Dontcha just hate it when that happens? McCormack must be rolling over in his grave… to check his notes! 
That’s wise.
Thank you, we will.
True.
You’re wrong about that: I think this is a much bigger deal than Watergate.
I’ll get back to that in a minute.
As Zoe pointed out, Bill Clinton’s penchant for a young bimbo had zip to do with the Democratic Party generally, and was not a reason to vote against Al Gore.
Similarly, at least in 1973-4, Watergate seemed to have a great deal to do with Nixon and his inner circle, but little to do with the GOP generally, as Tom Railsback, Caldwell Butler, Bill Cohen, and other GOP Congressmen on the House Judiciary Committee demonstrated in the summer of 1974.
Because of that - because there was clearly plenty of room at that time to be a Republican yet conclude that Nixon was covering up a criminal conspiracy - I was able to remain a Republican for nearly six years more.
As you know, it’s often been said that politics has subsumed policy in the Bush White House. There’s the looting, and there’s what they do to maintain and perpetuate the power to continue looting into the future.
Seems to be pretty much the same in Congress, too, especially in the House under the now-indicted Tom DeLay.
So I see the ‘get Joe Wilson’ operation to be part and parcel of GOP policy of the Rove/DeLay school: annihilate your enemy if you can - not only to get him out of the way, but to send a clear message that the same will happen to anyone who fucks with us.
So they did their best to destroy his reputation, and destroyed his wife’s career without a hint of regret. For all I know, they may have been making a specific point to the CIA too: leak the truth about what you told us, and you’ll pay like Plame did.
So IMHO, this indictment strikes to the heart of how the present-day GOP does business. It’s not a side-issue like Monica or Watergate; it’s an indictment of the party, not just Scooter.
As someone already pointed out, that stained blue dress won you one crucial election. At great cost to us all, I might add.
At any rate, we’re not going to be looking for more Scooter Libbys. We’ll leave that in Patrick Fitzgerald’s capable hands. But we’ll take advantage of the ones he finds.
I don’t hate Bush; I just wish he’d been a private citizen, these past few years.
What I hate is the damage he’s done to my country.
But don’t worry, the Dems are uniting. Two days before Scooter took the big hit, Bush threw in the towel, and quietly rescinded the Gulf Coast Wage Cut, a.k.a. the suspension of Davis-Bacon. Know why? One of the reasons was that every last Dem Congressperson united to stare him down. Just like on Social Security a few months earlier.
The Dems are more united than we look. We’re not bothered by honest red-blue state differences on issues such as abortion and gun control, although due to party composition, we’ll be mostly a pro-choice party 'way into the future. There’s really only two things that divide us: Iraq and corporate whoring. And Iraq will sooner or later cease to be an issue that divides Democrats, because sooner or later, it’ll be clear that all we’re accomplishing by being there is fighting for our own survival, which is kinda pointless, and then we’ll leave. And we’ll get a new generation of Democrats that realizes there’s more money from small donors than even MBNA can contribute. The corporate whores such as Biden and Lieberman will be marginalized, and the party will be on more or less the same page on the big issues - as unified as a party that doesn’t do top-down, make-'em-pay-if-they-dissent internal politics can be.
So don’t worry about us; we’re doing fine. Wish our people were doing the same - I notice your party is cutting Medicaid and food stamps to pay for Katrina, while continuing to seek new tax cuts, rather than reduce old ones to pay for Katrina. Y’all have a lot of gall, hitting up one group of poor people to pay for the misfortune that afflicted another group of poor people, while you continue to shovel money to the rich. If we can’t stop you now, we’ll damned sure make you pay for it at the polls next year.
Like I said, I didn’t divide the country. The Republicans did the polarizing, with their “with us or against us” attitude and their scorched earth methods of dealing with dissent. They even attack their own people (i.e. McCain?). The quotes I listed paint a pretty clear picture of which side did the dividing, and it’s pretty graphic - crush the opposition, kill anyone who doesn’t fall in line, on and on. And for the record, I hope it gets a lot more “anxious”, because there are a lot of chickens that need to come home to roost. Like RTFirefly and a few others, I used to be a Republican - I left them when they no longer adhered to the things I believed in, when I could no longer defend or justify the things they were doing and the “sort of people they were hanging out with”. That was during Reagan. I believe I chose wisely. At least I don’t have to defend what they are doing now, and I can’t understand how anyone could. I don’t like the Democrats all that much, but at least they aren’t the Republicans of today.
