Mais Oui – Je pense à la paix

PARTY UNFAITHFUL The Republican implosion.
by Jeffrey Goldberg
4 JUNE 2007

Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove-who’s most to blame for the Republican Party’s disarray? Keywords
Republicans: Rove, Karl – Gingrich, Newt – DeLay, Tom – Bush Administration – Conservatives – GW Bush.

The West Wing of the White House tends to have a funereal stillness, even in the best of times, which these are not. The President’s aides walk the narrow corridors with pensive expressions and vigilantly modulated voices. By contrast, Karl Rove’s office has an almost party atmosphere. Rove, the President’s chief political adviser—the “architect,� Bush has called him, of his 2004 victory over John Kerry—has been a man of constant troubles: Valerie Plame troubles, U.S. Attorney-firing troubles, and, most of all, collapse-of-the-Republican Party troubles. Yet his voice is suffused with bonhomie, his jokes are bad and frequent, his enthusiasm is communicable; he resembles an oversized leprechaun, although one with unconcealed resentments and a receding hairline.

“Hey, what’s Snow doing here?� Rove said one recent afternoon. “Must be important, if he’s visiting us.� Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, stood in Rove’s outer office, bent over in conversation with one of several assistants. “Uh-oh, here’s the big gun,� Rove said as Peter Wehner, the White House director of strategic initiatives, came into the office. Wehner, an evangelical Christian, is known in Washington for a relentless stream of e-mails that praise George W. Bush’s allies (“The Remarkable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair,� “The Remarkable Joseph Lieberman�); that glean from the Internet any cheerful news from Iraq; and that provide links to articles by writers like the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami and the untiring neoconservative Norman Podhoretz.

As we talked, Rove would bounce up from his chair, twice making a show of going to the dictionary to look up words. (One was “sanguinity,� as in “I’m very sanguine� about the Republican Party’s future.) He is a bookish man who plays the part of the anti-intellectual, which fits an Administration whose culture discourages displays of esoteric knowledge and, its critics say, of useful knowledge as well.

When Rove came to Washington, after the 2000 election, he envisioned creating an enduring Republican majority—the permanent mobilization of the Party’s broad, socially conservative base. Part of his strategy was to cast as threats, in alarming terms, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and other bogeymen of the right. It is Rove’s cleverness, combined with his joie de combat, that made him insufferable to Democrats.

Now, though, the Democrats are gloating—and happy to point out that little more than thirty per cent of the public approves of Bush’s job performance. Andrew Sullivan, a disaffected conservative, has joked on his blog that Rove seems to be getting his permanent majority—except that it’s a Democratic one. The Republican reversal has certainly come with great speed—as fortunes in Washington have tended to do since the Vietnam era. In the midterm election, Republicans lost control of Congress, and the House G.O.P. caucus is beleaguered by scandals and by accusations that its members have benefitted from crude pork-barrel politics. The tenets of neoconservatism that have animated Bush’s foreign policy—that America has a responsibility to spread the ideals of democracy, and that force can justifiably be used to aid this secular missionary work—are held in low esteem. The call to change the world which infused Bush’s second Inaugural speech has faded.

Disillusionment with the Administration has become widespread among the conservatives who once were Bush’s strongest supporters. Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, said recently, “The Republican Administration has shown itself to be completely incompetent to the point that, of Republicans in Iowa, fifty-two per cent thought we should be out of Iraq in six months.� Edwards, who left Congress in 1993 and now teaches at Princeton, is helping to lead an effort among some conservatives to curtail the President’s power in such areas as warrantless wiretapping. “This Administration is beyond the pale in terms of arrogance and incompetence,� he said. “This guy thinks he’s a monarch, and that’s scary as hell.� The grievances against the Administration seem limitless. Many congressional Republicans, for instance, were upset that Bush waited to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld until after the midterm elections.

Even if events in Iraq do eventually turn in the direction that the Administration hopes, history is weighted against the Republicans. Only once since the death of Franklin Roosevelt has a party kept the Presidency for three consecutive terms—when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, in 1988. Bush the Elder, though, had the advantage of being Ronald Reagan’s Vice-President, and Reagan, despite being damaged by the Iran-Contra scandal, was greatly esteemed by his party. Few of the men running now for the Republican nomination are likely to embrace George W. Bush’s record. “If the Democrats can’t win the Presidency in 2008, they’ll never win the Presidency,� David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, said not long ago.

And now Karl Rove, the man Bush has called his “boy genius,� is among those being blamed by conservatives for the Party’s problems—blame that he shares with others who have attempted to transform the party. One is Newt Gingrich, the strategist behind the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, who could not hold together his coalition, and resigned. (Gingrich also faced ethics problems—he was accused of using tax-deductible donations for political purposes.) Another is Tom DeLay, who served as House whip under Gingrich and became Majority Leader under Gingrich’s successor, Dennis Hastert, and who left facing charges relating to campaign fi-nance. Perhaps most of all, conservatives blame Rove’s boss, George W. Bush.

