Otto J. Reich is perhaps the most unreconstructed,
href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/">old-style rightist
appointee in the Bush administration. A
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,608019,00.html">friend and
protector of Cuban emigre terrorist Orlando Bosch, Reich was also
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_04_14.html#000057">implicated in
the United States' seeming involvement in the failed coup against Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez last April. He
href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/7280.htm">runs Latin America policy
at the State Department.
Recently, the St. Paul Pioneer Press asked Reich if he had any advice
for out-going Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and state business executives who
are accompanying him on a trade
href="http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P2MXVQK2QYHJWK">
mission to Cuba this month. Reich
told the
paper: "First, I would ask them not to participate in sexual tourism, which
is one of the main industries in Cuba."
Ventura called the remark "offensive" and
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15357-2002Sep13.html">said:
"At the very least, he and President Bush owe my wife and children a personal
apology."
A State Department spokesman rebuffed Ventura's request.
--Josh Marshall
Talking to different people today I heard many different
opinions about just what policy the president had enunciated in his
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html">speech.
After reading the speech several times it seemed to me that when you peeled away
the Cheney-esque bluster you had a Powell-esque policy.
No one is mentioning this. The White House had one policy. They hit a brick
wall. Now they've changed policies.
And that's good. Because this is a better policy.
Meanwhile, The New Republic has a
href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020923&s=editorial092302">scathing
editorial in its new issue, which strikes me as completely half right. The
magazine argues that the Democrats are shirking their responsibility by ducking
the basic questions about what to do about Iraq and in essence failing to
embrace the president's historic policy of preemption and regime change. The
first part of that is true, I think. The second part strikes me as strained and
unpersuasive.
(In the Cold War, guys, containment was the historic policy, not
roll-back. The logic of containment doesn't apply to Iraq today. But
href="http://www.tnr.com/052900/chait052900.html">bold does not always mean
right. Nor is maximum assertiveness always a sign of clarity or logic.)
I believe the Democrats are missing an opportunity. The opportunity, though,
is not to play
href="http://www.senate.gov/learning/min_6cabc.html">Vandenbergs to Bush's
Truman, but to hash out an
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0206.marshall.html">aggressive
policy on Iraq which eschews the dishonesty and amateurism which has plagued
White House policy for months. They are missing that opportunity. And for that
alone the TNR editorial is worth considering.
--Josh Marshall
Busy as I was today I thought I could wait till this
evening to note the latest bit of Republican Social Security campaign
hooliganism. I was wrong.
Republicans often argue that Social Security is a bad deal for
African-Americans. It's a
href="http://www.cbpp.org/10-5-98socsec.htm">specious argument based on
looking at some statistics and not others. But it's no more mendacious than a
bunch of other tendentious uses of statistics that are the common coin of
political debate today.
This week though,
href="http://www.gopac.org/static/about_gopac.adp">GOPAC -- a hard-charging
political action committee that was once the engine of Newt Gingrich's rise to
power -- decided to turn the volume on this canard way, way up. All the way to
eleven, you might say, using the argot of Spinal Tap devotees. The
GOPAC
href="http://dailynews.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=548&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20020912/ap_on_el_ge/reparations_ads">ad
running on black radio stations in Kansas City called Social Security a form
of "reverse reparations" which blacks paid to whites.
Here are a few choice clips from the ad ...
You've heard about reparations, you know, where whitesThe
compensate blacks for enslaving us. Well guess what we've got now. Reverse
reparations ... So the next time some Democrat says he won't touch Social
Security, ask why he thinks blacks owe reparations to whites.
good folks at the Social Security
Information Project at Campaign for America's Future found out about this,
put out the word, and by this afternoon GOPAC had pulled the ad.
In cases of low-rent sleaze like these it's hard to know whether to fix on to
the dishonesty, the crassness, the ugly caricature of gullible blacks the ad is
intended to appeal to, or just the pitiful dorks themselves who hatched the
idea.
You can just imagine the brainstorming session with the
href="http://www.cse.org/">CSE-baseball-cap-clad
href="http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P2MXVQK2QYHJWK">
goofball 'wingers who came up with
the ad. "Hey, you know how blacks are all into reparations? Well, Social
Security is terrible for blacks. We'll say it's like reverse reparations!