Yes, they do. You’ve done a fine job of illustrating your POV, and I don’t mean to marginalize that, but you must understand (don’t you?) that what you’re describing here is called “Politics”. It’s a pretty rough-and-tumble game, not one for the weak of heart (with a few notable vice presidential exceptions). Chris Matthews doesn’t call his show “Hardball” for nothing. Give me fifteen minutes in Google and I, too, could cut & paste a raft of Democrat doozies just dripping with warmth and affection, then we’d be off to the races to see who said what in response to whom. And, as sympathetic as you (and I) might feel for my state’s senior senator and the drubbing he took in ‘04, many would argue that he’s a better candidate for it today. Test of fire, and all that. Again, that’s “Politics”. Plus, if you’re still inclined to feel sorry for McCain having been the target of “friendly fire”, you’d better think about what happened to poor Zell Miller. When’s the last time you heard him described in the press as a “straight-talking maverick”?
OK, Steve, I appreciate your candor. The Reagan years had a defining impact on my personal politics as well, although with decidedly different results. But, we all gotta come from somewhere, as the saying goes, and, if my memory of high school serves me, back when our lackluster football team typically finished every season with few if any W’s, there’s a lot to be said for the short-term benefit derived from the sentiment, “Hey, at least we ain’t them!”
More to the point of this thread, however, (and to try at the same time to respond to your wonderment as to how “anyone” can defend Republicans), your fellow partisans, if they are truly seeking that which might be in the best interests of the Democrat Party, should take note of what seems to be your more moderated tone than expressed in your earlier admonition to “Sling dirt and attack attack attack.” Critics of the party, even some within the party, might say that “attack” has been the party leaders’ MO since Bush defied the UN and invaded Iraq. Arguably, that does seem to have been the case, and where has that gotten us? (I say “us” in the national sense, as Americans)
Again, those same critics might argue that had we (and here “we” refers to liberals and conservatives) all joined the fight and stood shoulder to shoulder against the UN and the radical faction of Islam which openly declared war on us and everything Western, that war would be over by now, or at least a lot closer to over than it now appears to be, and our nation would not be nearly as divided as you rightly point out.
In further attempting to find reasons for Republican support, it seems that to many their argument is compelling in that had we deferred to the UN and done nothing beyond Afghanistan, in a matter of time, more horrendous attacks would have been mounted here at home and as many Americans civilians would have died in our cities as Iraqi civilians have died in Baghdad and Basra and Fallujah. They accept the poignant fact that we’ve lost 2000+ American troops in the fight, but counter that with the often overlooked truth of the matter: that’s what troops do – they fight and they die for our country. This war is real. The enemy is real. It’s more than the body count we read in the papers and see on the tube. The radical Islamist movement will not give up soon, nor will they “go away” if we were to pull out tomorrow. We did not have troops in Iraq when the Twin Towers fell.
I’ve heard Republican policy-makers say that opponents of the war might do better by themselves to understand that these facts are not lost on Americans, despite spot opinion polls that more reflect the day’s lead stories than any underlying commitment to “world peace”. To a certain extent, I agree with that. In my opinion, if push came to shove and I were given the choice of 1) staying and finishing the job of creating a secure Iraq, or 2) pulling out now and facing the inevitable marshalling of the enemies strength and subsequent domestic attacks, I’m afraid I’d prefer we do our fighting abroad, and I have little doubt as to what that poll would reveal if put to the public at large.
Republicans find further support in the innate nationalism of many Americans, a characteristic that some describe as genetic, dating back to our own Revolution and the ensuing establishment of “Americanism” across the continent. They argue that we may disagree on how we got there, we may disagree on how the war is being conducted, we may disagree on when or whether to withdraw, but we should all agree that it is the best interest of the parties and the nation as a whole to focus our energies on neutralizing the largest single threat to “normalcy” in the world today (and they don’t mean the Republican Party). If we want the war over, they reason, let’s finish it. They might even agree with what you seem to be saying in an oblique sort of way: let’s all demand of our party leaders on both sides that they stop this deliberate campaign of “dividing the country” and of undermining public support for winning this war. Personally, I find it hard to disagree with the notion that if such a unanimity of purpose were ever achieved, who could doubt our ability as a politically unified world power to reach any goal we set? Then, they would say, we could get on with the more properly mundane facets of “Politics”, like executive-departmental squabbles and winning elections.
