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Here's a shocker.
Just four days after standing next to President Obama and declaring their commitment to control health care costs to the tune of $2 trillion over 10 years, the insurance industry, drug and medical device makers, and hospital groups are backing off their promise
From the NYTimes:
After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.
"These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment," Mr. Obama said. "Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion."
Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.
I just happen to have a copy of the letter [pdf] that these organizations released on Monday, and it
pretty clearlyexactly says:To achieve all of these goals, we have joined together in an unprecedented effort, as private sector stakeholders—physicians, hospitals, other health care workers, payors, suppliers, manufacturers, and organized labor—to offer concrete initiatives that will transform the health care system. As restructuring takes hold and the population's health improves over the coming decade, we will do our part to achieve your Administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate—saving $2 trillion or more. This represents more than a 20% reduction in the projected rate of growth. We believe this approach can be highly successful and can help the nation to achieve the reform goals we all share.
Now, the Hospital Association's executive vice president, Richard J. Pollack is saying: "The groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually." I'm not entirely sure how he interprets "1.5 percent points in the annual health care spending growth rate" but it pretty much reads to me like Richard J. Pollack is full of shit and a reneger.
Back at HuffPo (and over in the diaries, too), Jason Rosenbaum sums it up:
So we've gone from commitments to eventualities, targets, and non-specific understandings. This just proves what the American people have known all along: You can't trust the insurance industry with health care reform. They're liars. They're cheats. They're greedy. They're untrustworthy. They cannot be trusted to come up with a health care reform plan that works for you and me. We must make them do it.
To that end, Matt Singer has a suggestion: "You can contact AHIP online or at 202.778.3200."
ChrisinParis: Big Business lobbyists: Obama is mean to us
Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle. Sounds like some still can't accept their own responsibility for the economic failures that triggered the recession. The business lobbyists are crying "class warfare" so you know we're not far away from hearing about socialism. Oh those crocodile tears.
Some business leaders have focused on the harsh words lately, saying the president is being unduly divisive.Fueling public anger? Hardly. If anything, Obama is well behind the curve on this. The public is fuming over the continued easy treatment of Wall Street and big business and Obama is playing catch-up.
"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."
Bill Miller, political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Obama's remarks "an oversimplification of the real world."
Particularly in the areas of finance and taxation, Obama's language often seems to echo, and perhaps fuel, public anger over matters such as the large bonuses paid to executives of AIG, an insurance giant that was bailed out with public money.
We should always remember the morality of Elite Villagers, those who supported the pointless war in Iraq and who mostly are now decidedly not horrified at the fact that the administration tortured the shit out of people in order to justify the atrocity that was the Iraq war. The Villagers loved their little war. It made them feel heroic. They wanted justification for it, too.
Everybody's talking about Nancy Pelosi's press conference yesterday. I'm listening to Republicans on cable yapping about this contradiction or that contradiction. But what I've seen very little attention to is the fact that Pelosi had an answer that really answers all the questions, a plenary answer you might say: she supports a Truth Commission.
Here's where we are. There are various documents and recollections from around through the news ether. Pelosi's accusers are saying she knew more than she admits. She says that many of these claims are false and the documents perhaps erroneous, and that she's been consistent and true to her opposition to torture. And then she says, and I think there should be a broad-ranging Truth Commission to investigate what happened, who's telling the truth and who isn't. You can see it here at about 3:45 in.
That says it all. She wants it all investigated. The whole point of this storm about Pelosi is that her critics want her to be embarrassed and stop supporting a Truth Commission or any sort of examination of what happened. But she's not. She still says there should be an investigation. Her critics still want the book closed. That says it all. She'll have to stand or fall with the results of an actual investigation. Her opponents on this are simply risible hypocrites.
Whichever side of the torture debate you’re on, it’s a simple matter of fact that Nancy Pelosi’s claims about what she was told and when about torture are getting far more intense media scrutiny than the CIA’s claims are.
Simple fairness demands that both side’s claims get treated with a similar level of skepticism. And they’re not.