You're giving your money to the white man! They'll eat that stuff up. By the
way, you hear about how that fat rapper killed Tupac Shakur? Dangit!"
Ahhhh ... an idea is born.
It's pretty clear GOPAC was working in concert with the local Republican
candidate, Adam Taff. The AP story says Taff's campaign recently hired
Joe Gaylord as a campaign strategist. The article identifies Gaylord as a
one-time GOPAC 'consultant', though in fact that phrase greatly understates his
role in the organization.
The one bright spot to this ugly episode is some comedic value provided by
GOPAC's efforts at damage control. GOPAC spokesman Mike Tuffin said that they'd
subcontracted the ads to an outfit called Access Communications which mistakenly
gave the ad to the radio station. It seems the ad, surprising as it may seem,
was one of those ads a political pressure group produces without intending to
run. You know, one of those private campaign ads. "We disavow it and have
seen to it that it was immediately pulled," Tuffin said. "We did not know it was
going to be run and never intended it to be run."
And so it goes.
More disturbingly, it seems Republican incumbent
href="http://www.capito2002.com/">Shelley Moore Capito's
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_09_08.html#001762">silly word play
and lies have actually produced some results. You'll recall Capito picked up
the NRCC line and
claimed that Democrats' use of the word 'privatization' was a egregious lie and
slander, even though it's the word Republicans themselves only recently
embraced. Four local stations have now apparently refused to run the ads.
It's amazing what one can accomplish in politics if you're willing to lie
brazenly and repeatedly and the press refuses to call you on it.
Meanwhile, says the same AP story, Republican lawyers are threatening
to file a lawsuit against Democrats in Minnesota for an ad claiming that
Republican candidate John Kline would "end Social Security as we know it."
--Josh Marshall
Of all the 9/11 anniversary articles published,
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/11/nationchallenged/11CRIT.html?pagewanted=all&position=top">this
one in today's Times strikes me as the most interesting and
important.
--Josh Marshall
September 11th is a day for memory, reflection, unity, silence.
So why is the vice-president
href="http://www.democrats.org/news/200209110001.html">spending the day on
Rush Limbaugh's show? Can't we expect more from this man?
Here is a
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2001_09_09.html#001717">TPM flashback
from a few days after.
--Josh Marshall
I love steamed Chesapeake Blue Crabs. On a wonderful
evening about exactly a year ago I had them for the first time out where you're
supposed to have them, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Then last week some friends
of mine had me over for steamed crabs and I got to watch the chamber-of-horrors
process of cooking these guys unfold. The doomed, angry crabs would get tossed
into steamer, hop around for a second, and then just as they were about to give
up the ghost one or two of their claws would start to fidget and vibrate in a
chilling -- though admittedly rather appetizing -- death spasm.
I couldn't keep that image out of my mind this evening when I was doing some
new reporting on the John Thune for
Senate campaign in South Dakota.
It's been a hard several weeks for Thune. President Bush recruited Thune --
who is currently in the House -- to get into the race.
href="http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P2MXVQK2QYHJWK">And his candidacy was premised on
getting lots of support from the president -- who's extremely popular in the
state.
But the plan hasn't come off just as expected. Last month, Bush stiffed the
state on drought relief -- a serious embarrassment for Thune, since his campaign
is based on proximity to the president. And recent polls suggest that
href="http://www.timjohnsonforsd.com/">Tim Johnson, the incumbent, who long
trailed Thune by significant margins, is opening up his first, albeit very
meager, lead. At a minimum, Johnson has erased all of Thune's big lead.
The Thune campaign has been trying to get the campaign on to issues more
favorable to their candidate. And now the Thune campaign -- or some mysterious,
unknown forces trying to aid the Thune campaign -- seem to be getting desperate.
John Thune is pro-life. Tim Johnson has a mixed record on the issue,
basically on the rightward edge of pro-choice. In a rural, Republican state like
South Dakota you can imagine that Johnson probably doesn't make all that big a
thing of his position on the issue. No campaign fly-ins from Barbra Streisand,
Cybill Shepherd, etc.