You got what I was saying, I think. I was saying let’s put national good ahead of party well being. We see things differently, in that I see the FAR right as putting their agendas ahead of national benefit. I will not lump moderate Republicans in with the extremists. There was stab at this, when McCain and his moderate Republicans joined with moderate Democrats to stop the “nuclear option”. But McCain does not call the shots, more’s the pity. Him I would vote for in a New York minute.
From one standpoint, this war is already won. We toppled the Taliban and we toppled Saddam. However, we are losing “the peace”. Never mind that the war in Iraq was fought on false pretenses. Nevermind that American soldiers (and the enemy too) died in Iraq for political expediency and one man’s quest for personal “glory”. On the other hand, the loudmouths I selected (hell yes I was cherry picking) have no interest in uniting, damned by their own words… They thrive on divisiveness. They and others of their kind have a “my way or the highway” mentality. I count the president as one of these. Everything is wrapped in the flag. Who claims their every action was defined directly by God? The bottom line is, this country has not been so divided in decades, and the blame rests on those who made it so. Who was it that makes everything a matter of loyalty and patriotism?
So what do we have now? The Baptists are against the Catholics and vice a versa (which ones are the “good christians”). The gays are against the straights and vice a versa (family values and definition of marriage). The left against the right, and both against the moderates. Civilian warhawks against military vets (Powell and many others). Red vs blue. This country is split 7 ways from Sunday. I blame those who made it so.
Sometimes. Other times it simply makes you look like a sore loser.
Especially if the best you’ve got is stuff like:
You really don’t believe these have been hashed over enough, and that if the Dems keeping picking at the scab for a couple more years they will be swept to victory? I don’t see a lot of success for the party in 2002 and 2004, and the memories of the Sore-Loserman tantrums were a lot fresher than they will be either in 2006 or 2008.
Do you honestly think there is enough hard evidence of electoral wrong doings to convince anyone who isn’t already spring-loaded to buy whatever the leftwing blogs tell them to think?
I mean, come on - if you folks are really going to rely on scandal-mongering, don’t you think you ought to use a scandal for which there is evidence of some sort?
Regards,
Shodan
Electoral reform is a serious issue and the reliability of polling is a subset of that. Regardless of the genuine, objective and fully unknowable Absolute Truth of the matter, heaps of folks feel the election was stolen which indicates clear as day a lack of faith in the mechanisms used.
Even if you think SteveG1 suffers from soreloserism it does not mitigate the notion that the electoral system permits all kinds of corruption.
Before you direct a partisanist salvo at me, know I am not of the opinion that only one side practices these wiles. It is at my opinion that at any given time, the ruling faction is demonstrably better at it.
Well, heaps of folks who already vote Democratic. And, at least in the case of the famous butterfly ballot, that lack of faith did not manifest itself until after the election had been lost - the ballots in Florida had been approved by both parties before the voting began.
Well, he threw out the “Diebold” thing as if it had been proven that all kinds of corruption had occured in 2004 - an assertion for which no hard evidence has ever been produced. And ISTM that the losing side tried awful hard to find something. And, to date - you got bupkis.
It doesn’t seem to be resonating, in other words, and I doubt (absent any new revelations) that it is going to be a major issue come 2008. Any more than the hanging chads were a big issue in 2004. For most people.
I grant that it rankles, especially given the assumption by some that 2004 was payback time for Al Gore not to be able to sue his way into the White House, but Bush is not running in 2008. So it is going to be even harder to try to hit a nerve with yet another torrent of partisan wrangling about the Diebold machines or the chads.