When I asked Rove if the persistence of bad news, along with criticism from conservatives, has made the White House a moody place, he let loose an apparently authentic laugh. “This is a great place to work,� he said. “It’s inspiring to work here. It’s neat, particularly when you’ve got a boss whose attitude is ‘What can we do today to advance our goals? What are the big things we could be doing?’ � Such statements fail to acknowledge that the President has been spending much of his time fighting congressional attempts to limit his mobility in Iraq and to force the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For Rove, the future is still Republican. “I don’t think by any means it’s a sure thing, but I do think there are these big societal changes driving us, and I think that the conservative movement and the Party through which it operates are going to benefit,� he said. “That’s not to say that it’s going to be an ever-upward line. And it also doesn’t mean that smart Democrats can’t do something about it.�

Rove thinks that more voters now are being influenced by technology and religion. “There are two or three societal trends that are driving us in an increasingly deep center-right posture,� he said. “One of them is the power of the computer chip. Do you know how many people’s principal source of income is eBay? Seven hundred thousand.� He went on, “So the power of the computer has made it possible for people to gain greater control over their lives. It’s given people a greater chance to run their own business, become a sole proprietor or an entrepreneur. As a result, it has made us more market-oriented, and that equals making you more center-right in your politics.� As for spirituality, Rove said, “As baby boomers age and as they’re succeeded by the post-baby-boom generation, within both of those generations there’s something going on spiritually—people saying it’s not all about materialism, it’s not all about the pursuit of material things. If you look at the traditional mainstream denominations, they’re flat, but what’s growing inside those denominations, and what’s growing outside those denominations, is churches that are filling this spiritual need, that are replacing sterility with something vibrant, something that speaks to the heart of the individual, that gives a sense of purpose.� Rove believes what he has always believed: that the Christian right and, to a lesser extent, tax- and regulation-averse businessmen will continue to assure Republican victories.

Early G.O.P. Presidential polls, though, don’t seem to confirm this analysis. Rudolph Giuliani stands more firmly than any of his rivals for abortion rights and civil unions for gays, and at this point appears to be in the lead. Bush, polls suggest, has also lost the support of some self-described conservatives. (Thirty-three per cent of voters in 2004 identified themselves that way.) But Rove cautioned against reading too much into polls, or the results of the 2006 midterm elections. “It’s important to keep in perspective how close the election actually was,� he said. “Three thousand five hundred and sixty-two votes and we would have had a Republican Senate. That’s the gap in the Montana Senate race. And eighty-five thousand votes are the difference in the fifteen closest House races. There’s no doubt we’ve taken a short-term hit in the face of a very contentious war, but to have the Republicans suffer an average defeat for the midterm says something about the underlying strength of conservative attitudes in the country.� Rove’s arithmetic was correct, but he sounded like John Kerry, who, shortly after his defeat in the 2004 election, told me, “I received the second-highest number of votes in American history.�

Rove places the blame for the election results on the recent scandals in Congress—congressmen who placed themselves in the orbit of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of the Republican ethics meltdown; and the former congressman Mark Foley’s relationships with congressional pages—rather than the Administration’s management of the Iraq war. “If you look at the exit polling, the No. 1 issue, particularly among swing voters, was corruption and behavior,� he said. “After Foley, people said, ‘It’s just too much.’ After that, spending was the No. 2 issue.�

Rove suggested, as Bush repeatedly has, that history will ratify the decision to invade Iraq. “You know, the Bush doctrine—‘Feed a terrorist, arm a terrorist, train a terrorist, fund a terrorist, you’re just as bad as a terrorist,’ � he said. “It’s going to remain our national doctrine, and it’s going to be very difficult, I think, if not impossible, to dismiss this, just as it will be to dismiss the doctrine of preëmption. In the future, the country is not going to let the dangers fully materialize, and we’re not going to allow ourselves to be attacked before we do anything about it. The question was, did we have the right intelligence about Saddam Hussein? No. Was it the right thing to do? Yes.�

Leaving the White House, I passed through the West Wing reception area, where a single visitor—an Army officer, perched on a couch—was waiting for an appointment. It was Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, who that evening was to be named “war czar,� a job that few others seemed eager to take.

The appointment of a war czar four years after the invasion of Iraq has struck some as a late and insufficient response to the crisis, and has been a reminder that the Administration, ever since its halting response to Hurricane Katrina, has been judged harshly on questions of competence. Newt Gingrich is one of those who fear that Republicans have been branded with the label of incompetence. He says that the Bush Administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when nothing seemed to go right. “It’s just gotten steadily worse,� he said. “There was some point during the Iranian hostage crisis, the gasoline rationing, the malaise speech, the sweater, the rabbit�—Gingrich was referring to Carter’s suggestion that Americans wear sweaters rather than turn up their thermostats, and to the “attack� on Carter by what cartoonists quickly portrayed as a “killer rabbit� during a fishing trip—“that there was a morning where the average American went, ‘You know, this really worries me.’ � He added, “You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.� Gingrich continued, “When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.�

If Gingrich were an ordinary politician and not someone brimming with futurist and other ideas—some logical, some loopy, many interesting—he would have passed his sell-by date a long time ago. But Gingrich is not ordinary; he did not, in the manner of many ex-congressmen, become a lobbyist (like Dick Armey, the Majority Leader when Gingrich was Speaker). Instead, he has spent his exile lecturing, appearing on Fox News, writing and co-writing books at a ruthless pace (eight so far, including a recent novel about Pearl Harbor), and advertising his thoughts on how to transform government and how to save his party. Gingrich’s strength was always insurgency, and after he won his majority, his Achilles’ heel, which was actual governance, became visible to the world. In 1994, his Contract with America promised, among other things, to reform the way Congress did business; in 1995 and 1996, in a standoff with the Clinton White House, parts of the federal government were shut down for a total of twenty-seven days, and Gingrich received much of the blame. Three years later, Republicans, who by then held only a narrow majority in the House, lost five seats; the Gingrich revolution was over and so was Gingrich’s congressional career.

