Notice a Pattern?

(crossposted at The Blue Herald)

I know, I know, it’s hard to keep up with all the scandals these days! Well, face it, if you’re in the GOP, you’re not spending any time actually governing the country, or discussing ways to make things better, be it in America or Iraq. And idle hands makes for securing the Devil’s massive campaign contribution to your war chest. Let’s recap, shall we? In the past week or so, we learned that:

1. The National Intelligence Estimate flatly contradicts President Bush on at least two key points. One, the war in Iraq has made the “War on Terrorists” even worse. Two, we’re losing in Iraq. Bush’s solution is to come out and play his usual poker game, claiming the NIE supports his claims – but only his diehard followers believe this crap at this point. President Bush is either a liar or delusional, but it’s an academic question. He’s unfit for leadership. But let’s note the pattern — Republican is incompetent, tries to cover it up, lies about it, is exposed and denies and downplays everything.

2. Abramoff and his staff visited the White House close to what, 500 times, versus the few times Scott McClellan, Karl Rove and George Bush claimed – hardly surprising, given the tightness of the Rove-Norquist-Reed-Abramoff-Ralston circle. E-mails with Rove show Abramoff had real influence, too (Rove offered to block a nomination at Abramoff's request). So — the Republicans are corrupt, try to cover it up, lie about it, are exposed, and try to downplay everything.

3. Like Cofer Black on Rice: The most explosive revelation so far of Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, is that George Tenet and Cofer Black demanded a meeting with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to warn her about the pressing threat of Al-Qaeda. Rice and the other Bushies brushed this and all warnings off, continuing to be more concerned about missile defense. This past Friday, Rice admitted the meeting took place, but as of this Monday is trying to pretend it never happened, let alone that she received such dire warnings. Meanwhile, members of the 9/11 Commission are upset that they were never told of this crucial, central meeting. Rice’s meeting took place on July 10th, 2001, about a month before a CIA briefer flew out especially to Crawford, Texas to brief Bush (since Bush doesn’t like to read and prefers personal briefings). The CIA agent delivered an important PDB, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S.” and Bush responded, “All right, you’ve covered your ass now.” So — the Republicans are incompetent, try to cover it up, lie about it, are exposed, and try to deny and downplay everything.

4. GOP pedophile Mark Foley wrote sexually predatory e-mails and IMs to at least one teenage boy in the Congressional page program. The GOP House leadership knew about it for at least ten months, but Hastert initially denied this, then didn’t, then offered qualifiers before issuing a denial with dubious explanations. It took the GOP a few days to get their stories straight. And the GOP tried to cut a deal with ABC’s Brian Ross to prevent him from exposing the predatory e-mails and IMs. The GOP, the supposed party of family values and national security, had no problem with one of their congressman asking a teenage boy who their institution was charged with safeguarding about how often he masturbated. While some of the details of the IMs versus the e-mails are a little unclear, and who knew what when, what’s crystal clear is the GOP should have launched an investigation and didn’t, and that they put their obsession for continued political party control ahead of the safety and well-being of minors in their care. They also attempted, and are still attempting, a cover-up. So — the Republicans are corrupt and creepy, try to cover it up, lie about it, are exposed, and try to deny and downplay everything.

Call me crazy, but I’m sensing a pattern here. And even some the rightwingers are getting disgusted now. (Foley is a perfect litmus test to see who's sane and who's erupting Kool-Aid from every orifice as they lead cheers for the apologist GOP faithful.)

What ever happened to “the buck stops here?” (Never mind – it’s been outsourced to India, along with the GOP’s credibility. Meanwhile, India has thoughtfully exported something back in return — a nifty concept called karma.)

The Republicans have always been corrupt and incompetent, it's just that the Foley scandal - and the lies around it - are very easy to understand on a gut level and produce the visceral outrage that should have been there all along for people that have remained on the sidelines, or supported the wrong side. Here's hoping for a high bounty count in the House.