This last Sunday at churches -- mostly Catholic ones -- in Souix Falls a
flyer appeared on congregants' car windshields. The
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/keep.abortion.legal.html">flyer
(which has just been added to the
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/">TPM Document Collection)
reads: "You Can Help Keep Abortion Legal, Vote Tim Johnson for US Senate." The
first three words and the last three are in smaller letters so it basically
reads 'Keep Abortion Legal, Vote Tim Johnson.'
In still smaller letters below the flyer says "Call Senator Johnson at
605-339-9700. Thank him for his endorsement of the Roe vs. Wade decision
legalizing abortion."
According to today's Argus Leader, Mario Sassani of Holy Spirit Church
attended Mass early Sunday and then found out about the flyers when he returned
later in the morning for a 'respect life' meeting. He was a bit upset.
Now, if nothing else, Johnson's known to have a
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_06_16.html#001128">pretty sharp
campaign staff. So it's hard to figure how they would have thought it was a
good call to leaflet cars at Catholic Churches on Sunday morning asking
parishioners to "thank" Johnson for "his endorsement of the Roe vs. Wade
decision legalizing abortion." Possible, I grant you. What's not possible in
this world we live in? But just rather hard to quite imagine.
Now questions are circulating about whether the flyers were some sort of
political dirty trick.
So I asked Thune Press Secretary Christine Iverson about the flyers.
"I think the Johnson campaign," Iverson told me Tuesday evening, "has made a
move in extremely bad taste which offended a number of South Dakotans and
they're now trying to hide from their actions by attempting to put it on someone
else. But I think their campaign's backfired and I think they realize that
they've made a terrible, terrible mistake and offended a number of people very
deeply."
But wasn't it a bit hard to figure, I asked Iverson, that even the most
moronic member of the Johnson campaign would decide to leaflet a Catholic church
on Sunday morning with pro-choice flyers?
"I agree," said Iverson. "It was appallingly bad judgment on their part."
When I asked if it could have been some outside group trying to embarrass the
Johnson campaign, Iverson said, "I suppose that it's possible. But again the ads
clearly mention voting for Tim Johnson in November. It's difficult to imagine
how anyone who's not supporting Tim Johnson would have been responsible for
those flyers."
Iverson denied the Thune campaign was involved in any way and added that "bad
judgment and poor taste have long been hallmarks of the Johnson campaign and
this recent incident is no exception. Someone who is attempting to help them or
they themselves made a terrible, terrible error. And they have deeply offended a
number of people. They realize they made a horrible and grave mistake."
When I asked Dan Pfeiffer at the Johnson campaign about Iverson's remarks, he
said: "That is the craziest thing in the world. It's ludicrous to assume that we
did this ... It's a political dirty trick. There's no question about it. And we
believe very strongly that it was John Thune's campaign or someone trying to
help John Thune's campaign that did this. It's such a ludicrous assertion that
it's hard to know what to say. What do you say to insanity? To say that we did
this is dishonest, disingenuous and incredibly desperate."
Neither campaign claims to have any actual knowledge of who put the
flyers on the cars. You can be the judge.
--Josh Marshall
We knew we'd have an election. We knew there might be war
in Iraq. But who knew the Republican party would go to war against the English
language?
Just to recap: Republicans long called their Social Security reform plan
'privatization' or 'partial privatization.' This Spring their
href="http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P2MXVQK2QYHJWK">polls and focus groups showed it
was killing them with voters. So they decided the 'privatization' label was
dreadfully unfair and that nobody should be allowed to use it anymore. The
National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent out a
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ss.nrcc.memo.doc">memo instructing
House candidates to demand that reporters never use the word 'privatization'
because doing so would mean using "the power of the press to promote inaccurate
Democrat spin and taking sides in the midterm elections ..."
(According to a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A3492-2002May10¬Found=true">May
11th article in the Washington Post, Republicans have even considered
suing Democrats who accuse their candidates of supporting
'privatization'.)