Multiple news accounts this morning report that Pelosi’s credibility is in question after yesterday’s press conference, in which she accused the CIA of lying about what they told members of Congress about the agency’s use of torture. This theme was sounded by MSNBC, WaPo’s Dan Balz, the New York Times write-up, and many others.
That’s as it should be. But I challenge you to find a news account that stated with equal prominence that the CIA’s credibility is also in question.
Let’s briefly recap. Three senior Democrats — Pelosi, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller — have all publicly claimed that the CIA didn’t brief them about the use of torture in the manner the agency has claimed. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has conceded that its own accounting may not be accurate.
Yet key facts that cast doubt on the CIA’s claims have been buried or completely omitted from multiple news reports. The Times’s first mention of Graham’s claims came today, five days after he first made them, and they were buried in the 22nd paragraph of the paper’s write-up. Neither The Time nor The Post have even mentioned Rockefeller’s claims once. The networks have refused across the board to mention the CIA’s own unwillingness to vouch for the accuracy of its information.
There are notable exceptions. McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, for instance, has talked up the importance of the CIA’s caveats. And to its credit, The Politico has shined a spotlight on the dissents of Graham and Rockefeller and on some of the contradictions in the GOP’s criticism of Pelosi.
This is not only about Pelosi. It is a dispute. One side is claiming one thing, and the other is claiming the opposite. Simple fairness demands that equal levels of skepticism are applied to people on both sides of this argument. And that isn’t happening. There’s no way around it.
One of the big political stories of the day, apparently, is Newt Gingrich's blind-rage attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I mentioned it earlier, in large part because a) I find it hilarious that Republicans have let a disgraced former Speaker become one of their leading attack dogs; b) his argument was incoherent, but common among Republicans; and c) Newt seems to be getting nuttier as time goes on.Nevertheless, Gingrich's tantrum is being treated as one of the day's most important political stories by major outlets. Atrios asks the right question:
[Y]ou know, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has precisely zero power but his every pronouncement is treated as Incredibly Important News. Any journalists want to explain why?
I suspect it's not because they think it's hilarious that Republicans have let a disgraced former Speaker become one of their leading attack dogs and because Newt seems to be getting nuttier as time goes on.
Let me put this a slightly different way.
Remember Jim Wright? He was a Texas Democrat who served as the House Speaker for about a year and a half in the late 1980s. Remember Tom Foley? He was a Washington state Democrat who served as the House Speaker for about six years, following Wright.
When was the last time you heard either of them throw a partisan temper tantrum, lashing out wildly at Republican officials? If, every other day or so, Wright and/or Foley popped up in D.C. to take cheap shots at GOP leaders, would it be treated, each and every time, as a huge political story by establishment reporters?
More to the point, when was the last time major news outlets asked Wright and/or Foley to appear on major news programs, giving them a platform to launch attacks at their political rivals?
Newt Gingrich left office more than a decade ago as a national embarrassment. He is one of the nation's least liked and least respected political figures. And as a practical matter, he is just as relevant to the current political landscape as Jim Wright and Tom Foley. (Wright fell victim to an ethics scandal, but then again, so did Gingrich.)
In fairness, Gingrich maintains slightly more importance, by virtue of the fact that his shrinking political party keeps turning to him for advice, as compared to Wright and Foley, who Dems tend to ignore. But that's not much of an excuse -- just because Republicans on the Hill are foolish enough to take Gingrich's tirades seriously doesn't mean political reporters should do the same.
If you go over to the "Morning Joe" website and look at the clips for today you wouldn't know that Lawrence O'Donnell was even on the show today. The reason why might be the fact that O'Donnell pointed out that Barry Goldwater, like Pelosi did yesterday, said the CIA lied to him back in 1984. Because Joe Scarborough and the rest of his yes men and women had spent all morning trying to convince the world that the CIA NEVER lies this was probably an inconvenient truth for them.
Thank God for MediaMatters
Now notice that in order to support torture Joe Scarborough is willing to defame one of the major players in the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, by saying he was crazy. That is the state of Republicans and wingnuts today. They will through anybody, even their most revered icons, in order to protect the Republican brand. Disgusting.