Oh, and Denny, and Condoleezza, and Bush, and Tony Snow, and the rest of you? Keep on lying, please. It's political gold. ;-)

Behind the Curtain of Bad Government Decisions

A trio of good articles illuminate the process of some really bad decisions and bad government.

First up, from The Wall Street Journal’s free opinion site, John Fund explains why the vetting of Harriet Miers and her subsequent selection by George Bush as his Supreme Court nominee was so very poor. He paints a picture that will be familiar to anyone who read about Paul O’Neill’s stint in the Bush administration in The Price of Loyalty, and other accounts... This is a place where dissent is seen as disloyalty and speaking truth to power is difficult if not outright discouraged. Beyond matters of ideology, the question of competence continually reappears in all in-depth accounts of the Bush administration (in order to make good decisions, one must first set up a system that encourages rather than discourages accurate information).

Meanwhile, The Washington Monthly’s cover story is a fascinating (and chilling) portrait of Patrick McHenry, a young Republican congressman from North Carolina. The article gives great insight into the crucial role the College Republicans play in the GOP as well as offering a rather scathing view of McHenry. Author Benjamin Wallace-Wells notes:

Like most of the post-Gingrich generation, McHenry's ultimate loyalty is less to principle or ideology than to the machine itself.

One of the most striking passages in the article reports that:

McHenry's credit union bill, a high priority for the banking lobby, has received strong backing from DeLay. The Republican leadership awarded McHenry a seat on the House Financial Services Committee upon his arrival in Washington. “Most people would say it's the most plum assignment you can get,” one conservative lobbyist told me, “because you can leverage it to do so much in fundraising.” But first you have to prove yourself. Asking McHenry to author a bill that undermines the interest of half his constituents is the political equivalent of demanding a young Mafia enforcer kill his cousin as a test of loyalty. “It's a bill that a lot of us are watching,” a conservative activist from Mecklenberg County who has been skeptical about McHenry told me. “It's pretty clear that here McHenry is picking Washington over his district, and we're interested to see if he pays any price for it.”

Subsequent paragraphs describe how McHenry lies to his constituents (say “he deliberately misleads them” if you like, but I call it lying). His campaign tactic, twice, consists purely of claiming he’s the more conservative candidate, even when he’s not, while offering no real policy.

The resulting portrait is of a young man who is all slogan and no substance, who views power as a goal unto itself, and who feels his constituents serve him, not the other way around. He is precisely that sort of politician who gives politicians a bad name.

Still, McHenry’s self-serving moves are as nothing compared to the master machinations of The Hammer and his buddies. A long but rewarding article from The Washington Post by Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi explains how fellow “indictees” Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay and David Safavian worked to kill an anti-gambling bill in the House in 2000. Essentially they falsely portrayed the bill as pro-gambling to the conservative Christian groups that supported it, and also used intimidation and a series of bribes or “donations” to grease things along. Delay in particular comes off as someone who preaches social conservatism (anti-gambling) while his true loyalty lies with selected businesses (online gambling company eLottery, for one). Abramoff of course was taking money from Indian tribes to lobby for them even as he actually lobbied against them. Tony C. Rudy, a senior aide to Delay who later worked for Abramoff, served as a crucial link, and his actions provide a compelling picture for how Abramoff and Delay were simpatico and how the ol’ boy network works when it comes to money and legislation. Also implicated, of course is:

Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Both kept in close contact with Abramoff about the arrangement, e-mails show. Abramoff also turned to prominent anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, arranging to route some of eLottery's money for Reed through Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform.

(Norquist, of course, is close friends with Karl Rove, Rove’s secretary used to work for Norquist, and supposedly Norquist advised her as to which phone calls Rove should take. Rove has not been drawn into the Abramoff or Delay scandals as of yet, and has his own glaring problems right now... but I mention him to show this old boy social network is very real.)

Honestly, I find it’s hard to untangle all the stories of Abramoff’s villainy, so I’ve been waiting for the court cases to get under way and the eventual postmortem to make sense of it all. In-depth features like this, though, serve an invaluable function by explaining not only why these men are scoundrels but how they achieve their skullduggery.