The Chris Moeller Archives

The Democrats' gift refund policy

During this 2007 holiday season, Republicans seem intent on participating in one of the best-known traditions (among the goyim, at least) of the Jewish celebration of Hannukah; that is, presenting a new gift each day to their loved ones. Among the GOP's political offerings to the Democrats this week was Karl Rove telling Charlie Rose, against a virtual torrent of historical evidence to the contrary, that President Bush and the White House were driven and rushed to conflict in 2002 by a war-hungry Congress. "We don't determine when the Congress votes on things. Congress does," Rove told Rose in his typically Orwellian style of distortion, referring to the Congressional authorization to bring force against the Saddam Hussein regime.

And while it's impossible to deny that the President had an entirely sycophantic Congress at his disposal in 2002-- not far removed from the way it still exists today-- Rove's claim flies in the face of all logic held by Americans educated in the claims and evidence provided by former Bush cabinet officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, as well as the widely-acknowledged and advertised aims of the influential political action organization, Project for a New American Century, which lobbied for a military and imperial solution in Iraq dating back to the first Gulf War in 1991, and whose members reportedly dominated the policy discussions in the Oval Office in the days following the 9-11 attacks.

Taking this type of political gift into account, the first week of the holiday shopping season should have been a week in which Democrats could ask pointedly of voters: Have you had enough of these GOP lies? Instead, Americans were reminded instead that the knife still cuts both ways in Washington, as the Democratic party found itself hampered again by the dishonesty and sleaze of the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine, that two-headed and two-ton barnacle cemented to the hull of the Democratic ship.

This time, specifically, it was that Clinton of yesteryear, William Jefferson, that got caught with his lips moving. Campaigning for his wife here in Iowa on Tuesday, Bill did some history re-writing that would make Rove blush with envy, announcing that he was opposed to the Iraq war "from the beginning," despite simultaneously admitting that he supported his wife's decision back in '02 to surrender Congressional war authority to President Bush on Iraq.

Coupled with news of a hostage standoff at Clinton campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, Americans were reminded again this week of just what polarizing figures the Clintons have always been, and what realistically they would bring to a fourth decade at the helm of the Bush/Clinton American political cabal. Citizens of every political stripe must be embarrassed by the parade of lies that continue to emanate from the two mouths of this most ethically-challenged political coupling.

On the stump during this campaign cycle, Hillary Clinton has taken to claiming that she was a vital instrument in shaping the key policies of her husband's administration, in areas as diverse as the economy and foreign affairs. This contention has been shown to be patently untrue by all journalistic accounts, except for those from within the family's most loyal inner circle. Hillary did not have a hand in shaping global policy, or in steering the national treasury, or on anything other than political strategizing. Following the first year of Bill's governance, during which Hillary's polarizing personality and instinct for Cheney-like secrecy helped to wreck the cause of universal health insurance possibly for multiple generations to come, the First Lady's most influential role, both publicly and behind-the-scenes, was to be Mudslinger-in-Chief towards the victims of her husband's pathological, unquenchable, and maladaptive sexual appetite.

Hillary, claiming to be the most-experienced candidate in the race this year, has chosen not to run on her Senatorial record, which is as incomplete as it is unspectacular. She's attempted to paint herself as an anti-war candidate while lapping even the Republicans in the field for political contributions from the major defense contractors. Worse yet, some of the private and congressionally-unaccountable mercenary military contractors in Iraq, like the Fluor Group, have come on board financially, as well, while the PR firm run by Hillary's top campaign strategist, union-buster Mark Penn, also represents Blackwater USA. Well-heeled conservative organizations from across-the-board, with their plethora of specialized interests, such as furthering media deregulation, have been busy purchasing access to the Hillary agenda.

A major American political party has arguably never been given an electoral advantage like the Democratic Party has been given by our current, incompetent president and his party, and still the Democrats show every indication that they plan to shoot themselves in the foot by putting the Clintons back at the top of the ballots nationwide. Even as candidate Barack Obama ascends to the top of the polls in Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation caucuses, it's intellectually dishonest to think that the Democratic nomination wasn't long ago decided by the powerful Clintonistas in control of the party boardroom. The Hillary Hammer waits to strike the Obama campaign in New Hampshire, just five days after the Iowa Caucuses in early January. Clinton will easily carry New York, if not all of the Northeast; she's extraordinarily well-financed in California, and the Democratic National Committee, as we speak, is moving to decertify the delegates from Florida and Michigan because those states attempted to butt in on Iowa and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation electoral coronation.

The Democratic party establishment picked their candidate long, long ago. They've wanted Hillary for so long, they nominated a loser in John Kerry in 2004 to clear the path. If you think that's bullshit, you're kidding yourself. The Terry McAuliffes, Bob Shrums, and James Carvilles that run the party have been content to run out the clock on Bush, rather than to actively oppose him with anything other than empty rhetoric prior to the 2008 vote. This has been best illustrated by the leadership's failure to stop the war in Iraq despite having gained control of Congressional pursestrings last November. And the real kicker is this-- even that strategy's a loser. If the Republicans have the sense to oppose Clinton in the general election with any one of the "outsider" candidates from a list of Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, they will have pulled off the extraordinary trick of casting the Democrats in this election as the establishment party of Washington.

And the Dems, for their part, keep forgetting that Bush isn't on the ballot in 2008. American voters, after they get to know them, just might decide that they prefer either the outward rhetorical strength of Giuliani, the "project-your-favorite-quality-here" malleability of Romney, or the general human decency of Huckabee, to the "politics-as-usual" cycle-of-dishonesty from the Clinton machine. Never underestimate the American people's desire for a rigorous hand-scrubbing.

posted by CM @ 3:06 PM