The other day, I compared Newt Gingrich to an erupting popcorn maker, spewing incoherent talking points in every direction. Today, he offered a good example of what I was talking about.In an interview with ABC News Radio's Marcus Wilson, Gingrich, R-Ga., said Pelosi, D-Calif., "has lied to the House" in claiming that she was never briefed by the CIA about the Bush administration's use of waterboarding and other harsh tactics.
"I think she has lied to the House, and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don't think the Speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," Gingrich said.
He continued: "I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I've seen in my lifetime."
"She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior."
I see. The Bush administration engaged in systematic torture, but our disgraced former House Speaker is outraged that Nancy Pelosi did what members of Congress have been doing for decades: she questioned the veracity of a CIA briefing.
I'm not even sure what ol' Newt was whining about. The Speaker of the House is a "trivial politician"? What does that even mean? Pelosi's questions about the briefing she received in 2002 is "despicable" and "vicious"? How's that, exactly? Kevin Drum suggested Gingrich may be "getting political Alzheimer's or something," which sounds about right.
But the controversy surrounding Pelosi's comments yesterday seem to have brought out the nuttiness in the GOP's most nutty personalities. Fox News' Megyn Kelly, always a paragon of journalistic integrity, asked Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) this morning "what can be done to take away her speakership?" King then called for Pelosi's ouster, calling her "an enemy of national security."
And if Steve King wants the Speaker replaced, I'm sure House Democrats will get right on that.
In the meantime, let's not lose sight of a key detail here: Pelosi wants a full investigation. She's so confident that she's telling the truth, she's anxious for a Truth Commission to determine exactly who's right, who's wrong, who committed crimes, and who covered them up.
As Josh Marshall concluded earlier, "[Pelosi] still says there should be an investigation. Her critics still want the book closed. That says it all. She'll have to stand or fall with the results of an actual investigation. Her opponents on this are simply risible hypocrites."
A new Rasmussen poll finds that only 37% of Republican voters think the party has no clear leader, a definite improvement from a 68% figure two months ago. But there's a catch: There's no agreement on who the party's clear leader actually is.
John McCain comes in first place among possible leaders at 18%, followed by Michael Steele with 14%, Sarah Palin on 10%, Mitt Romney at 8%, Rush Limbaugh with 6%, and Dick Cheney at 4%.
The polling memo reiterates a recent point by Scott Rasmussen: "To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation's capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance."
National Journal routinely polls a panel of "political insiders" to gauge the establishment's take on various issues. This week's question was a good one: "Has Dick Cheney helped or hurt the Republican Party since leaving office?"Among Democrats, it wasn't close -- out of 103 insiders, 92% believed Cheney is hurting the GOP. Among Republicans, it was far less clear, but a majority (57%) agreed that the former vice president is doing more harm than good for his party.
But notice some of the quotes Republican insiders gave to National Journal:
"The message on interrogation techniques is right. The messenger is not."
"He seems determined to vindicate his decisions and policies even if it damages the GOP's recovery. And it has."
"Anything that reminds the public of the Bush administration harms the party's ability to turn the page. If he'd had any concern for his public image when he was in office, he wouldn't have to worry as much about defending his reputation now."
"There is nothing Dick Cheney can say or do to help the Republican Party today. The best thing he can do is disappear for the next 10 years."
"Overall, hurts, but if there is a terrorist attack on the United States, Lord forbid, he will have turned out to be prescient, and the Democrats will be out of power for a long time."
"Let's face it: The guy doesn't know anything about winning elections outside of Wyoming."
"Not even a close call. With Cheney out there, Obama doesn't even need to remind the American people about the mess that was the Bush years."
"He's advocating for what's left of the party. We need to expand the party."
"Cheney represents the grumpy intolerance that has come to characterize the GOP. Get off the stage!"
That's real tough talk from a group of Republicans who know their anonymity will be protected.
It gets back to what we talked about yesterday: most of the party is anxious to see Cheney go away, but they're still afraid to say so. The GOP doesn't like Cheney, but it does fear him.
