this district, for Illinois, and for the country as a whole, is that Fat Denny will no longer sully our good name in Congress. My one worry is that the unstated reason behind his decision not to wait for the inevitable loss in '08 is that he wants effectively to anoint his successor--quite likely Aurora dairy magnate, homophobe and overt racist Jim Oberweis Überweiß. The good news, if that scenario plays out, is that Überweiß is, if I remember correctly, 0-for-4 in statewide races. He spent a ton of money trying to best Jack Ryan and six other contenders for the Republican nomination to run against Barack Obama a couple of years ago, and couldn't hack it then. I don't see him performing any better in a district that is heavily Hispanic, particularly after his infamous "brown people" ads from that failed Senate primary get resurrected and played repeatedly on local Spanish stations.

As the screaming queen in the fedora is wont to say, "Developing." Providing the weather doesn't get in the way tomorrow, I'll try to keep this story updated--but we may be in for a late-season pounding, according to the National Weather Service.

Oh, yes, mustn't forget. Drop a few spare coins in the kitty for the best of the Democrats running to replace Hastert, John Laesch.

Update I: The Politico has now taken up the Hastert-to-resign refrain, but quotes an unnamed "GOP aide" as saying the announcement, originally planned for Oct. 17, will be postponed. We'll see. Kinda pointless to reschedule after the horse is already out of the barn, but Hastert always was manipulative.

Cry me a river

It's Schadenfreude time!

Turning the Wayback Machine to June of 2004 we might find a story such as this one, from the Washington Post:

Pelosi Seeks House Minority 'Bill of Rights'
Hastert Dismisses Democrats' Complaint, Saying GOP Record Is Better Than Foes'

House Democrats' anger at heavy-handed Republican tactics reached a new level yesterday, with the chamber's top Democrat asking the House speaker to embrace a "Bill of Rights" for the minority, regardless which party it is.

In keeping with the general atmosphere of the House these days, aides to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he will not respond to the two-page proposal from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis, as one of the Holy Roman Emperors (who were really neither holy, Roman, nor emperors in any meaningful sense of the word) used to say, "The times change, and we change along with them." Fast-forward to the present, where we find some interesting reading from Representatives Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and Tom Price (R-Ga.):

Roughly 140 million Americans will be represented in the House by a Republican during the 110th Congress. Our fundamental duty is to guarantee that they receive just and meaningful representation in Congress. This can only be accomplished with bipartisan administration of the House, respect for customary and regular order in considering legislation, and establishing that the right of the minority party will be respected.

[edit]

With that in mind, please join us in co-sponsoring the Minority Bill of Rights, which we plan to introduce next week. The Bill of Rights is identical – in both letter and spirit – to a 2004 proposal made by then-Minority Leader Pelosi ....

To quote from Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards' play 1776, "Ha! I wish you the same luck [we] had with it!"

O tempora! O mores!

Marcus Tullius was a cantankerous old windbag, and incredibly pompous, to boot. But his tagline in the title of this post for once seems apt for what I have to say, so I'm using it.

I watched some of the coverage tonight as President Ford's body was brought to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C. It is a sad commentary on the parlous state of our nation in these troubled and troubling times that the network talking heads couldn't just shut the hell up and let the proceedings pass in a dignified silence. Instead, they felt the need to politicize and to polarize just about everything that possibly could be polarized or politicized about the event.

Say whatever else you like about the man, but Gerald Ford may well have been the last decent Republican politician in a generation. Even sadder than that fact is the fact that he apparently had thoughts in a similar vein, but was too much of a gentleman to give them voice while he was alive and might have done something to change the tenor of the times.

We can do this thing!

Just about anybody who reads this should know that J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert is in deep trouble because of his actions inactions in l'affaire Mark Foley. Just today, the Decider-in-Chief decided to grace us with his presence in Chicagoland to, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, "boost the campaigns of two Republican candidates as well as to raise the spirits of House Speaker Dennis Hastert."

And just why might Hastert's spirits be in need of a boost, you ask? Well, this might have something to do with da Speaker's depression:

Боже мой

It would appear that God answers Republican prayers after all. Within a day of watching the Decider's popularity nose-diving to another all-time low, and within hours of having yet another shoe drop (itself not long after a different shoe fell; is it me, or does Foleygate have more shoes than Imelda Marcos?) in the Mark Foley scandals, North Korea claims it's joined the nukular club:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to the our military and people," KCNA said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, citing defense officials.

I will not claim that Bush asked Kim Jong Il to do the test at this time, and neither will I claim that this is Karl Rove's much-vaunted "October Surprise." But I can't help but notice that the timing is awfully fucking convenient for the Bu$heviki. Usually, whenever the Boy Who Would Be King's approval ratings tank this badly, they up the FearCon level for a few days and scare enough of the waverers back into the "R" column. I think that trick's been played a few too many times and lost its effectiveness, so it would not surprise me if the Shrubbery had gone looking for a new trick. I just can't prove this was that trick.