Now an actual Republican House candidate is demanding 
that her opponent stop using the term
'privatization' once and for all. First-term Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito
(R-WV) -- locked in a tough rematch with Democrat
href="http://www.dccc.org/candidates/onecand.phtml?candidate=51804">Jim
Humphreys -- has
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020909/ap_to_po/social_security_politics_3">demanded
that the
href="http://www.dccc.org/press/newsreleases//2002-08-05.587.phtml">Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) stop airing a campaign commercial
which claims that she supports 'privatization'.
The actual ad says "When Capito had a chance to help protect Social Security
from privatization, she voted no..."
Capito calls the ad "false and negative" and claims that she had "never voted
on the privatization of Social Security because no such vote has ever taken
place." (Italics added)
The issue here isn't whether there was a vote or who voted which way. (The
vote took place on July 25th, 2001 when California Democratic Congressman
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2000_12_31.html#000694">Bob Filner
had the House vote on an amendment designed to put everyone on record for or
against privatization). The issue is merely over the word 'privatization',
Republicans' own once-preferred word.
At the time of the vote took place 'privatization' was still the word
Republicans used: A week before the vote, conservative Washington Times
columnist Donald Lambro called the policy 'Social Security privatization.' The
whole issue is that the NRCC has now decreed that the 'privatization' label is
beyond the pale. So it follows that no vote on 'privatization' ever took place.
Now, clearly this whole exercise can quickly degenerate into ridiculous word
games. But that's precisely the point. House Republicans are afraid to
discuss their Social Security policies. (As one of the NRCC's recent
href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/nrcc.soc.sec.complete.pdf">internal
polling reports put it, "Successful implementation of inoculation and
response strategy [on Social Security] serves only to limit erosion --
not going to get any sort of clear 'win'.") So they're resorting to a weird mix
of game-playing and lies to muddy
the waters and stop anyone from taking them to task over their support of an
unpopular policy.
Every political
reporter knows this is true. This same trick is going to be pulled in race
after race. Will anyone call them on it?
--Josh Marshall
This new article in the Weekly Standard by Stephen
F. Hayes ("
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/607rkunu.asp">Democrats
for Regime Change") is getting a lot of attention by tarring Democrats as
hypocrites on Iraq. Hayes takes us back to February 1998 when President Clinton
was ratcheting up pressure for military action against Iraq in the then-on-going
struggle over inspections. He quotes the then-president extensively on the
necessity of acting. And he quotes Democrats like Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and
John Kerry supporting the president and
href="http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P2MXVQK2QYHJWK">
echoing his argument for action --
including military action -- against Iraq.
Hayes' argument -- first implicit, later explicit -- is obvious: what else
beside partisanship would be preventing Democrats from endorsing the case
against Saddam and the need for military action now when they did so so
fulsomely four years ago?
The argument reads well. But it sets the Standard in a two-against-one
battle against logic and the its own editorial line.
After all, just what sort of military action was being discussed? And with
what aim? Even the most skittish Democrats today are full of talk about the
necessity of confronting Iraq, the dangers of WMD, and so forth. But Hayes'
argument only makes sense if what Democrats were inclined to endorse four years
ago is at all similar to what they're hesitant to endorse today. But, of course,
it's not. The entire discussion Hayes references refers to military action, but
not the forcible overthrow of the Iraqi regime through military force.
Who says so? Why, the Weekly Standard. And virtually every other
Republican politician and certainly every conservative publication. The conceit
of Bush administration policy on Iraq is that it's fundamentally different from
Clinton administration policy -- which is, by and large, true. At just the time
Bill Clinton and the sundry Democrats Hayes' quotes were making their statements
the Standard said, succinctly enough, that "Containment is the strategy
this administration has chosen." (Weekly Standard, Editorial, March 2,
1998) In other words, the policy then on offer was fundamentally different from
what's now being discussed. Supporting that one then and not supporting this one
today means nothing.
Perhaps Clinton's policy was the wrong one. Pains me as it does to say, by
the end of the second term I don't think the Clinton administration had a
coherent policy on Iraq. But the logic of Hayes' argument collapses at the
simple level of a mistaken apples and oranges comparison.
--Josh Marshall
