Political Interest

Bush's Non-Existent Credibility On Iraq

Stung by poll numbers that show that more and more Americans doubt President Bush on Iraq the Bush administration is preparing a counter attack, according the New York Times.  In typical Bush/Rove fashion the counter attack will be both personal and dishonest.

The intention appears to be to attack his opponents as hypocrites because many of them also believed that the Iraq regime possessed weapons of Mass destruction and voted for the "Force Authorization" resolution.  It is essentially the same line the Bushies have been trotting out since the Kay report came out, with an added emphasis on the personal attack.  While it had been largely  successful in the past, it likely to meet with a deserved failure this time, outside Bush's ever shrinking base.

The defense is misleading and dishonest because it ignores a number of facts about the run up to war and is intentionally too narrowly focused.  The Bushies focus their entire energy on the WMD debate in September and October of 2002, but ignore their own actions both before and after that vote, as well as other aspects of the debate.

• Bush claims that the Democrats in Congress had access to the same intelligence as the administration, this is untrue.  The Congress did have access to the National Intelligence report, but the administration had far more access to both intelligence analysis and raw intelligence.  In those reports and data there was more than enough information to cause doubt about the existence and extent of any WMD program, if the administration had been looking for it.
• Bush ignores the effect his administration had on shaping those intelligence products.  The pro-War sentiment in the administration was widely known in the intelligence community, the questions pointed at any counter intelligence analysis were chilling and Cheney's role in particular were all channeling the intelligence analysis in one direction only.
• They ignore the entire UN inspection period between the vote and the start of the war. It is extremely telling that the Bushies never reference this period, because they never took the inspections seriously and fully planned to go to war no matter what was or was not found.  But during the inspection the existence and extent of any WMD program came into increasing doubt, and the Bushies ignored that evidence.
• They also conveniently forget their other misleading statements in the run up to war.  If ridding the Middle East of the threat posed by the Hussein regime was the benefit of going to war, the costs too were consistently understated by the administration, in troop levels required, in costs in dollars, and most pointedly in US dead and wounded.  I suspect the US public would actually be much more forgiving of the WMD deception if the costs had been more in line with the Bush administrations pre-war sales pitch.

Dog the Wag

Kaine's victory in Virginia makes it more likely that there will be a partially troop withdrawal from Iraq.  While I already thought the politics of the war was making the withdrawal next summer very likely, Kaine's win is going to hit the panic button in the GOP.  As this quote from the NY Times makes clear the GOP needs to change the dynamic.

Our voters, going into the midterm elections, are mobilized and energized; theirs are despondent," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Reflecting Democratic euphoria over what was perceived as a shifting electoral tide, Mr. Emanuel added, "Virginia is a bright, bright red state - shining red."

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, countered that Democrats also won these races in 2001, only to suffer losses in the 2002 midterm elections. "It will mean exactly what it meant for them in 2001: not a thing," Mr. Forti said.

And getting some of the troops out of Iraq is the only way they control that do it

Kaine Defeats Bush?

The Governor's race in Virginia could make waves on the national political world, especially if Democrat Tim Kaine defeats Republican Jerry Kilgore.  At this point the race is too close to call according to polls, but, thanks to an eleventh hour visit by President Bush, the blame game is already well under way between the Bush Whitehouse and Kilgore.  This according to the Washington Post:

If Kilgore does lose, Bush's troubles will be only part of the issue. The White House could argue privately that a Kilgore defeat had more to do with his own campaign mistakes, particularly going on the attack over the death penalty without first defining his own identity in a positive way, according to some familiar with the thinking in Bush circles.

Moreover, for the past three decades, Virginia has regularly elected governors from the party not controlling the White House. President Bill Clinton went to Old Town Alexandria on election eve in 1997 to help Democrat Donald S. Beyer Jr., only to see the candidate go down to defeat.

But Clinton was doing much better politically that year than Bush is this year, and so it did no damage to him. The Bush team is especially attuned to this year's Virginia race, particularly White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who closely follows tracking polls and the latest developments there.

A Kilgore loss may convince some Republicans that Bush is more liability than asset. "If both these races go south, in New Jersey and Virginia," said a GOP consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, "that'll be a real signal to Capitol Hill and that's when the rats will really jump off the ship."

A Kilgore/Bush loss has the potential to send the GOP into further disarray heading into the mid-terms, so let's hope

GOP Campaign Sleaze

Ever since the days of Nixon and the plumbers the Republican candidates have had an amoral sleaze about them.  Even candidates like George H. W. Bush who did not particularly stand for anything have felt justified in using whatever tactic possible to get elected, no matter how divisive, unfair, or sleazy it was.