Maybe the former vice president put together embarrassing dossiers on everyone he could think of during his time in office? Sure, it seems unlikely, but let's not hastily rule anything out.
OOPS. Think Progress: Hoyer and Cantor forget to take ‘AIPAC’ off file name of letter to Obama on Middle East peace.
Earlier this month, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent a letter to President Obama regarding the Middle East peace process. The letter says that the U.S. “must be both a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel,” adding that “Israel will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement.” The Washington Post’s Al Kamen writes today about a discovery he made when opening the computer file version of the letter, in an item titled “Now, That’s Lobbying”:Curiously, when we opened the attachment, we noticed it was named “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”
Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something. AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?
Matt Yglesias observes, “It is worth noting, however, that while public talk at the AIPAC conference was about devotion to peace, the substance of this letter is to try to make people think there will be a domestic price to be paid for any serious effort to push for a solution. This is similar to how Israel’s land grabs in-and-around Jerusalem are at odds with the Israeli government’s public presentation of itself as interested in peace and disturbed by the lack of a credible partner.”
You may have read yesterday that Obama is going to continue using the military tribunals for a small number of prisoners, but he'll be giving them more legal rights than they had before. Did he just cave? I'm not so sure. While the decision to continue some trials by tribunal would seem to contradict his earlier opposition to the process as "flawed," if in fact the detainees are being given adequate rights - and the question is whether they are - then is there a justification for not simply prosecuting them in the courts? The articles I've read don't make it terribly clear why they can't be prosecuted in the federal court system. Though, perhaps the reason is buried in this NYT article.And in a clear rebuke to Mr. Obama, Democratic leaders refused to include $80 million the White House had sought for closing Guantánamo. Senate Democrats also said the administration must provide a plan for relocating more than 200 detainees still held at the prison. The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced its version of the military spending bill Thursday with the $80 million but banned the transfer of detainees to the United States.It appears we're having a case of "terrorist NIMBY." Let's prosecute them all, even if they're just innocent farmers, and lock 'em up forever, damn it! But not in my backyard, thank you very much. It seems Republicans and Democrats in Congress are afraid of having any of these terrah-ists shipped to prisons in their own states. Which means, of course, they'll all be shipped to DC, since we don't have any real representation in Congress. Of course, the joke then would be that every single member of Congress who didn't want these guys in their own backyard would in fact have them in their own backyard, in DC.
Heather Friday May 15, 2009 5:30amSheldon Whitehouse while being asked about the torture bombshell that Lawrence Wilkerson dropped on Dick Cheney says that if what Wilkerson asserts is true and the Bush administration went outside of the OLC's legal justification for the torture, it raises the prospect for criminal prosecutions.
Sanchez: We're hearing from ex-Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and he's making the argument that he believes that what the Bush administration was doing with enhanced interrogations was trying to make a case for the invasion of Iraq and trying to justify what happened in Iraq. So you believe that is actually what enhanced interrogation, "so called" torture was being used for?
Whitehouse: I've heard that to be true. There is some further evidence of that in Chairman Levin's Armed Services Committee report. There is not a great deal of evidence that came out in our hearing one way or the other about that. The one thing I will say about that is that if that is true, then it takes the application of these techniques out of the protected scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.
Sanchez: And it makes this them political. It's not about we were scared, we wanted to defend the country any more. Now it's about we needed to have some political justification or something we wanted to do. (crosstalk)
Whitehouse: And that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge from these facts if that were in fact the motivation.
Sanchez: One quick thing before I let you go...Am I hearing you say that if there was evidence, enough evidence on this particular subject, that it was being used to try and get or boost the reason for the war in Iraq, that you would be more likely to push for criminal prosecution?
Whitehouse: Torture is criminal. If it's not justified by the OLC opinion. If there aren't any defenses that that raises because you've gone outside of it then it exposes people to that. That's a decision that should be made by the Attorney General, by an appropriate prosecutor or official...
Sanchez: But will you say on the record that if you find evidence of that you're more apt to want to push for a prosecution? Yes or no.
