American Politics Journal

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Thursday, May 24, 2001 (APJP) -- The VRWC spin machine really has to scramble this week.

On one hand, they've got the massive embarrassment and political defeat of Senator Jeffords of Vermont defecting from the GOP, becoming at best an independent who has promised to vote with Democrats on procedural matters (hello, Minority Leader Trent Lott!) and at worst a full-fledged Democrat [Note: as this is being prepped for release, Jeffords has officially announced he will become an Independent]; and on the other hand, they have the embarrassment of the Ted Olson nomination, [Note 2: he's been confirmed by the Senate] with the Arkansas Project, again being discussed in the press, rising up like an undead body in some cheezy slasher flick.

Oh, and in case the VRWC happens to have a foot at the ready, there's the matter of Dick Cheney's big fund-raising bash Wednesday. They can juggle it on that foot.

Finally, there's the matter of the Republican claims that Clinton trashed the White House, and the GAO report Bob Barr demanded.

The VRWC is lucky. They have a remaining foot left to juggle that one.

First, Jeffords. He was a moderate Republican, a breed that is being increasingly steamrollered by the rabid right in their drive to take over the GOP. In Jeffords' case, the incident that broke the camel's back was an education award given at the White House. Jeffords has always been big on education, and strived mightily to improve schools in Vermont. It's been the centerpiece of his career. It should be no surprise to anybody that he is Chairman of the Education Committee in the Senate.

So he was justifiably proud when a Vermont teacher was named for a prestigious National Educator award.

But Jeffords opposed Putsch's tax plan on the grounds that it gave far too much to the rich while taking away the country's ability to reduce the still-crippling national debt.

In a Senate that is split 50-50, defections from the party line take on gargantuan proportions. Jeffords' did. Putsch was forced to seek a compromise solution, reducing the tax cut plan from as much as $2.5 trillion (it was NEVER $1.6 or $1.3 trillion–Putsch was simply lying about that) to an actual $1.3 trillion. Putsch's masters will not be pleased, so Putsch was not pleased.

They decided to punish Jeffords in much the same way that the Speaker of the Assembly in Texas might punish some yahoo who, as Molly Ivins might put it, is "being bad for bidness". First, they floated a rumor that they were going to gut dairy price supports. That's a big issue in New England; "The West Wing" even showed then Governor Bartlett of New Hampshire fielding hostile questions about it. (Bartlett's answer? "Yeah. I gave you a royal rogering on that one.") Even hints that something like that might happen because of his political stance would do him political damage with the folks back home.

But that wasn't enough for the ham-handed ideologues in the White House. They decided that a little public humiliation was in order. So when it came to giving the award to that Vermont teacher for Educational Merit, everyone on the Educational Committee was invited to attend. Everyone, that is, except the Chairman of the Committee, the Senator from Vermont.

This isn't the Texas state house where you wait for the legislative miscreant to sober up and then slap him around a bit until he gets the idea that you are displeased with him. This is the US Senate.

Jeffords concluded that there was no future for him in the Republican party. By all accounts, for several weeks he had been discussing the switch with colleagues, and at least some of the Republicans realized that they were about to lose him, and with him, control of the Senate. They offered him a "place for a moderate" at party discussions, a position that strikes me as being about as meaningful as the game points in the TV show, "Whose Line is it, Anyway?". But the White House would budge, and there were probably a number of Republican Senators unwilling to compromise in any way.

On May 24th, 2001, Jeffords announced that he is becoming an Independent voting Democrat on procedural matters, thus putting the Senate in the hands of the Democratic party.

One right-wing pundit was heard to snarl that there was a "good riddance" coalition among Republican Senators who were happy to see the "liberal" Jeffords leave, and one apparently said that he was never happy trying to run the Senate with an unreliable coalition.

Well, his problem is solved! How ‘BOUT that?

One amusing footnote: the pundit from the National Review who was discussing the "good riddance" coalition noted that while "liberal", Jeffords was fiscally conservative, which made him a good Republican in the past. Left unmentioned was the fact that the disagreement between Jeffords and the GOP lay on fiscal grounds.

The spinmeisters are at it. White House flak Ari Fleischer, when asked if the White House tried threatening Jeffords with removing diary price supports, denied it, but then turned to the reporter and said, "If I were you, I would be very careful about asking questions like that". Evidently they haven't quite figured out that threatening their allies is counterproductive.

Good.

His Fatuous Flatulence, the varasour of all that is holy and good in America, Bill Bennett, rose to defend Ted Olson. He inveighed against liberals for pursuing the "politics of personal destruction", taking time out to say that Clinton had it coming, but that Lyin' Ted was a good man, a decent man, a fine upstanding Christian nearly of the same value that Bennett himself has.

OK.