Today we get an example from the Washington Post of the latest incarnation, Jersey style, from GOP Gubernatorial candidates Doug Forrester:

On Wednesday, Forrester vowed that he would not turn Corzine family recriminations into a campaign issue. Less than 24 hours later, he changed his mind. "We felt that she, who had seen this abandonment firsthand as a witness, it was fair to say, 'Hey, take an eyewitness account seriously because the stakes are so high,' " Forrester told The Washington Post.

As for Corzine, he acknowledged his former wife's right to speak her mind, and left it to his campaign to rail about "Bush-Rove smear tactics."

Luckily, these tactics don't always work, as H. W. found out in 1992 when he loss despite his smears and innuendos against Bill Clinton.

Bad Timing, or Bad Policy

Yet another of the sophmoric attempts at policy making by the House GOP got called out by the Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman today.  This time it's the ill considered budget cutting agenda being persued by the winger's in the House:

It was unfortunate political timing for House Republicans: On Friday, as the Agriculture Committee was drafting budget-cutting legislation that could knock 295,000 people off food stamps, the Agriculture Department released findings that 529,000 more Americans went hungry last year than in 2003.

The juxtaposition neatly encapsulated the problems that Republicans will have this week and next when they try to put their rhetorical zeal for spending restraint into legislative action.

GOP Leadsrship is Out to Lunch

The Congresssional wing of the GOP may be even more out of touch than the Bush administration.  In an ideological reation to Katrina, which exposed the economic and racial divides in 2005 America so starkly, the conservatives have embraced a big political loser in casting about for offsets. 

The house has fixated on the total number of $50 billion.  But, instead of going after bloated highway projects, farm subsidys, or oil company give aways, they have gone after groups without lobbyists, groups that don't give campaign contributions.  This from the NY Times:

The House plan, to be approved by the Budget Committee this week, will present lawmakers with some tough decisions through its potential reductions in spending on food stamps and school lunch programs, Medicaid and farm subsidies, among others.

In the Senate, the Republican leadership also urged committee chairmen to look for more than $35 billion in savings, and the $39 billion plan to be debated this week before an expected vote on Thursday is a result.

Sorry poor kids, no lunch today, you have to be the ones to pay for Katrina.

While having a positive agenda is sometimes nice, after the Bankruptcy Bill, the Energy Bill give away, and now this, throw these bums out would be enough of a positive.

In a sense the outing of CIA agent Valerie Wilson, aka Plame, is just another part of the entire triumph of politics over substance in the Bush White House.  This administration is driven by the desire to obtain and wield power, but has little understanding of what to with it.

So the appointment of political cronies to public safety positions is tollerated, or sycophant staffers as Supreme Court nominees, huge budget deficits are driven up as political "due," and national security assets are attacked if that advances the administartion's political interest.  The Boston Globe picks up on the connection in an analysis piece:

This leadership strategy involves rallying intense groups of supporters and striking out against critics. It helped win President Bush many close votes in Congress in his first term and a narrow, hard-fought reelection victory.

But when the White House applied the same approach to building the case for the Iraq war, it found itself in battles not just with Democrats but also with parts of its own government, including the CIA.

The fierce prowar leanings of Libby, combined with the partisan warfare perfected by presidential adviser Karl Rove, led to a legal and political disaster for the administration.

The Plame scandal is a dirct product of the Bush/Rove political strategy and part of a larger pattern of failure only now unforlding.

Wrong Way George

An astoundingly high percentage of the population thinks we are headed in the wrong direction.  The numbers from the SurveyUSA poll show a dissatisfaction that goes across the board.  Donkey Rising, has the details:

SurveyUSA recently released a set of fifty statewide surveys that show just how large the constituency for change is becoming. In each state, these surveys asked “In general, do you think the country is headed in the right direction or wrong direction?” When combined and weighted by population, these surveys indicate that, nationwide, just 29 percent of adults think the country is going in the right direction and 66 percent think it is going in the wrong direction. But it is the state-by-state results that provide the really interesting findings. As the SurveyUSA report notes:

In not a single state do 50 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

In only five states (Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska) do 40 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

In twenty-five states, fewer than 30 percent of adults think the country is headed in the right direction.

Wal-Mart: No Diabetics Need Apply

Wal-mart, according in an internal memo, is taking some extreme steps to lower health care costs, including discouraging 'unhealthy' applicants.  This summary is from the New York Times:

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

As much as it flopped in the general election, actions like these show why Kerry's health care plan, in which the government pays for catastrophic care, or something like it is desperately needed.  The politics too may be changing as Americans watch cynical contortions like Wal-Mart's and companies profits get squeezed.

Bush Launches Global War On Satire

OK, the Bush White House is officially in full blown Nixonian paranoia mode. According to the NY Times the Bush administration is going after the Onion, ostensibly to protect the official Presidential seal.

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)