Friday Madness

There is a www.recoveringrepublican.com that caters to former Republicans. So far I'm not impressed but they may gain some momentum with the latest fracas on the Hill.

I think Andrew Sullivan got the Judd Gregg thing right. He has Gregg accepting the Commerce post believing Republicans were actually going to work with President Obama. He might have thought that because he worked with the Democrats in the first bank bailout bills that Bush forced down Congress' throat. Once it became clear there was no movement on the Republican side to accomodate the President, he knew the game was up. A personal issue was also his awareness that he didn't work well with teams. Democrats are also hinting that the Jack Abramoff connection with his staff may have been a negative. Sullivan desires credit for coining the phrase," opportunism of selective ideology" referring to the GOP.

Meanwhile in Chinatown, Diapers Dave Vitter spoke to the Federalist Society claiming Obama's theory of judges was "dictatorial". A fringe group of the Federalists managed to foist off the "unitary theory of the executive" onto the American people through the Bush Administration. Only Mexico under the PRI and Adolf Hitler obtained greater inherent legal executive authority than Bush. So you wonder for this crowd how much more dictatorial can you go?

The House Democrats slipped a mickey into the drink of the stimulus by requiring Governors to respond within 30-45 days whether they wanted to accept simulus funds. This was in particular a shot at South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who has been campaigning on network television against it. Republican Governors Haley Barbour and Texas' Rick Parry have also denounced the package.

The Queen of the North, Sarah Palin, is having none of it. She's cancelled her appearance here at the CPAC summit with Rush Limbaugh for reasons of her official duties. But I expect it was to avoid criticising Obama when she has been pushing him on using stimulus funds for the Alaska-Canada pipeline. She urged him to raise it with Canada's Harper, which he did. A prompt thank-you note to the President was sent. An Alaskan nationalist, Palin is not going to waste any opportunity snagging some federal support.

My posting about the Kanjorski C-Span comments concerning the September 18 run of the banks anticipated the new rash of comments by Cliff Kincaid, Diane West, and Rush Limbaugh who raised the issue of who actually did do the run. Rush Limbaugh thinks it was a consortium of countries, including George Soros, who wanted Barack Obama elected President. The conservative commentators claim (although not true) that John McCain was leading the race at that point. The financial collapse did do in John McCain, but also recall it was the time of the first debate where the rest of the United States got to see Barack Obama and not the McCain caricature of a terrorist-living ,crypto-Muslim naif. Obama went on to win that and every single other debate with McCain. But the first debate sealed the deal just like the Reagan-Carter debate ended that election. But expect more on this subject in the future.

The "birthers" continue on. They are trumpeting their recruitment of a few legislators in Tennessee, who are demanding President Obama prove he is an American citizen.

The "Real America" terminology is being brought to bear on the stimulus debate. Without Republicans voting on the House bill, now we are hearing it is no longer an "American" bill. Senators Specter, Snow and Collins are called Benedict Arnolds by Dick Morris. Presumably helping Americans during this time is considered --"unpatriotic". Strange.

Karl Rove, who never hides his ugly face, has been around town chatting how 'gracious" the Republicans have been about the whole stimulus debate and that this highlighted the Obama position of it's my way or the highway. I never knew that was Obama's position. Also I wouldn't call the Republicans particularly gracious. For his part, Congressman Conyers just issued another subpoena to Karl. When is Rove going to hide and start preparing his law cases.

Little Eddy Cantor who had a 100% voting record for Bush seems to be replaying footage from Newt Gingrich's early years. Republicans complained then that the accomodations the minority leadership made with the Democrats doomed them to a perpetual minority status in the House. Newt changed all that with his fervent obstructionism, which eventually saw the Republicans come back in 1994. Cantor is simply replaying that. It's the most amazing Hail Mary Pass in political history. he should have been John McCain's campaign manager.

Republicans have threatened the three Republicans about withholding campaign funds from them in the future. One problem, Collins just won and Snowe won't run until 2012. So they have decided to target Sen. Specter with a primary challenger. It may cost Specter his job but the Republicans will lose the seat to Democrats if they continue down the hard-right path.

Rasmussen is another man going down the road to perdition. The Rasmussen poll claims that Republicans would pick up 50 additional seats in the House if the election were held today. I guess he has changed his first name to Zogby.