It strikes me as possible that the impact of the latest scandals is being over-estimated. No doubt they are bad enough, even for a lame-duck President, but Karl Rove, who seems to have been the target of most of the vitriol and hatred at least on the SDMB, has not been indicted. So, if he was the architect of the Stolen Election of 2004, no one was able even to indict that particular ham sandwich. No evidence, you see. And the charges are not even for outing Plame.
Which points out the troubles with relying on scandal for political success in the long run. Maybe the latest will be as big a deal as the Usual Suspects are hoping for. But when Libby was indicted, my local newspaper had to run a half page of columns explaining who the hell he was. The immediacy of the connection between the lone indictee to date, and the Bush White House, is not as compelling to those not already consumed with Bush hatred as to, perhaps, some others.
Regards,
Shodan
A few questions, if you will, friend Shodan.
That happy crew of professional Republican operatives, who stormed into Miami pretending to be a cadre of local concerned voters, with the avowed intent of disrupting the recount. Good clean fun?
What difference does it make that, as you say, the “butterfly” ballots were approved by Democrats? The several thousand “Jews for Buchanan” most assuredly did not have thier vote counted as they intended. If they had, The Man Who Fell Up would not be festering in the Oval Orifice. Agree, or no? Should we, or should we not, bend every effort to ensure that a voters intent should be the guiding principle.
The inequities inherent in our electoral “system” assures that the poorer counties, and the residents thereof, will have less electoral access than their more advantaged fellow citizens. Longer lines, less polling stations, etc. ensures that their voice are muted. This sort of electoral injustice stains the very essence of democratic principle: the equality of all citizens in voting. Do you agree, or disagree, given that solving that inequality would most likely ensure a larger turnout amongst disadvantaged/minority citizens, who tend to vote Democratic. Would you support Federal legislation to equalize such access, in light of the fact that a further, say, 10% advantage in voter numbers would have ensured that the last two elections would have had drasticly different results, with effects on our history that can only be guessed at?
Let’s start by saying that I am of the opinion that the electoral system is severely compromised. I don’t care who makes the voting booths or what representatives of who approved the ballot. If an election cannot be resolved without the kind of wrangling and bitterness that occurred, then we are not counting votes properly. We simply aren’t. The OSCE sent observers to swing states in 2004. I take that to mean that there is reason to doubt our process.
Do not take that as a dispute of the results.
The fact that these problems were only evidenced after we experienced them is not really surprising. Sometimes it’s hard to know what organizational difficulties one may encounter until the process is run. I can and will say there are problems with our electoral/vote counting system without disputing the fact that we had a process in place that everybody agreed to which yielded results we must abide to.
One of my biggest problems with the voting method is the distinctive lack of a reducible paper trail – and the lack of concensus on results. If the system were water-tight there’d be no room for this friction, even with a really close vote. As Stalin says, "Those who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything.” Again, do not take the bait. I am not contesting results, I am indicting the process.
Electoral reform should be a major issue. Lots of bad memories will come up and electronic voting will become even more prevalent as we hit more major elections over time. There remain problems that have to be worked out.
Al Gore didn’t run in 2004 of course but 2004 was supposed to be [for many folks] when the national mandate would change. I accept without qualms that it did not change. Kerry ran the worst campaign since Dukakis. George Bush is far more mediapathic and Americans chose to have better material on TV for another 4 years.
Rove has not been indicted because the investigation is obstructed. Also, lots of people love to hate Rove. For me, that has no implication on justice. It seems to me this investigation is going to go up through Cheney’s office, and may not touch Rove. However, the indictment even of Libby is a historically significant event, the first of it’s kind since the indictment of Orville E. Babcock 130 years ago. Babs escaped conviction because Grant pardoned him.
Every second-term administration has scandals. It’s a fairly natural part of the Mob trying to make sure they’ve a good shot at becoming the Party on the next election day. And while, on its own, Libby’s offense may not seem that great, and he may not even seem that important in some areas, he was deputy to the most powerful U.S. Vice President in our history and the crimes for which he is being indicted are linked to serious policy issues, over which the country is divided. I think it is likely that people will pay attention to what is going on with that, especially since Fitzgerald is running such a tight ship. Bush has to take the blow, and its a blow amidst blows.
