Just POlitics

Party discipline

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, discouraged a handful of her members from attending a bipartisan Social Security meeting with Republicans and AARP representatives yesterday. Only two of the five invited Democrats showed up at the meeting.

"We just said we'd prefer you not go," Mrs. Pelosi said, "one thing we have to have on Social Security is a united front" against the private accounts Republicans want to create.

Ed Case of Hawaii and Jim Cooper of Tennessee — attended the meeting, organized by Rep. K. Michael Conaway, Texas Republican. Three others did not show — Reps. William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Mike Thompson of California.

Rep. Jack Kingston, (R-Ga.) said, "At some point you have to decide whether you're going to represent Ms. Pelosi and she's going to own your soul, or whether you're going to represent your constituents."

The Left’s war on religion

The left has begun to recognize that they are truly in a "Culture War" with the religious right. Stanley Kurtz of National Review writes about the growing fear of the liberal intellectual media’s attempt to demonize the religious right:

"I fear these stories could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians. Whether this is what Harper's intends, I cannot say. But regardless of the intention, the effect seems clear," Mr. Kurtz said.

"The phrase 'campaign of hatred' is a strong one, and I worry about amplifying an already dangerous dynamic of recrimination on both sides of the culture wars. I don't doubt that conservatives, Christian and otherwise, are sometimes guilty of rhetorical excess. Yet despite what we've been told, the most extreme political rhetoric of our day is being directed against traditional Christians by the left.

"It's been said that James Dobson overstepped legitimate bounds when he compared activist judges to the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, that was an ill-considered remark. I hope and expect it will not be repeated. But Dobson made that comparison extemporaneously and in passing. If that misstep was such a problem, what are we to make of a cover story in Harper's that systematically identifies conservative Christianity with fascism? According to Harper's, conservative Christians are making 'war on America.' Can you imagine the reaction to a cover story about a 'war on America' by blacks, gays, Hispanics, or Jews? Then there's Frank Rich's April 24 New York Times op-ed comparing conservative Christians to George Wallace, segregationists, and lynch mobs.

"These comparisons are both inflammatory and mistaken. Made in the name of opposing hatred, they license hatred. It was disturbing enough during the election when even the most respectable spokesmen on the left proudly proclaimed their hatred of President Bush. Out of that hatred flowed pervasive, if low-level, violence. I fear that Bush hatred is now being channeled into hatred of Christian conservatives. The process began after the election and is steadily growing worse. This hatred of conservative Christians isn't new, but it is being fanned to a fever pitch."

The Washington Times in "Inside Politics" reports on Rush Limbaugh picking up the gauntlet regarding the Liberal Left and their religious relativism:

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is striking back at religious liberals. On Wednesday, during a discussion with a caller named "David" from Merrick, N.Y., he held forth on what the left does not understand about the late Pope John Paul II, adding:

"I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country. And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, 'This is right and that is wrong.' "

Mr. Limbaugh continued, "A lot of people on the left don't want to hear that. They want to define that for themselves, and they don't want to be judged, and they don't want anybody casting judgment on them and forcing anything on them so there's fear. All this fear prohibits and gets in the way of people understanding who other people are."

Reaction from religious liberals was swift. The Interfaith Alliance yesterday called the remarks "religious hate talk."

Ethics War

"There are other Democrats who are just as interesting from an ethics standpoint," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the Republican Conference. "Unfortunately, the Democrats have been throwing a lot of mud and it is going to be thrown right back at them."

It is clear that the Democrats have, by changing the rules adopted by Republicans (which required bi-partisan support for action by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct), changed the committee into an ugly partisan "Ethics War" between the two parties. Under the Republican adopted rules, no party could take action without at least one member of the other party agreeing to taking action against an ethics complaint. Now, Republicans who control the committee are set to destroy as many Democrats as possible through ethics investigations. It is likely that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will lose most of her staff through investigations.

To get a sense of how bad the Ethics War will get, it is helpful to read the Hill’s article describing what’s about to happen. Democrats are sure to be censured at the very least:

[Rep. Jack] Kingston said it is inevitable that Republicans will file complaints against other Democrats. He cited reports that Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) took trips that were paid for by lobbyists, a violation of ethics rules, and that 10 aides in the Democratic leader’s office failed to report trips paid for by outside groups.