But Gingrich seemed to me to believe that, having led one Republican revolution, he is well positioned to lead another—one that would place him in the position of Presidential candidate. Though he says that he won’t decide whether he is running until the fall—and although the clamor for his candidacy has so far not been shrill—he is behaving in many ways like a candidate, taking on speaking engagements and constructing elaborate defenses of his record. He has admitted having committed adultery, and he sought penance on the radio show of James Dobson, a prominent leader of the Christian right. He is also mindful of his weight. When we met recently at the McLean Family Restaurant, in suburban Virginia, near the headquarters of the C.I.A.—one of many government agencies that he says require “radical transformation�—he ordered oatmeal with no milk or sugar. Republicans will be studying Gingrich’s waistline this summer for signs of a pre-campaign regimen of self-denial just as closely as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be studying Al Gore’s.

Gingrich does not seem to have aged much in the eight years since he left Congress. His manner has not changed much, either. He has a fondness for ideas that he deems large and not much talent for small talk. Charm is a chore, though he was not at all crabby—as he sometimes is—when we met. The condition of his party had put him in a noticeably buoyant mood. On being asked whether Republicans would be able to capture the White House in 2008 or 2012, he said, smiling, “Or 2016, or 2020.�

Not since Watergate, Gingrich said, has the Republican Party been in such desperate shape. “Let me be clear: twenty-eight-per-cent approval of the President, losing every closely contested Senate seat except one, every one that involved an incumbent—that’s a collapse. I mean, look at the Northeast. You can’t be a governing national party and write off entire regions.� For this disarray he blames not only Iraq and Hurricane Katrina but also Karl Rove’s “maniacally dumb� strategy in 2004, which left Bush with no political capital. “All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote,� Gingrich said. He continued, “The Bush people deliberately could not bring themselves to wage a campaign of choice�—of ideology, of suggesting that Kerry was “to the left of Ted Kennedy�—and chose instead to attack Kerry’s war record.

The only way to keep the White House in G.O.P. hands, Gingrich said, would be to nominate someone who, in essence, runs against Bush, in the style of Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right cabinet minister who just won the French Presidency by making his own President, Jacques Chirac, his virtual opponent. Sarkozy is a transforming figure in French politics, Gingrich said, and he suggested that the only Republican who shared Sarkozy’s “transformative� approach to governing was, at that moment, eating a bowl of oatmeal at the McLean Family Restaurant.

“What’s fascinating about Sarkozy is that you have an incumbent cabinet member of a very unpopular twelve-year Presidency, who over the last three years became the clear advocate of fundamental change, running against an attractive woman�—the Socialist leader Ségolène Royal—“who is the head of the opposition,� Gingrich went on. “In a country that wanted to say, ‘Not them,’ he managed to switch the identity of the ‘them.’ He said, ‘I’m different from Chirac, and she’s not. If you want more of the same, you should vote for her.’ It was a Lincoln-quality strategic decision.�

Gingrich’s ego is robust—Barack Obama is not the only national politician to fashion himself as an inheritor of Lincoln’s mantle. He seems convinced that the Republican Party’s salvation lies in his fecund mind, and believes that truly transformative conservative ideas, when well articulated, will be enough to attract large majorities. He cited global warming as an example. Very few Republicans these days talk about global warming as a reality, the way Gingrich does. Before a recent debate on Capitol Hill with John Kerry (reporters were promised a “smack-down�), Kerry seemed flustered when Gingrich shifted the debate from the basic science to a discussion of market-based solutions to the problem. Gingrich explained it this way: “There’s a short-term way out of this and a long-term way out of this. The long-term way is to create a new intellectual battleground, which you can’t do if you start out by saying ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ But if you say, ‘O.K., let’s talk about, for example, how you best have conservation in America, do you think trial lawyers, regulators, bureaucrats, and higher taxes are the answer, then you ought to be with Al Gore. If you think that markets, incentives, prizes, and entrepreneurs are the answer, you ought to be with us.’ �

I asked Gingrich if it was a mistake to appeal to the religious-conservative base of the Party on such issues as the fate of Terri Schiavo, a woman who was living in a persistent vegetative state. In 2005, Republicans—supported by, among others, DeLay, and the former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist—engineered quick passage of a special law requiring that Schiavo be kept on a feeding tube, against her husband’s wishes but in accord with her parents’ demands and the demands of many evangelicals and conservative Catholics. (Frist, a physician, diagnosed Schiavo, noting that she was “clearly responsive,� after watching her on videotape.) The courts intervened, and the feeding tube that kept Schiavo alive was removed; she died thirteen days afterward. That episode, though, frightened members of what the anti-tax agitator Grover Norquist calls the “leave-me-alone coalition.� It certainly frightened centrists, without whom neither party could flourish.

