All Posts Tagged With: "right-wing"

The right end of the dial is all atwitter — borderline messing themselves — with this Blagojevich scandal. Nothing like a good scandal to get everyone all hot-and-bothered.

“Americans voted for change. Barack Obama promised that he would have the most open and honest administration and transition in history,” said RNC chairman Mike Duncan, on a conference call with reporters. “But that’s not what we’re getting. What we’re getting is the same old politics out of Chicago.”

Why all the sudden interest in an “open and honest administration” by the party whose leader for the last eight years was anything but “open and honest”? What short memories the clamorers must have. Wasn’t this the same party who just a couple of years ago faced significant losses in Congress following one of the worst corruption scandals in Congressional history? Does Abramoff ring any bells?

I’m as disgusted as anyone with the Illinois governor’s outrageous behavior. But, as Mike McCarville said, “guilt by association without facts is irresponsible.” Those so quick to pass arbitrary and capricious judgment on Obama were strangely silent — or worse, complicit with their unashamed defense of the indefensible — when their own president and administration, Congressional leaders and party powerbrokers were whole hog in the filth of corruption.

It seems to me that all the hand-wringing about this scandal would be better done with clean hands — something the GOP and its faithful following in the blogosphere cannot rightfully claim.

The GOP is clammering about Obama’s cabinet selections:

“Leader Boehner obviously hopes and expects that the president-elect will keep his promise to include Republicans in his Cabinet,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. “Obama has pledged to govern in a bipartisan way, and we have pledged to work with him when he does.”

“Choosing one or two token Republicans in lesser Cabinet positions won’t pass the smell test,” said Dan Bartlett, who served as communications director and counselor to the current President Bush. “Keeping Secretary Gates would be a huge signal and important governing move.”

I wonder. Could either Boehner or Bartlett point to how their party’s most recent White House administrations have done that? I had to go all the way back to Nixon to find a Democrat in a Republican president’s administration (unless you can point to a more recent example). President Bill Clinton appointed Republican William Cohen to be his defense secretary during his second term. What Democrats did George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan appoint to their Cabinets or White House staffs?

Obama has signaled that he may very well appoint Bush’s own defense secretary to continue in that role. He has also considered Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) for a role in his administration as well as former NATO commander Jim Jones for national security advisor.

Even so, grumbling within the right-wing blogosphere is that Obama’s choices aren’t Republican enough. Again I ask, how many Democrats did Dubya have in his Cabinet and White House staff? Why didn’t Boehner — or even the president’s own communications director Dan Bartlett — hold Bush to the same standard?

“43″ certainly was elected by much narrower margins than “44″ — in fact, he didn’t even have the popular vote in 2000. You would think if anyone should govern in a bipartisan way, it would be someone who was elected by the slimmest of margins among a bitterly divided electorate. But that didn’t happen, did it?

In yesterday’s Politico story about the scrutiny of Obama’s picks for his administration, one sentence in particularly really jumped out at me:

“Gates is not a sharply partisan figure.”

Okay… is that a bad thing? Is that why he’s not Republican enough to pass “the smell test”? Because he’s not a “sharply partisan” figure, does that disqualify him as a Republican or mean that Obama isn’t trying to bridge the partisan divide? Do we really want a sharply partisan figure? I thought one of the things about this election is that the American people wanted to move beyond the gridlock of the bitterly divided Washington and transcend such “sharply partisan” politics.

So far, in my opinion, Obama has done a better job than his predecessors of assembling pragmatic, centrist and arguably bipartisan team to help govern this nation through very difficult times. Based on some of the complaints in the left-wing blogosphere, Obama certainly hasn’t picked aggressive progressives that would satisfy the more left-wing branches of the Democratic Party — despite what fear-mongering you may hear from the radical right-wing bloggers. His economic team, which he is set to announce later this morning, is being pretty warmly greeted by Wall Street, which tells me that Obama can’t be too bad for business like the conservative pundits would have you believe.

This election, I believe the significant majority of the electorate made their choice clear, not only electing the candidate they felt best represented change, but also repudiating the governance of the dominant party for the last eight years by electing wider majorities in both the House and the Senate for the other party. Why, then, would we let members of that failed party’s leadership judge who’s best to serve in this new administration? We shouldn’t and Obama won’t.

I believe Obama is firmly committed to governing pragmatically, which means an administration filled with opposing viewpoints — whether it’s Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, pro-business or pro-worker, hawk or dove. There will be many voices led by one leader. It certainly will be a nice change.

I really don’t have strong feelings one way or another on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in Obama’s administration. She’s surely capable. The cynical side of me wonders what the back story is on all of this as well as what problems might result from such a pick, especially given the animosity of Bill Clinton toward Obama. However, the president-elect seems committed to a “team of rivals” in his administration, a concept employed by President Lincoln that I heartedly agree with. (I’ll write more about this in an upcoming post.)

What’s mildly surprising is the level of growing support amongst the right-wing punditry. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Golfarb certainly seems to like the choice:

There appears to be little angst among conservatives at the prospect of Hillary Clinton joining the Obama administration as Secretary of State. The idea was warmly embraced by Henry Kissinger, who our President-elect seems to hold in high-esteem, Governor Schwarzenegger, who likely has no more sway on Obama than the proverbial guy in the neighborhood, and Jon Kyl — surely Senator McCain put in a good word today as well. The love affair that was sparked last spring between Clinton and the Obama-fearing right continues to smolder, surely a surprise to those who suspected that such an unholy alliance couldn’t last beyond the convention. Whether Clinton would accept the job, or why she would want it, is not clear, but the right would be happy enough to have her.

[...]

Clinton would be a fine Secretary of State, and she is likely to be a nuisance to Obama whether she is inside or outside of his administration, but as our top diplomat she could reprise a role that made Powell a kingmaker in this year’s election. And perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran to an insubordinate United Nations in the event that Obama’s personal diplomacy somehow fails to deter the mullahs from their present course.

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Something in his last sentence jumped out at me: “…perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran…” Seriously… have we not had enough of war to satisfy our blood thirst at least for a little while? We’re not even finished with the two we’ve got going on right now, which is bankrupting us and stretching our military to the breaking point. Our economy is barely hanging on by a thread and we want to start up another conflict that will surely be more costly than the current conflicts, both in financial terms and in human lives.

If we think Iraq was a challenge, it will pale in comparison to a conflict with Iran. Let’s not make another mistake. Let’s recover from these last seven years first before we dig ourselves into any more war pits.

This flag-pin controversy manufactured by conservatives is absurd on its face and ridiculous in its mountain-making out of molehills. The “right-wing smear machine” has questioned Barack Obama’s patriotism and allegiance to this country because he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin.

Setting aside the outrageousness of the controversy itself, which I plan to write in greater length about in the next couple of days, one of the standard bearers leading the charge is the always entertaining (because of his buffoonery) Republican Congressman Jack Kingston. In another entertaining foot-in-mouth moment for the Georgia Republican, as he launched into his absurd attack on Obama’s “refusal” to wear an American flag on his lapel during an interview earlier this week with Dan Abrams on MSNBC, the congressman forgot one very important detail… Continued