Whitehouse: One is more apt to do that--correct.
Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) was just interviewed on MSNBC and he talked about the new reports that Vice President Cheney tried to get the Iraq WMD investigators -- after the invasion -- to waterboard an Iraqi intelligence official to try to pump him for information about Saddam's alleged alliance with al Qaida. Whitehouse noted that this would dramatically change the legal terms of the question since even the notorious OLC memos allow practices like waterboarding to avoid imminent threats to the US. But waterboarding this Iraqi guy about Saddam's relationship with al Qaida -- after the invasion -- would have been to get political information, proof of the purported but then largely discredited rationale for the war. (Also worth noting is that an Iraqi intelligence official captured during the invasion would, I think, very clearly be an old fashioned POW.)
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Here are Sen. Whitehouse's (D-RI) appearances on the topic this afternoon on CNN and MSNBC.
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How idiotic are the people in the traditional media? Speaker Pelosi said quite firmly that the CIA misled her about the Bush administration's torture policy back in 2002. She was adamant. And, yes, it was torture.Josh Marshall: Neocons Gone Wild
Yet, traditional media types can't grasp that concept. Surely, they're breathlessly intimating, Pelosi must be wrong. Do they not remember what really happened back in 2002-2003? I made the mistake of watching the start of the TODAY Show this morning. Matt Lauer and the ever painful Kelly O'Donnell seem shocked, shocked that Pelosi would say someone in the Bush government would have lied back in 2002. For Christ sakes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and their entire administration were flat out lying to the American people back then about terrorism and Iraq. They misled us into a war -- abetted by the traditional media.
Do these idiots in the media not remember that? The likes of Lauer, O'Donnell and their colleague covering the White House, David Gregory, were regurgitating the Bush team's lies -- and echoing the drumbeat for war. It was appalling -- beyond appalling -- that no one challenged the lies back then. Now, they can't grasp that someone in the government was lying about these issues. Idiots.
As we're getting a clearer picture of how much of the torture push was aimed at finding someone to 'confess' to knowledge of an alliance between Iraq and al Qaida, I wanted to flag people's attention back to an article Jonathan Landay wrote back on April 21st which went into some detail on the subject -- both from his own sources and from the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse.
As one "former senior intelligence official" told Landay, there were two main reasons behind the use of harsh interrogation methods and torture ...
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly -- Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 -- according to a newly released Justice Department document.
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.
"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."
Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.
We also know from Robert Windrem's report at The Daily Beast that Cheney apparently pressed Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer to use water torture on what was apparently a bona fide Iraqi POW -- a senior intelligence official -- in order to get him to confess to connections with al Qaida. Duelfer refused.
Looking at these revelations together put my mind back to those days in Washington in 2002 and 2003 when there was a feverish cottage industry of neocon journalists and think tankers endlessly vying with each other to match each other's increasingly outlandish tales of Saddam-bin Laden conspiracies. What this emigre or exile had claimed, what the CIA knew but wouldn't reveal. It went on and on. And, of course, these folks collectively had a metaphorical IV directly into Vice President Cheney's brain -- and, well, vice versa.
In any case, for all the puffed up chests these folks always had a certain air of needing confirmation or perhaps better to say validation about them. The desire was intense. And now, seeing it all together, you can just see Cheney -- who was really one of these guys -- having a few of these 'high value' guys in his grasp and just not stopping the waterboarding until they admitted it was true.
AEI and Lord of the Flies all playing out in some dungeon somewhere. And every time the waterboarders came back to say it was a dry hole, they've got Cheney -- or I guess maybe Addington -- ordering them to go back for more.
Lawrence Wilkerson's comments yesterday about the Bush administration torturing detainees in the hopes of establishing a Saddam/al Qaeda link were obviously important. But there was something else Wilkerson said that bears repeating.My investigations have revealed to me -- vividly and clearly -- that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.
What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?
That's a good point. All of the recent revelations about detainee abuse, torture memos, administration directives, etc., point to incidents from Bush's first term. Wilkerson's contention that the explosive Abu Ghraib scandal changed the nature of the process seems entirely plausible.