Gingrich has been criticized lately by some conservatives—most notably DeLay—for spending too much time reaching out to center-right voters; he advocates modernizing the government rather than making it smaller. (Gingrich and DeLay barely speak; their relationship came apart in the late nineteen-nineties, when Gingrich suspected DeLay of engineering an attempted coup.) It is true, Gingrich said, that he wants to bring the center into a coalition with the right, “because I want to give the right power. The right can have power only by being allied with the center.�

That, Gingrich said, was Rove’s mistake. “I think he didn’t understand the second-order effect of base mobilization. The second-order effect is that you drive away the center because you become more and more strident at the base.� What you end up with, he said, is cases like Schiavo’s, and the feeling that Republicans risk alienating “America’s natural majority.� “The Schiavo case was one of my proudest moments in Congress,� Tom DeLay told me not long ago in the basement grill room of the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican retreat, where congressmen and senators can mix with lobbyists, a number of whom are former congressmen. DeLay was tan and smiling and tranquil, which was striking, considering that he is currently under indictment in Texas on money-laundering charges, and that many Republicans blame him for allowing a culture of corruption to thrive when he led the Republican caucus. DeLay helped create the so-called K Street Project, designed by Grover Norquist to move Republican congressional staffers into key positions at lobbying firms and trade associations; he was closely linked to Jack Abramoff, and two senior former staff members have already pleaded guilty to corruption charges in the Abramoff case.

“I don’t let those kinds of things bother me,� DeLay said of the controversies that churn around him. “I’m at peace with myself,� he added, laughing. “I know that bothers some people. I’m very relaxed.� He pointed to his cup of decaffeinated coffee. “This is pretty much the strongest stuff I drink these days. I’ll occasionally take a glass of wine with dinner.� Earlier this year, he published a memoir called “No Retreat, No Surrender� (his spokeswoman says that he was not stealing from Bruce Springsteen, and that the phrase has been used many times throughout history, including by the Spartans and as the title of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie), in which he claimed that as a young congressman he would on occasion drink ten to twelve Martinis at a time. In this period, he earned the nickname Hot Tub Tom. Then he found Jesus and, he said, stopped sinning. In the book, he freely confesses to committing adultery. “I had put my needs first,� he told me. “I was on the throne, not God. I had pushed God from His throne.�

In the book, DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things, conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,� DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs.� He added that the impeachment trial was another of his “proudest moments.� The difference between his own adultery and Gingrich’s, he said, “is that I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.� He added, “Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.�

In fact, DeLay speaks of Gingrich with undisguised contempt. “He’s got this new shtick now—‘solutions,’ he calls it, like government is the new solution. Government isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.� DeLay smiled. “Did you see that he had a love match with John Kerry on global warming?� he said. “That’s not going to help him with the Presidential race.� A tall, thin man of about fifty approached DeLay, who jumped up to hug him. “This is the man who really saved me,� DeLay said. He introduced the man as the Reverend Ken Wilde, an Idaho evangelical leader, who founded the National Prayer Center on Capitol Hill. The center houses volunteers who pray for America’s leaders. “When I was going through my troubles, it was Ken who really stepped up,� DeLay said.
Wilde had a brief message for DeLay. “The church is strong,� he said. When he left, I asked DeLay if he thought the church—evangelicals, who make up the core of his support—was strong enough to save the Republican Party. In this case, he agreed with Gingrich. “We’re having a time of it right now,� he said. “We don’t have a good shot at winning 2008. I’m not saying we don’t have a shot, but it’s not good. It’s going to take six years to rebuild.�
DeLay says that when, in the coming years, he is not fighting the indictment in Texas (he insists that he is not guilty) he will be building a conservative grass-roots equivalent of MoveOn.org. “God has spoken to me,� he said. “I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party, and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated.� He said that Republicans should spend their impending exile reminding themselves what they stand for. “I see this as a cleansing process, where you can return to your principles, which are order, justice, and freedom—the basic principles of the conservative movement. We have to redefine government based on conservative principles, we have to win the war against our culture, and we have to win the war on terror.�
DeLay’s critics find his reinvention as a guardian of conservative ideals implausible. “I don’t think he ever understood what it was about,� Dick Armey, who preceded DeLay as Majority Leader, told me. “The revolution was about changing public policy for America, but he thought the revolution was about winning a Republican majority in which he would have an important position in the leadership. For him, keeping the majority was about keeping power for himself.�
In Armey’s view, DeLay saw earmarking—the practice by which members of Congress can attach spending projects to larger bills—as a means of keeping the Republicans in permanent power. One such project, in Alaska, involved building a bridge that would connect a small city to an airport on an island, at a cost of more than two hundred million dollars; the so-called “bridge to nowhere� became a national joke and a scandal. “Politics is morally and intellectually inferior to any other criteria when you’re making choices about spending,� Armey said, “and they fell into making political choices. There was an explosion of earmarks in the last several years. You use earmarks to help the guy who needs it to win elections, but then what happens is people say, ‘I don’t need an earmark, but it sure would be nice’ �—that is, to bring pork to the congressman’s home district.