There may well be a snowball effect. Bush’s decision to nominate Ben Bernanke was a safe one and got little press because it seems just sensible to nominate somebody committed to carrying on the Greenspan Plan but he has to squeeze through a nominee, deal with an unstable Iraq that may kick us out in 2006 and of course, we have a domestic refugee crisis.
So people think they smell a rat and it starts with Libby.
Forgot one. As you are no doubt aware, the Republicans of the Florida legislature, being in the majority, announced that they would return an electoral college instruction favoring Bush regardless of how the vote recount went. Approve of such dastardly partisan back-stabbing or no?
If you want scandal mongering, look no further than your own gun-for-hire, Ken Starr. Pot calling the kettle black? If you wonder where the sore loser ism comes from, well that’s easy. Right after the election, those of us in the other 49 percent got the win crammed down our throats with both feet. 1. The Mandate. 2. The Landslide. 3. You lost so shut up. I tried, really, to be gracious about it all at first, but after hearing about The Mandate so much, I decided screw it. There were investigations into election “irregularities”. Diebold had promised to deliver the election to Bush. There were charges of abuses in Florida.
Besides, we have a better scandal to beat up on now. Deliberately false reasons for going to war, which led to outing a CIA agent, which led to perjury and obstruction of justice. That’s pretty juicy.
Some people have axes to grind over perceived Democratic electoral frauds going back a long way.
Ah, yes, “Landslide Lyndon”. I disapprove, of course, but that’s a bit to the side of my main point: that economicly disadvantaged persons are polticically disadvantaged as a direct result. And that this disadvantage favors a particular political persuasion and political party.
People SHOULD have gone to prison for that. I doubt anyone here would try to defend what the “Johnsonistas” did. However, it does not excuse subsequent people of pulling voter fraud either.
What I was pointing out, of course, is that the system is prone to abuse and that everybody’s doing it. With regards to economic disadvantage:
I’m of the view that the economically disadvantaged are politically disadvantaged because they are disenfranchised and don’t vote. They are disenfranchised and don’t vote because politicians do not cater to them. Politicians do not cater to them because they cannot afford to. They cannot afford to because these populations do not raise money.
If they are politically disadvantaged because bad guys stop them from voting for the other side, I fail to see how it’s different from the Johnsonistas.
I don’t think excuses are necessary until we have some hard evidence that it happened.
Ah. So is that another one you don’t think has been hashed over enough?
Really hitching your wagon to a star, aren’t we? 
Actually, what I was saying is that if I wanted scandal mongering, a fresh one that hasn’t been done to death, and more-or-less rejected by the electorate might do you better than warmed-over ones. If that’s the way you want to play it.
I’m merely saying that your grudges might be leading you to over-estimate the strength of your hand. Short-term scandals do not always lead to long-term success. Carter had a dickens of a time making it to the White House, and that was against the guy who pardoned Nixon. And you’ll note that he didn’t last, nor was his administration famous for its successes. More like MEoW, the invasion of Afghanistan, stagflation, hostages, killer rabbits, etc.
Who knows? Maybe this time, you can get Bush. Or next time. Or next. Or next. Just be sure you don’t look up and see that he isn’t on the ballot.
Regards,
Shodan
Those questions, friend Shodan? If you’ve the time?
For what it’s worth, I had no use for Carter at all. I saw him as an incompetent weakling. The vorpal bunny bit was friggin hilarious. I saw Ford as just a well meaning oaf, a placeholder and nothing more. Obviously I dislike Bush. I see him as a spineless mealy mouthed liar who repeats the same lies even after they have been exposed as lies. I see him as one who lets other people do his underhanded dirty work and take his hits because he has no guts, a spoiled frat boy who was never held to account for anything in his life. I see him as someone who will fight to the last drop of everyone else’s blood, but not his own (the “war president” and “bring it on”). I see him as one who will do whatever it takes, trash reputations (Swifties) and destroy careers (Plame), but expects himself to be treated with kid gloves. In short, he disgusts me. Many people say they would share a beer with him - not me, I only drink with friends. I would love to see this Fitzgerald investigation put his butt in federal prison (and not some posh country club either). Too bad it won’t happen.
“So people think they smell a rat and it starts with Libby.”
Unfortunately, it will probably end at Libby too, dammit.
So would I, but neither of them drink, mores the pity.