If so, the Bush/Cheney torture policies weren't dropped four months ago, when President Obama took office, but rather, five years ago. If the tactics were absolutely necessary for our national security, and to protect Americans from deadly terrorist attacks, this wouldn't have happened.
Benen: WHY OBAMA MUST TRULY HATE BUSH....
Andrew Sullivan had an item this week, arguing that President Obama might have some strategy in mind that will, eventually, get the truth out about the Bush administration's torture policies. Yesterday, Sullivan posted a reader response that did a nice job summarizing what the White House is likely thinking.
Imagine what such prosecutions would entail: years of courtroom drama, depositions, lawsuits and counter-suits; the long parade of powerful and high ranking ex- and current members of government, including a goodly number of Democrats, being called on the carpet and having to testify against one another; the enormous rancor and bitterness. This would be Watergate on steroids. And imagine the shot in the arm this would give the zombified Limbaugh Right.
The prosecutions you are asking for would simply swallow the Obama presidency whole. It is the kind of energy draining, oxygen consuming drama that is the nightmare of every president. It would come to define his presidency in the same way the Hostage Crisis defined Carter's and there is zero chance he will opt for this.
President Obama is making a realistic, cold, clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis. This is the choice: Does he fix the economy, fix healthcare, get a handle on the two wars he's dealing with, or does he prosecute Bush era war crimes? He has chosen his agenda and is asking us to choose that to.
Right. Obama, I suspect, just doesn't want to deal with any of this anymore; he has too much else to do. Investigating alleged Bush/Cheney crimes, prosecuting alleged Bush/Cheney crimes, releasing photographs documenting alleged Bush/Cheney crimes ... the president apparently doesn't see the utility in any of this.
Indeed, I've been trying to think about this from Obama's perspective. Bush left him with a generational economic crisis, an abysmal job market, a budget mess, a war in Iraq, a deteriorating war in Afghanistan, an nuclear-armed and unstable Pakistan, a nuclear-armed and nutty North Korea, a warming planet, a collapsing U.S. auto industry, an ineffective health care system, a massive debt, an absurd national energy framework, and a nation that has lost much of its global prestige.
Ready to dive in and start getting the nation back on track, the president is then told, "Wait, we have to deal with the consequences of the previous administration's alleged war crimes, too."
I can only assume the president wakes up every morning thinking, "God, I just hate that guy."
He's probably looking at all of this in cold, calculating terms, and has decided none of torture-related allegations and/or evidence advance the nation's interests. Except, there's a nagging problem -- that darn rule of law.
While I can easily understand the president's calculation, I still think some of Obama's recent calls are mistaken, not because they're inexplicable, but because the expedience just isn't a good enough excuse.
It's a real shame Bush and Cheney screwed up so spectacularly, and ignored the law so systematically, that it's interfering with Obama's desire to govern. It really is. If I were in the president's shoes, I might feel the same temptations. But he signed up for this gig, vowing to rebuild the nation. As much as he'd like to get beyond the recent past, nothing of any value is ever built on a corrupted foundation.
Benen: KRAUTHAMMER'S BEST EXAMPLE....
The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer received some well-deserved flack after his pro-torture column a couple of weeks ago. He argued at the time, that "the ticking time bomb" is a reasonable excuse for torture. "An innocent's life is at stake," Krauthammer said. "The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy."
The general response to this is that the proverbial ticking time bomb is a fantasy scenario, best left to action shows on television. Today, the conservative columnist responds by pointing to a specific example, that actually happened, to help bolster his point.
On Oct. 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel's existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered this enhanced interrogation (as we now say) explained without apology: "If we'd been so careful to follow the [1987] Landau Commission [guidelines], we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."
Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin's moral calculus.
Krauthammer had weeks to come up with a real-world scenario to help prove his case for justifiable torture, and this was the best he could do.
There was no ticking time bomb in this anecdote. There was a soldier who'd been captured by his enemy. Obviously the government wanted to save the man's life and mount a rescue operation, but officials brutally tortured an accomplice and the soldier was nevertheless killed.
