The rudderless and demoralized GOP is thrashing around helplessly, searching for the coherent and authoritative voice of a national spokesperson. So far three hefty bald men have obliged. Two are unelected motor mouths and another has been out of power for mere two weeks and cannot keep his mouth shut. Worrisome though it may be for Republican office holders, I am deriving some vindictive pleasure in seeing them hoisted by their own petard of arrogance and ignorance.
Rush Limbaugh, the "radio personality" of immense disrepute, has emerged as the clear leader of the right wing. Barack Obama made the mistake of acknowledging that fact. He should have given Limbaugh the cold shoulder instead. Among the long list of idiotic things that Limbaugh has said over the years, he recently added another gem when he made public his hope for Obama to fail as president. Many prominent Republicans came forward to hastily deny and denounce the rash pronouncement. Limbaugh is of course known goods. He has been holding court for more than twenty years and has a considerable fan following. He is doing what he has to do to satisfy his ardent flock and to earn his mega millions. It is the members of the Republican establishment, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who have flattered and feted him over the years and must now put up with his loose lips. Bush even threw a surprise birthday party at the White House for Limbaugh a few days before leaving town last month. The radio host crowed about the honor on his show. So, may be Limbaugh is a bit miffed that he won't be setting foot inside that mansion for parties and sleep overs in at least the next four or possibly eight years.
Less clear is the case of Joe Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber, who first emerged as the right wing's favorite poster child during the second McCain-Obama debate. Since then Wurzelbacher has been seen at various right wing national events, even doing a dint as a foreign correspondent during the Israel-Gaza conflict for a conservative website. Now the news blog Politico.com reports that Wurzelbacher attended a closed door strategy meeting of aides to Republican lawmakers to offer his opinions on Barack Obama's economic stimulus proposal. How pathetically lacking in leadership is the GOP and how dim is its political future that Joe the Plumber, whose fifteen minutes of fame should have been long over, is on its economic advisory team?
Call it a pipe dream come true: When members of the Conservative Working Group held their weekly strategy meeting on the Hill on Tuesday morning, they were joined by none other than Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who had come to offer his thoughts on the economic recovery bill.
The Senate staffers who showed up at 9 a.m. for the closed-door meeting refused to leak the contents of their discussion with the tradesman-cum-strategist, but Wurzelbacher himself revealed that the advice they soaked up was just good, old-fashioned “common sense.”
Wurzelbacher opposes the stimulus and said he questioned why the government can’t just cut its bills like other people do. He also advised staffers to take a harder line on the legislation: “Republicans on the Hill are afraid of saying too much,” he noted.
Further recommendations from the Karl Rove of the Commode included having “someone go in there and kick some ass.”
One voice that the Republicans probably wish wouldn't be heard but is now booming again, is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, who along with his juvenile boss, can claim the lion's share of the blame for leaving the GOP's future and its reputation in tatters. But unlike Bush, Cheney hasn't left town (the Cheneys have bought a home in Maryland) and if Wednesday's unexpected outburst is any indication, he doesn't plan to fade into the political sunset any time soon. In an interview with Politico.com he lambasted the Obama administration for its plan to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison and for wanting to reverse some of Bush-Cheney's secretive, draconian and often illegal national security measures. The villainous and self righteous Cheney questioned Obama's intelligence and his understanding of national and global issues. And then, as befits his vengeful personality, he predicted that the new president will make "catastrophic" terrorist attacks on America possible by his misguided policies. Rush Limbaugh only hopes that Obama will fail. After merely two weeks of the new president taking office, Cheney has already declared him a failure.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.
And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” ….
In the interview, Cheney revealed no doubts about his own course — and many about the new administration’s.
“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”
Accidental Blogger 