Conservative leaders have always entertained suspicions about George W. Bush’s conservative credentials—in part because his father raised taxes while President, and in part because “compassionate conservatism,� which was a mantra of Bush’s 2000 campaign, sounded to some dangerously like “big-government conservatism.� DeLay’s willingness to spend tax money in order to keep his party in power came as a surprise to those who believed that he was a doctrinaire, limited-government conservative. “Bush was never a conservative, but Tom DeLay was one of us and he betrayed us,� Richard Viguerie, a founder of the modern conservative movement, says. “He’s like a lot of these guys. They campaign against the cesspool. ‘I’ll clean up the cesspool of government,’ but after a while they all say, ‘I made a mistake—it wasn’t a cesspool, it was a hot tub.’ That’s what they called him, you know, Hot Tub Tom.�

Viguerie, whose new book is called “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause,� told me how the conservative movement has been undermined: “It’s not any one thing, but, when you add everything up, what you have is a massive overreach of executive powers, and massive overspending by people who claim they’re conservatives. Every President, with hardly any exceptions, will take as much power as he gets. That’s what Presidents do. Bush has tried more than most. And it was supposed to be the Republicans in Congress who would do oversight of the President, so that he wouldn’t get away with too much abuse of power. But they abdicated that role. It was all about the maintenance of power, and now look where they are.� He continued, “This President has strengths and weaknesses, but he has a major character flaw, and that’s that he will brook no criticism and his people won’t, either. And the whole Party gave in to him on that.�

Jeff Flake, a four-term congressman from Arizona, is one of the Republicans who have turned on the Administration. He is a Mormon, with five children, and his cheerful personality seems to have somewhat protected him from retribution from a Party leadership that doesn’t like what he’s saying. “The Republican Party has always had three tenets—economic freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility,� he told me not long ago. “If you look at any of those three issues lately, you’d be hard-pressed to say that the Republican Party really stands for any of them. Look at the growth of government. And I’m not just talking about war spending and homeland security. You can put that aside, and we’ve still grown substantially. Look at that tracking-poll question that’s always asked: ‘Whom do you trust more to manage the public’s finances, Republicans or Democrats?’ Republicans have always had a big edge there. And that has narrowed over the years, and now it’s reversed.�

Flake said that he and Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana conservative, often joke that they feel like Revolutionary War-era minutemen who arrived five minutes after the battle was finished. “You know, it took three runs for Mike to get to Congress. We both got here in 2000, we show up and report for duty, and we’re told, ‘All right, No Child Left Behind is the first mission.’ That’s the first thing we do. We arrived for the revolution, and we’re six years late. And then we thought, Maybe this is an aberration, wait until the next term, and then what is it? Prescription drugs. We were just too late.� Limited-government conservatives believe that No Child Left Behind is a federal intrusion into a matter best left to states, and that the prescription-drug bill represents the further expansion of entitlements.

When I mentioned Flake’s objections to Rove, he said, “I don’t accept the label ‘big-government conservatism.’ I think the object here is how do you fundamentally reform the big institutions of government in a way in which you drive them toward market choice, to the individual, to decentralization.� He went on, “Flake is one of the few people who are consistent. Because he will say, ‘Not only should we not have the prescription-drug benefit but also we shouldn’t have Medicare, either. But most members of Congress, virtually every conservative member of Congress, has said, ‘Look, we’ve settled that issue; we’re going to have Medicare.’ �

Flake, like many Republicans on the Hill, no longer seems interested in Rove’s theories. “If we would stick to our principles, we could be a natural governing majority,� he said. “But our leaders have not stuck to the principles they say they follow.� Like most Republicans, he sees little chance in the near term for his party’s revival. “It’s a tough environment, and, frankly, I’m not sure we’ve bottomed out yet. There are still a lot of investigations going on, and the war is going on. We’re going to have to turn it around, but I’m not sure how we’re going to do it. All we can hope for, I guess, is for the Democrats to overreach on something.�

The Democrats are not strangers to overreaching, and America’s political parties tend to make quick recoveries. In 1964, Republicans—and especially conservatives—despaired after Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson; four years later, Richard Nixon won the White House. In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that drove Nixon from office, but Carter lost four years later to Ronald Reagan—and Republicans gained control of the Senate. Not long ago, I asked the G.O.P. leader in the House, John Boehner, if he thought it possible for his party to keep the White House and take back Congress in 2008. His answer was revealing. “The Democrats have gone too far,� he said. “They’ve grossly miscalculated what the American people want on national security.� When I asked him to describe a set of post-Iraq, post-corruption, post-earmark-scandal ideas that would propel the Republicans back into contention, he said, “Members have to do the hard work, using their own brains to develop our proposals for the future.� Then he said, “The Democrats are going to stumble. It’s just the nature of things.�

millions de nile

breathing, i try to take in the day. the birth of a love, she is 46 today, and we’ve been together for over 6 years. that’s a lot of breathing we’ve spent together, but a fraction of what is to come, i’m sure. i’m sure our bodies’ rhythms are pumping in unison now, our breath, our heart rate, our hopes and dreams… we braid our lives into one palace of magic. our children fill the rooms with laughter, and reason to seek answers. their innocence gives me strength for the monsters.