But whatever the trick was or might have been, we now have a whole new ball game in Weltpolitik. Thanks entirely to the Decider-in-Chief, the one man on the face of the earth who is demonstrably clearly less sane than George W. Bush now also appears to have nuclear weapons at his disposal. Thanks a lot, boys. I feel so much safer now.

Stupid Republican Tricks, Part, Oh, Who The Hell Is Counting Anymore?

The sight of this story at CNN almost caused me to spew homemade potage Parmentier all over my computer screen:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Faced with fending off the backlash from the Mark Foley scandal, House Republicans took the offensive Friday, asking Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to testify about whether they engaged in partisan trickery by releasing Foley's messages weeks before the midterm elections.

Top GOP leaders -- including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, and Majority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio -- have accused the Democrats of knowing about Foley's correspondences with teen pages, and waiting to release them until it was politically advantageous.

Are you fucking kidding me? That's how they're planning to "get by" the Foleygate scandals, by blaming them--as usual--on the Democrats?

Color me (a) unsurprised, and (b) highly skeptical that the ploy will work. For the last week, the words, "Foley," "Republican," and "sex scandal" have been pretty much indissolubly linked together in news reports, blog posts, and casual conversations. That's the kind of association you don't wash away by asserting it isn't there and pointing toward a convenient scapegoat waiting in the wings.

Moreover, it was reported at least two days ago that a Republican staffer gave the Foley e-mails to the source who gave them to the news media. The Democrats--like most Republicans--found out about Foley's conduct when it was first broadcast on the national news last week.

Why? Because that's how J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert and the rest of the Rubber-Stamp Republican leadership wanted it. They didn't want to do anything to jeopardize a safe seat in Florida, and they certainly didn't want to do anything that might give voters even more reasons to vote for the Democrats or at least to stay home on Election Day.

Peddle your pabulum elsewhere, boys. We're not buying it.

Kiss my left behind, Denny

So what's wrong with this headline, taken from yesterday's Chicago Tribune?

Hastert takes responsibility, but won't step down

Now that I think about it, it might be easier to list the things that are right with that headline. Here they are:

To read what's wrong with it, follow me below the fold.

Unglaublich

In back-to-back stories on Foleygate this morning, NPR reported that an informal survey they conducted with independent and Republican voters who claim that "moral values" are their leading concern showed that Foley's indiscretions and the Republican leaders' dereliction of duty in failing to do anything about it apparently was unlikely to affect the way they will vote next month. Although the NPR sample was small (14 voters, all Republicans or independents in key congressional districts who are churchgoers or self-select "moral values" as being important to them), the reporter claimed that the responses they got were in line with a larger, scientific study by the Pew Research Center to be released today.

And in the very next story, while Foley's office has been locked and his staff has been ordered not to remove or shred any documents in his files, J. Dennis "I see nothing! I know nothing!" Hastert would look unfavorably on any attempt by the FBI to search Rep. Foley's former office in the course of the investigation into Foley's conduct that Hastert himself requested. In other words, Hastert (like the Rubber-Stamp Republican leadership on so many issues) is still fighting the last battle. He's still pissed off about the FBI search of Rep. William Jefferson's office a few months ago, when Rep. Jefferson was under investigation for possible bribery.

From some of the comments made by NPR's "values voters," I surmise that the Mighty Wurlitzer has come through for the Republicans in a clutch again. Every one of them made at least one of the usual Republican talking points. "Well, the Democrats did it, too." "Clinton was boffing an intern." "This kind of thing has been going on in Washington forever." "There are a few bad apples in Washington, but that doesn't mean the Republican Party itsef is corrupt."

What planet do these people live on?

There is no equivalency between Bill Clinton's consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky and what Mark Foley was doing (and trying to do) to underaged congressional pages. And yes, the way the Republican "leadership" in Congress responded to Foleygate is completely indicative of the overall corruption in the Republican Party--as is the leadership's attempts (apparently successful) at blaming the scandal on the Democrats, even though it was a Republican staffer who leaked the e-mails to the press, and all the people involved in the scandal were Republicans.

Clearly, Democrats have got to work harder--a lot harder--to tie this scandal firmly about the necks of all Republicans. We must make the case that this scandal is only the latest in a long line of Republican misrule, the logical consequence of core principles at the heart of the Ghastly Old Perverts' party platform. Otherwise, we shouldn't count on either convincing the Republican base to vote Democratic or else to stay home in five weeks' time.

And yes, I did consider the possibility that these NPR reports (and possibly even the Pew survey itself, though that's a harder camel to swallow) were propaganda pieces put out by the Republicans themselves, in the hope of salvaging their majority by discouraging Democrats' expectations of a sweeping victory and thus hoping to get us to slack off between now and election day. Even if that hypothesis is true, it should make no difference to us. We must behave as if every word of those NPR stories is the Gospel truth--and counter the perceptions that gave rise to the opinions they reported. Otherwise, we're likely to find, if not Hastert in the speaker's chair come January 3, 2007, then another one of the Ghastly Old Perverts.

And that would be a crying shame. And a national disgrace.