Month: April 2006

No More DeLay: Former GOP Leader Drops Out Days after Staffer Pleads Guilty

Jon Ponder

Just days after his deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy pleaded guilty to corruption charges, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
has dropped out of his re-election race in Texas:

CNN reported Monday evening that indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (TX) will drop his bid for re-election in Texas’s 22nd Congressional District, according to two unnamed GOP sources. DeLay’s being challenged by former Congressman Nick Lampson, who lost his seat in 2004 as a result of DeLay’s redistricting scheme.

Rudy is the second DeLay aide to cop a plea. In November, his former spokesman Michael Scanlon, who was a business partner of Jack Abramoff, the convicted former lobbyist who worked closely with DeLay’s office, pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt public officials.

DeLay will make an official announcement today but we can expect his statement to be all happy talk. What remains to be seen is whether Rudy, Scanlon or Abramoff have already ratted DeLay out.

If you ask me, it’s almost a dead cinch prosecutors have the goods on DeLay.

Hope I Get Lucky in the Pandemic Lottery

Buck Banks

Vaccination vascillation: Lenny Bruce used to have a line he would scream out in the middle of his act: “We’re all gonna die!” While the essential truth of that statement hasn’t changed, if the avian flu pandemic becomes a reality, some — scratch that — a lot of us are going to die sooner than a few others.

The National Journal interviewed Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Health and Human Services Department, about the nation’s vaccine supply. Overall, the news ain’t good.

According to Gellin, we can’t make enough vaccine right now to combat an avian-flu pandemic:

Because a pandemic will be caused by a virus that we’ve not experienced before, a pandemic vaccine is likely to be a much higher dose to achieve the immune response needed for protection. In studies that [the National Institutes of Health] conducted last year, we were sobered to learn that the vaccine dose was six times higher than what is in our seasonal flu shot and that two doses were required.

‘At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year.’ — Dr. Bruce Gellin

We estimate that if we were to ask Sanofi to dedicate their facilities entirely to H5N1 vaccine, they could produce approximately 30 million to 40 million doses of H5N1 vaccine in a year. At two doses per person, we could vaccinate only 15 million to 20 million Americans in a year. Of course, this would also mean that the company would have to stop making next year’s flu vaccine in order to do this.

So how do we decide who gets the 15-20 million doses in the event the pandemic starts whipping up on us? Well, if it happens under the current president’s administration, poor people and people of color can forget it. Ditto old folks, gays and illegal immigrants. Here’s my prediction of how the flow chart of who would get the vaccine and in what order might look like:

1. First responders and all medical personnel
2. First family (extended), cabinet members and West Wing retainers
3. Four members of the Supreme Court
4. Most of the Senate
5. A little over half of the House of Representatives
6. White House press corps
7. “Wall Street Journal” Washington Bureau
8. All employees of Fox News Network, select CNN anchors and Bob Woodward
9. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
10. Jackie Mason and Dennis Miller
11. Tony Blair and Gerald Ford
12. Straight military personnel deployed in Iraq

Have an idea of who else would be on the list? Leave us a comment!

The Arnold Show: Why Mavericks Cannot Govern

Jon Ponder

The governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger here in California — like that of Hulk Hogan, er, Jesse Ventura in Minnesota — is more proof that political careers based solely on the whimsy of egomaniacs are generally doomed to failure:

“Haven’t you been listening to me? In Hollywood, I would know how to deal with this. I would bring someone in from the outside to get it done. Do I have to do that here?”
— Gov. Schwarzenegger

So far, a durable governing coalition has eluded him. Schwarzenegger has chalked up many of his troubles in office to the power of special interests and legislators resistant to reform. But insiders say his policy setbacks and slide in the polls may also owe to stubbornness, a taste for flashy Hollywood-style — but politically unrealistic — moves and a naivete about politics in general.

What is not a surprise, of course, is that the movie star turned governor is a diva. When his former chief of staff, Patricia Clarey, tried to disusaude him from pursing the disastrous special election last year, he barked:

“Haven’t you been listening to me?” Schwarzenegger said, according to one person who was present. “In Hollywood, I would know how to deal with this. I would bring someone in from the outside to get it done. Do I have to do that here?”

Of course, after the special election failed resoundingly, he still blamed Clarey:

He wasn’t always nice about it. On a post-election trip to China, the governor left Clarey to commercial flights and press buses while his personal financial advisor traveled as a member of his inner circle, flying on Schwarzenegger’s jet and dining with him and [Schwarzenegger’s wife, former journalist Maria] Shriver.

Schwarzenegger complained privately that he didn’t like “hanging with” Clarey, and criticized her in front of colleagues. Other aides would join him for lunch; she wasn’t invited. In a final rebuke, Schwarzenegger replaced the Republican Clarey with a Democrat.

Governor, I beseech you: Resign now. You can be back on the set of “Terminator 4” or whatever on January 2, 2007. It’s a win-win-win for you, the Democratic majority in the state and its citizenry.

Another Rove Error: Frist Flames Out

Jon Ponder

Kittens’ karma: Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee was appointed to Majority Leader of the Senate by White House political director Karl Rove in 2003, after Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi made a racist remark.

“I hear he was a pretty good surgeon,” a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

The appointment of Frist (who was, of course, “elected” by a majority of Republican senators who knew that defying Rove would be political suicide) was a move to put a reliable White House stooge in charge of the Senate.