Funny thing, though. Bennett never used the word "perjury", and while he allowed that certain low-life librul scum were seeing fit to dare question the honesty of this fine upstandin' you know the rest, he didn't mention that in fact, the issue wasn't whether he was involved in the Arkansas project (legal–dishonest and sleazy, but legal) but whether he lied to the Senate subcommittee about it.

Lott managed to head off a full floor debate in the Senate, but the public has managed to notice the foo-foo-raw, and are asking questions like "What was the Arkansas Project?" and "If it was legal, why did Olson try to bull the committee about his involvement?" Having the boy they were fast-tracking for the position of Antonin Scalia III in the Supreme Court hit with allegations of perjury was bad enough. The LAST thing they wanted was public inspection of the Arkansas Project.

Now that Republicans have lost control of the Senate, Minority Leader Lott may not be able to prevent full floor discussion.

Oh, dear.

Oil and Electric company thieves were thick as crows and twice as repellent at a glittering fete held at the official residence of the Vice President the other night. Word is the Pubs raised some $28 million from their grateful Johns for a job well done, delivering America on a silver platter and all.

Fundraising on government property is a big deal. Or at least it was last year, when the GOP spin machine put endless man hours into sliming Al Gore on that one.

But last night's trick party was "different." You see, they didn't use any government phones to accept their bribes. That's different.

Republican arrogance and stupidity struck again. They knew the press wouldn't complain, because the press doesn't want to lose all the money the Pubs plan to spend on a "bribery is free speech" campaign against McCain. Besides, the press knows they have to be careful about asking certain types of questions, according to the White House, and don't want to lose the fawning position of being among the first to receive their news from GOP fax machines.

The media, however, couldn't quite bring itself to pretend the big party didn't happen. Too many people knew about it. One friend of mine, a company CEO, received an invite to it. This puzzled him, since he is strongly left-wing, a Democrat, and a champion of gay rights. Presumably someone at the White House found it inconceivable that any CEO could possibly disapprove of the rape the GOP was committing on behalf of company heads against America. I asked him if he would consider attending with eighteen sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest, but he didn't get back to me on time on that one. CEOs just aren't on the ball like they used to be, I guess.

Common Cause and a lot of other public interest groups, the Democrats, and even some Republicans heard about it, too, and complained. When you've got your "Vice President", the "man to see" at the White House, busily selling off chunks of America in the Official Residence, complaining about Al Gore possibly using the wrong telephone to make a standard solicitation call looks pretty stupid, and detracts from the fact that the Republicans can do what they want because God and General Motors is on their side.

Remember the stories about how Clinton trashed the White House and stripped Air Force One of all its napkins and plastic glasses on the way out? All the really big turds floating in the media punch bowl (Limbaugh, Drudge, Matthews, O'Reilly, etc.), spent weeks howling about it non-stop. The tales became lurid beyond belief, up to and including piles of human waste left on the Oval Office carpet (I've seen Karl Rove; it's an understandable case of mistaken identity). Even when Putsch came out and said that the stories that the Clinton people had stripped Air Force One were not true, they ignored that inconvenient slip of the tongue by their supposed leader and kept right on howling.

Bob Barr, the Congressional Case with the whipped cream fetish, did what he usually does whenever anybody accuses Clinton of anything; he called for an investigation. The GAO, which is responsible for the care and upkeep of the White House, proceeded to investigate.

They came back with their report last week. In a nutshell, the report stated that there was NO vandalism, no sabotage of equipment and material aside from some very minor pranks, and no damage beyond the normal amount of wear and tear expected after a two-term presidency.

Limbaugh, Drudge, Matthew and the rest have forgotten to apologize, which is astonishing. We all thought they had more character than to commit a moral omission like that, didn't we? Of course we did. I'm very, very disappointed.

Barr, a nutcase if ever there was one, insists that the GAO account only covers the White House, and none of the equipment and material contained within -- which explains why the report covered such items as copy machines, computer keyboards, and telephones among the items left generally unmolested by the departing Clinton horde.

The GOP can only scream so loud about the GAO. After all, the GAO scores revenue forecasts, and their tax cut depends in large measure on those forecasts. And they no longer control the Senate.

For the GOP, there is a bright side to all this. Because of all the catastrophes they inflicted upon themselves at home, nobody was paying any attention to the catastrophes they were creating abroad with their insane "fortress America" approach. People know there's fighting in the Middle East and Macedonia, but they don't know how bad it's gotten. Or how far the repercussions can reach.

Still, maybe our "C minus" Prez is on the right track. If Americans are laughing or shaking their heads in disgust at him and the VRWC, maybe they won't notice that these inept-seeming clowns are still blackmailing us at the gas pump and light switch, and still working feverishly to misuse religion to further strip free Americans of their rights.

Still, life has to be simple for George W. Putsch. If a drunk driver, for example, were to punch the ticket of his executive secretary, he wouldn't stand in some church and yell in Latin while smoking a cigarette. Not him. He would ask Dick if he could have a new one, and tell Jenna her driving privileges were suspended for a week.



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