i can no longer live the way i used to live. i can’t watch the news- that world being trashed is my children’s future. when a drowning mother hands her infant off to a man in the boat, as the waters swallow her- i can’t see those photos anymore. the mother is my sister, the child my child. i bleed all the way through life now. right now, i am so forlorn over the lack of consideration for human life. dancing with the stars, singing with the stars, idolizing with the stars, moving with the stars, gawking at the stars, blogging with the stars, vote for your favorite star… millions of people make a river in egypt: de nile. denial. denial has to have some sort of saving grace on my soul. denial gives me a false hope that carries me through the night while i sleep, and allows me to raise my children without needing to march anywhere or write to anyone or put a big ugly fight with the bullies of the world: the american government. fuck, i know what would happen to me if i spoke out more than i do… i’d be called a “washed-up, wannabe, muff-diving, ugly, abomination, stupid, fat, lezzbo BITCH who should go back to following MLE around like a puppy dog, and leave the big thoughts to those with balls that don’t get placed in the night stand drawer.”so here i am. me and my blog, and a pile of laundry and some dirty diapers, and chicken pox. and nary a postcard or a picket sign in sight.

i’m still thinking about post cards. sending a shitload to somewhere, with one word on it: IMPEACH. who do we send it to? where is ken lay when you need him? if only condi would blow bush… well… there are rumors…. about the bush part, i mean. which bush, hmm…someone get me a prozac. this is so depressing. without denial, would i let the frustration of it all bubble to the top? would the sadness wash over me like watered down syrup, drowning me on my stack of flat wishes. does denial make it possible for me to get up each morning, and concentrate on what fruits and veggies my kids need to eat? does denial allow me space in my mind to save myself from more years of anxiety attacks? denial saved my ass growing up: if you don’t know your mother is crazy, then you don’t think “I’m raised by a crazy!” you think, “i’m raised by a colorful gal!” if i step out of my safe denial, my feelings might come up. i might get angry- and have no place to put it. (hello, sweet cindy sheehan)

i might feel desperate and reach out for help- and get none (hello, conservatives). denial not only protects me from having to make a move regarding that criminal activity in the white house, but it also allows me to just be a mommy. to just let my dreams come true, let the reality of my hopes fading into truth be my point for living… granted, this world might not be here for my grandchildren… but isn’t that one more reason to run away from the fact that the most powerful man in the world is an ass puppet for gold and hate mongers. ass puppet. i wish i could say that to his face. i wish i could run into him in the back room of a smokey bar. i don’t know if i’d beat the shit out of him…. or knock him over the head, strip him naked, dress him up as a troop, and send him into iraq. i’m afraid, very afraid. but i’m boogeyman afraid- i don’t even know what i fear. i just know i fear something. and i am mostly afraid that i fear my government.and if i step out of denial, what the hell do i do with that? if i open my eyes to find dad(bush) molesting the family(raping us of our faith, trust, patriotism), who do i go to for help? there is no mother- cheney is merely the uncle who molests the neighbor kids (WMD anyone?). do i run to get help and take the beating from the angrily quiet victims…. or do i close my eyes and go back to sleep, hoping i don’t feel him this time? cuz if i don’t see it, i might not feel it. and if i don’t feel it, i don’t have to acknowledge it’s there. i don’t have to accept my vulnerabilty.

if i just keep denial wrapped around me, like a cashmere blanket, warm from the dryer even… i don’t have to do anything different. i can just curl up with my woobie, read with blind eyes, listen with deaf ears, and don’t question…. and life will be soft and safe and no one will headline my name with the word “BBBIIITTTCCCHHHHHH”. why am i ready to let my life bleed dry before i am ready to put on some boots and do something?postcards. i wonder if it would do more to send the post cards to the white house or to nancy pelosi? i bet if i mailed a shitload of postcards to nancy… and the other folk who work with her… i bet there’d be something- if nothing else, at least a BLOG about the effort right? i can write a postcard. i can get a stamp. i can do this. i can buy 100 postcards, i can buy 100 stamps. i can mail one postcard a week, or one a day…. i can send them, tell my friends to send them, tell anyone to send them… millions…. a deluge of IMPEACH IMPEACH IMPEACHi think nancy would listen. i do. i just looked up her contact info, and i’m going to use it. i think i’ll email her and send postcards. emailing is quick, and cheap. postcards scream “I’m not effing kidding here”. so i’ll do both. on the postcard, i shall write only “IMPEACH”… and in my emails, the subject will read “IMPEACH” and inside it shall only read, “BUSH”. i hope she understands these two go together… not that i want to impeach someone, AND make everyone a lezbo, but rather, “IMPEACH BUSH” is the entirety of the message. i can’t sit around slack-jawed at the incest and rape happening to our souls anymore, or i will need to start taking partial credit as to why our state is in such disarray. right? postcards and emails. i might be the only one doing it, but dammit… one by one is better than none by none. hm… if my 1000 “impeach” postcards and emails get him out of office… well, rootbeer floats all around!let’s just see what happens. i’m going to believe this will work. believe it, know it, is is.