Now Frist’s leadership is going down in flames, but, so far, hardly anyone is connecting the dots between Frist’s incompetence and the Bush’s “Boy Genius” who engineered his accession:

Frist, once esteemed as a citizen-politician, a heart- and lung-transplant surgeon who spent part of each year donating his services in the most desperate parts of Africa, has transformed himself into the ultimate political opportunist. His moves—like last week’s ludicrous attempt to hijack the Senate’s immigration debate and move it in a punitive, populist direction—have been so clunky that he has lost the respect of his colleagues, especially Republicans. (The Democrats are thrilled by his ineptitude.) “I hear he was a pretty good surgeon,” a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

Next up, watch the wheels will come off Dr. Frists’s quixotic bid for the presidency:

Frist will leave the Senate at the end of the year and start his presidential campaign. “He’ll disappear,” said a Republican consultant. “He’s not built for heavy weather. He’s just not an instinctive politician. And when you’re a light candidate, every maneuver seems naked and tactical. With Frist, it’s been college Republican sort of stuff.”

Why Won’t Reporters Ask Bush about Permanent U.S. Bases in Iraq?

Jon Ponder

Gary Hart wants to know why the White House Press Corps is avoiding an obvious question:

“As we learned nothing from the French experience in Indochina, we have learned nothing from the 28-year British occupation of Iraq.”
— Gary Hart

I have been pleading with the American press corps for months to ask the Bush administration one simple question, a question designed to expose our true agenda: “Are we, or are we not, constructing permanent military bases in Iraq?” Full stop.

Finally, this from Gen. John Abizaid, our senior military commander in Iraq: The United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and to protect the flow of oil…

As we learned nothing from the French experience in Indochina, we have learned nothing from the 28-year British occupation of Iraq. Presumably, our remaining forces, say 50,000 to 75,000, will be garrisoned outside the chaotic urban areas where they will be used to keep Syria at bay, intimidate the Iranians, and protect the Saudis (and their/our oil). Problem is, garrisoned U.S. forces will be safe within their fortresses from suicide bombers but sitting targets for mortars and IEDs launched by primitive artillery.

Hasn’t this been the long-range plan all along? In the run-up remember hearing that we could use a conquered Iraq as a sort of aircraft carrier from which we could police the Middle East.

Last One Out of the Harris Campaign, Please Turn Out the Light

Jon Ponder

Saturday mutiny: The floundering campaign of Rep. Katherine Harris, a Republican, to take the seat of Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, took a triple hit yesterday when four top advisers resigned:

Congresswoman Katherine Harris’ U.S. Senate bid suffered a surprising setback Saturday with the resignation of her campaign manager, press secretary, media consultant and outreach director.

“I didn’t know I was going to get the knives in my back from my own party, and I’ll be honest, it’s infiltrated my campaign staff.”
— Harris

“I was told if I didn’t get out of the race, I would have an April surprise,” Harris said at a meeting at the First Baptist Church of Cocoa Beach, where she met with about 50 Brevard County Republican stalwarts Saturday morning. She said she could not verify who warned her.

“I didn’t know I was going to get the knives in my back from my own party, and I’ll be honest, it’s infiltrated my campaign staff . . . For too long, we have been undermined by people in our own party and staffers in our own campaign.”

Harris said campaign manager Jamie Miller, campaign spokeswoman Morgan Dobbs, director of field operations Megan Ortagus and media consultant Adam Goodman have been replaced by people who will be publicly announced next week.

“We have real professionals coming on board,” Harris said.

Former campaign manager Jim Dornan, who resigned in November, disagreed.

“She had the best people in the country. This is a campaign that is spiraling downward by the minute and the smartest thing for her to do would be to get out of the race,” Dornan said. “Katherine’s trying to run it and a candidate can’t run her own campaign. It’s foolish for her to try.”

The resignations follow a half-dozen others from Harris’ campaign in recent months.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had anything quite like it,” said David Colburn, a history professor at the University of Florida and the author of several books on Florida politics. “I can’t help thinking what the Republican Party is going to do.”

Meanwhile, recent polls show that the incumbent, Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, maintains a healthy lead:

Nelson, who was targeted by the White House as one of five “red state” Democrats who might be toppled, remained above 50 percent [at 51 percent] in the Mason-Dixon Florida Poll.

[…]

Former Reaganite Jim Webb Running as a Dem Against Sen. Allen in Virginia

Jon Ponder

Jim Webb has been on my radar since he was Secretary of the Navy in the Reagain Administration. At the time, he seemed to me to be a rare honest broker in administration full of connivers. (What gentlemen they were compared to the Bush crowd.)

Now he’s running against uber-rightwinger incumbent George Allen for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia. Because Allen is such an odious Bushite and since he plans to run for the prsidency in 2008 from his senate seat (and you gotta wonder how Virginians feel about that), an upset here would be — and I use this word advisedly — thrilling.

If it can be done, it wouldn’t surprise me that Webb could do it. He has also hired the new wunderkind of political consulting, Mudcat Saunders and Steve Jarding, who helped get Mark Warner elected governor of Virginia.

And he has the endorsement of Gen. Wesley Clark, who is one of the very few politicians I trust.

Here’s what he said about his campaign in an March 14, 2006, interview with Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of DailyKos:

WEBB: We’re running on four themes, and the first one is to re-orient our national defense to a more traditional set of policies that truly relate to defending our interests abroad. I believe the Iraq War was a serious strategic error that has cost the nation a great deal in terms of blood, treasure and international respect. At the same time I am a realist when it comes to the legitimate need to defend our interests. These needs are sometimes strategic, and in rare instances (e.g., now, the need to root out international terrorism) related to direct combat. We need to begin a careful withdrawal from Iraq. The first step in doing so involves a clear signal to the region that we have no long-term interests in that country.

Read the interview here.