Now Rep. Tubbs is scrambling to get out from under the glare of suspicion, as Wesley Pruden writes in the Washington Times:

The latest victim of penmanship malfunction is Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, a Democrat, who first said that a junket she took to balmy Puerto Rico, along with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader, and a clutch of several other concerned congresspersons, was paid for by a Washington lobbyist.

Now, she has discovered that someone in her office, but certainly not she, made the mistake. The lobbying firm of Smith, Dawson and Andrews didn't pay the tab for her trip, as she first said it did. It was picked up by a group of Puerto Rican patriots, bursting with ethics, morality, etiquette and decorum, who have protested the U.S. Navy's bombing range in Puerto Rico. The Puerto Ricans wanted an opportunity talk to, some might say to "lobby," the congresspersons, and it was easier for everyone to have the lobbying done at that nice Doral Resort rather than in a cramped office at the Capitol in Washington. Stephanie finally got her paperwork to accord with Nancy's. Everyone's happy now.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), referring to Democrats indiscretions yesterday, said that the missing reports are "technicalities on reporting" and said those should not be confused or equated with larger ethical issues.

One of Pelosi's aides did not report an ineligible trip to South Korea last year with a group that had registered as a foreign agent.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking Democrat in the House, also has recently filed paperwork that had been missing for past trips.

The Pelosi line is, "Do not fall into the Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting -- timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House," she said. "I don't get into anybody's ethical issues. That's for the ethics committee to do. But I do have a responsibility to uphold an ethical standard, and when the Republicans gutted the ethical process, purged the committee, firing the chairman and firing the staff, then that became an issue that we all had to play a role in."

PBS: balanced & fair?

The NY Times reports on how the new Republican chair of Public Broadcasting Service is trying to balance the liberals’ favorite media:

The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

Predicting Republicans’ demise

The Washington Post is predicting that the Republican Party is experiencing a once in a lifetime control of government:

As the president passed the 100-day mark of his second term over the weekend, the main question facing Bush and his party is whether they misread the November elections. With the president's poll numbers down, and the Republican majority ensnared in ethical controversy, things look much less like a once-a-generation realignment.

Instead, some political analysts say it is just as likely that Washington is witnessing a happens-all-the-time phenomenon -- the mistaken assumption by politicians that an election won on narrow grounds is a mandate for something broad. In Bush's case, this includes restructuring Social Security and the tax code and installing a group of judges he was unable to seat in his first term. This was the error that nearly sank Bill Clinton's presidency in his first years in office in 1993 and 1994 when he put forth a broad health care plan, and that caused then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Republican "Revolution" to stall in 1995 in a confrontation over cutting spending for popular domestic programs.

GOP 2008

National Journal asked 85 GOP members of Congress, party officials and strategists to predict who would he be the Republican nominee in 2008. Allen, a former Virginia governor who is little known outside the mid-Atlantic region, took the top spot, edging Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) came in third, followed by, in descending order, former New York City mayor Rudoph W. Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and New York Gov. George E. Pataki.

Hunting Abramoff

Michael Crowley of the NY Times appears to be shopping a book on lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In a tome for even the Times, Crowley offers a biographical look at Abramoff and tries to further tag Minority Leader Tom DeLay:

Abramoff also directed his clients to donate to the conservative movement. None did so more than the Indian tribes that he had begun to represent. Abramoff once boasted he had steered more than $10 million in tribal contributions to G.O.P.-aligned groups. Documents from the Coushatta Tribe, based in Kinder, La., show how this worked: Abramoff presented the tribe with a specific list of ''requests,'' which included such helpful notations as ''Very receptive to tribal issues,'' ''Senate Appropriations cmte. Member'' or simply ''Race is priority for the Republican leadership.'' Abramoff's old friends, including DeLay, were often the beneficiaries of Coushatta money. For instance, the tribe sent $20,000 to one DeLay political committee and $10,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority, a DeLay-run state political committee whose activities are now under investigation. Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform received $25,000 from the tribe for a promised meeting with the president, which never took place. Coushatta money also went to Ralph Reed's Atlanta-based political consulting firm. That firm took more than $4 million from Abramoff to rally religious opposition to a casino Abramoff was trying to shut down on the Coushatta's behalf. (Reed, who is running for lieutenant governor of Georgia, has insisted he was ''deceived'' by Abramoff. Others on the Christian right aren't so sure. ''I think it's a hard sell that he didn't know any of this,'' says Paul Weyrich, a dean of Washington social conservatives.)