DC Address: The Honorable Nancy PelosiUnited States House of Representatives
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-0508
Email Address: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov
impeach impeach impeach impeach impeach impeach go go go go go go go sisters go brothers go go go go go go go !!!!!!!!!right?

Tammy writes – I beieve beautifully – feeling so much – all the while changing diapers and celebrating Melissa’s 46th birthday – and so it goes…

Linda – as Rosie says – that is what “they” want you to believe [government] – if you are paying attention to all the BS regarding Rosie – you are not paying attention to the real issues that our real heroes the troops and that to me and many others the true terrorists are the governments around the world including ours. They sacrifice our younger people for their own sick desires – none of this is for altruistic reasons – is if for greed and power – God gave us free will – governments are taking our rights away –

They consider our men and women of the armed forces and the people of any/all nations to be collateral damage. Oh its okay for nearly 1 million to die for their dark desires – well damn it is not alright – they claim to be christian and they believe in God – if they believe – do they not get it that the ultimate is that eventually they will be faced with God and how are they going act when they WILL be held accountable – I am far from perfect but I would not want their karma – no way.

As far as Elisabeth is concerned – she is not a true conservative – neither is this dark administration – they are frauds – true conservatives are those who believe in full accountability. Barry Goldwater was one – he may not have been liked by all – but he did not believe that government should not be making decisions about sexuality and abortion among other things – he was not pro abortion – he as many of us are – pro-choice – meaning that some silly ass politician has no right to tell us what to do with our bodies – that decision should be between a woman – God – and her doctor.

As far as the so called ‘gay issues’ – DO you really think that these politico’s give a bloody damn who you make love to OR screw – whatever – think again – they want us in everyones business – so we DO NOT look at what they are doing by stealing our rights away. It is the ‘pay no attention to that man behind the mirror syndrome’ ALWAYS pay attention – ALWAYS – when we are focused on Lindsey Lohan Dui’s and Anna Nichole Smith baby – OR Rosie being attacked by Bill Gette and Elisabeth Hasselbeck – notice what is going on around us – what crap in the name of freedom is being siphoned away by the Cheney – Rove – Rumsfield [yep - him still the puppet Bush] – and Gonzales are they pulling in the dark and in the background – my grandmother always said what goes around comes around…

Last night I watched a funny little film with Ben Stiller – about a night watchman at a museum that everything in it came alive at night. He had replaced 3 men who were being retired against their will. They had in secret decided to steal many of the museums antiquities and blame him. What the 3 men didn’t realise that this man had befriended all the beings in the museum and that they ALL pulled together as a group and captured the 3 BAD guys and saved the day/night so to speak. It came back to me in a D’uh moment realising that this film is can actually be a metaphor for what is really happening in the world today. Be aware be very aware of everything going on. Do not take things for granted – In other words we CAN if we stick together stop the name calling and accept the face that none of are perfect [thankfully] but we are all children of God and pull together to make America one America again. Okay I am pau. Thanks for listening remember that all the right answers are very simple it IS the politics that complicate things.

COMMENTARY

By Miki Turner
MSNBC contributor

Updated: 5:37 p.m. MT May 25, 2007

Meow. The reign of Rosie is over.

I guess we should have expected that a woman who would take the day off to celebrate her life partner’s 40th birthday — when she basically only has to work about an hour a day — would be the same kind of gal who would have the courage of her convictions and leave that gig purportedly over the sparring match beamed around the world.

Two days after her heated debate with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck comes word that Rosie O’Donnell is leaving “The View.� Her sudden departure from the morning chat fest she had anchored since last September comes three weeks ahead of her planned exit. She said she didn’t want to fight with Hasselbeck any more and now she won’t have to — at least not on TV.

The Disney statement read: “We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but Rosie has informed us that she would like an early leave. Therefore, we part ways, thank her for her tremendous contribution to ‘The View’ and wish her well.�

While it is less surprising than the “take this job and shove it� exodus of her predecessor, Star Jones Reynolds, it’s just as jarring. Apparently neither Rosie or Star got the memo about daytime TV. Everyone is supposed to play nice. You’re supposed to save all the drama for the soaps! But you can bet that all the stay-at-home moms, all the college students packing up for the summer and those of us on the left coast who wanted to sleep late but got tipped off about a knock-down, drag-out fight on “The View� from friends on the East Coast, were totally appreciative to be ringside for Rosie vs. Elisabeth, Round 625.

I’d rather watch a good verbal beat down than Mayweather vs. De La Hoya any day.

Joy gets the party started On Wednesday, it all started with Joy Behar’s Bush-bashing laundry list. You could see the pre-natal veins in Hasselbeck’s head starting to protrude, especially after Behar accused Bush of stealing the election in 2000. The further down the list Behar got, the more agitated Hasselbeck became. After a short series of soft punches from Hasselbeck — remember her using TiVo as a defense on why she chose to watch “Dancing With the Stars� as opposed to Al Gore on CNN? — it became painfully apparent that Behar was going to win that round. Not one of Hasselback’s jabs landed.

Meanwhile, we have O’Donnell in the opposite corner stewing. Her lips are probably still sore because her pearly whites were obviously clamping down on them. But when Hasselbeck began defending the war, Mt. St. O’Donnell blew. “The enemy is in Iraq? Did Iraq attack us?� Honey, get the popcorn! It’s about to go down! You could kind of see it coming because O’Donnell, who referred to herself as a “big fat loud lesbian� on Wednesday’s show, had been abnormally quiet throughout the entire Behar vs. Hasselbeck undercard. O’Donnell had been on the show long enough to know that it’s lose-lose any time she shares her opinions in that public forum. Especially when Barbara Walters isn’t there to be the voice of calm and reason.

The problem with O’Donnell is that her self-avowed description of herself alienates a lot of the nice people who prefer more sanitized programming before lunch. They want to hear mindless banter about clothes, nutrition, weight loss, hot guys. But O’Donnell, who wears her gayness proudly and loudly and moderates the discussions on the show’s “Hot Topics� segments, like to discuss issues so flaming that even Walters’ reactions have become increasingly more subjective.

That’s why O’Donnell consistently finds herself vilified in the press when she attacks “innocent pure Christian Elisabeth.� If the two of them were selling soap, it’s probably safe to assume that many Americans would prefer buying it from a pretty blonde whose values are more morally sound.

Grow up, Elizabeth Yet, at the risk of sounding overtly judgmental, I don’t really care for Hasselbeck. It’s nothing personal because I’ve never met her. I just don’t think she adds anything to the show and she’s a little too whiny for that time of day. She has that kind of voice that brings back memories of fingernails screeching on the chalkboard. I kind of wish she would have triplets and move to that rural area in Ohio that Dave Chappelle calls home. Like Dave, she’s got some growing to do.

What truly amazes me, however, is that it apparently hasn’t occurred to Hasselbeck that she’s one of the only people in the country — blind, crippled, crazy or Republican — that still defends Bush and the war in Iraq. You don’t have to ride the current wave, jump on the Al Sharpton bandwagon or be a hater — that certainly won’t get you that coveted invite to the state dinner for Queen Elizabeth — but, dang get a clue already!

Conversely, I’m fairly indifferent when it comes to O’Donnell. I think she must like the taste of her own toes because she puts her foot in her mouth a lot. I think she was wrong for mocking the Chinese language and perhaps should have suffered harsher consequences when she claimed it was all in the name of comedy. And I was over that whole Donald Trump feud the day before it actually started.

The difference between O’Donnell and Hasselbeck is that even though you may not always agree with either of them, at the end of the day you still have some respect for O’Donnell’s convictions. It takes a lot of courage to out yourself on national TV — and I’m not talking about her sexuality. And, when it comes to politics and friendship, I’m often on the same page with Ms. Ro.

That’s why I knew that O’Donnell was hurting that day even before she asked Hasselbeck if she had been there for her every time she’d been slammed in the press. This feud, which actually started Monday when Republican pundits criticized O’Donnell for insinuating that the U.S. troops in Iraq were the true terrorists, went a lot deeper than a heated debate over politics and war.

Hurt feelings rule the day – O’Donnell may be loud, but she appears to be a little insecure, too. In her world true friends stand up for and stand by each other. And while Rosie, who considered Hasselbeck a friend, might not take a bullet for her, she’d probably push her out the way. That’s why when Hasselbeck couldn’t or wouldn’t answer O’Donnell’s question about whether she felt O’Donnell believed our troops were terrorists, it was like a dart to the heart.

In her defense, however, Hasselbeck did say she didn’t believe O’Donnell felt that way, but O’Donnell had stepped aboard a fast moving train, leaving her friend behind at the depot. This is a scenario that plays out in the lives of millions of people daily. Feelings get hurt, your hearing becomes more selective and the claws come out. Before you know it, things have been said and regrets have been realized. And women, particularly, sometimes have problems getting over things in a timely manner.

Ladies, didn’t we learn anything from Paris and Nicole?

There’s no way of telling what will happen to O’Donnell and Hasselbeck’s friendship. O’Donnell did say in that ABC statement that “she loved all three women,� but that could have been the expressed sentiment of some summer intern. Personally, however, I’m pretty bummed O’Donnell is not coming back to enjoy the view. I was looking forward to her return on Tuesday. First, I wanted to hear how I could get a day off to celebrate my man’s birthday and still have a job upon my return to work. Second, I wanted to see how O’Donnell and Hasselbeck were going to interact with each other while sitting on opposite ends of the desk. If it got ugly, I’d have to go with Ro for the first round TKO. Were they going to play pretty or was it going to play like a scene from “General Hospital.� You would hope cooler heads would prevail, but it is a sweeps month.

But you know what? A few good things did come out of this fracas. One, most of America learned that more than 655,000 innocent Iraqis had been killed in this senseless war. That is bound to challenge the way the people who support this war and this administration think. Two, we now know that passionate people with issues make for good TV no matter what time of day it is. Three, skin is thin. People on TV should wear leather jackets. O’Donnell called Hasselbeck a coward, but she’s the one who will be sitting in that chair when the show resumes it’s live schedule on Tuesday morning. And lastly, since the view from “The View� has become so incredibly murky that it’s probably time to close the blinds. If not, the aging Walters might have the unenviable task of replacing herself.

Miki Turner is a freelance TV producer/writer in Los Angeles. She can be reached at dmiki@aol.com.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Thanks RO…