It's clearly a tragic outcome to an awful situation, but does the anecdote help justify the U.S. government committing acts of torture? I don't think so.
What Krauthammer has offered is a story in which bad guys kidnapped a good guy. If that's grounds for torture, practically every kidnapping would compel U.S. officials -- not just the CIA and the military, but state and local law enforcement, too -- to torture suspected accomplices with some regularity. The "rare exception" would quickly become routine.
What's more, what does it say about the strength of Krauthammer's case that the single most compelling anecdote he can find to defend torture is a kidnapping in a foreign country 15 years ago in which the hostage was killed?
Steve Chapman thoroughly mocks the Republican fear-mongering:
Here's the Obama administration's plan for emptying out Guantanamo, as I understand it: Take each prisoner out of his cell. Give him a personal apology, a big kiss and an AK-47. Then hand him a free airline ticket good for any destination in the continental United States.
Maybe I've got one or two details wrong, but I'm having trouble thinking clearly. That's because I've been listening to politicians who have responded to the news of Gitmo's pending closure with disconcerting shrieks of panic. [...]
Terrorists coming soon to my neighborhood? Thanks for the warning. I'll pass it on to Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski when I see him at the gym.
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I've been talking to a few people today who have some professional insight into the whole torture saga, just what happened, what this or that secret memo might say. And I'm getting the sense that waterboarding to force people to tell us the 'truth' about Saddam's alliance with al Qaida might turn out to be a pretty big part of this. Especially when we look closely at Cheney's role.
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So, what came out of today's hearings on torture?
- Perhaps the main piece of news came when Philip Zelikow, the former top State Department lawyer, revealed that the memo he wrote offering an alternative view on the legality of torture -- which he says the Bush White House tried to destroy -- has been located, and is being reviewed for declassification. The memo figures to be a hot item when released.
- Ali Soufan, the former FBI interrogator who testified behind a screen for security reasons, made a point that seems to undercut the argument of torture supporters that waterboarding has been shown to work. They cite the interrogations of Khlaid Sheikh Mohamed and Joe Padilla as having used "enhanced interrogation techniques" to produce actionable intelligence. But Soufan pointed out that torture wasn't approved until August 1, 2002, after those interrogations took place.
- Soufan also described in detail the process of interrogating Abu Zubaydah, which he was involved in. He said that when he and CIA officers used legal techniques, they quickly learned valuable information, including that KSM masterminded the 9/11 attacks. But when a contractor came in and started torturing Zubaydah, he quickly clammed up. Overall, said Soufan, the use of torture was "harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaeda."
- As for Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democratic senator chairing the hearing, he decried the Bush administration's lies about how the torture program was approved:
We were told that waterboarding was determined to be legal, but were not told how badly the law was ignored, bastardized and manipulated by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel nor were we told how furiously government and military lawyers rejected the defective OLC opinions.
- Another witness, David Luban, of Georgetown Law, called the Bush OLC memos "an ethical train wreck."
- And of course, Lindsey Graham humiliated himself, badgering a witness with whom he disagreed and citing a now-debunked ABC News story as evidence that torture works.
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Just last month, Marcy Wheeler made the front page of the New York Times after she became the first person to notice that a newly-released Justice Department memo revealed that Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in one month. Last year, Wheeler’s groundbreaking investigative work on the CIA leak case also made the front page of the Times. Her early and powerful reporting about malfeasance by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped to propel him out of the Bush administration. And her live blogging from the Scooter Libby trial in 2007 is widely regarded as one of the seminal moments in online journalism. Wheeler also produced outstanding coverage of the American auto industry crisis. Combining her background in the industry with a deep commitment to American workers, her depth of analysis was unrivaled.
Ali Soufan didn't get to read his entire prepared statement in today's SJC hearing. But his prepared statement adds some more nuance to the narrative of how CIA started to torture Abu Zubaydah. (Except where linked, the details below come from Soufan's testimony.)
March 28, 2002: Abu Zubaydah caught.
March 31, 2002: AZ flown to Thailand.
Early April, 2002: Soufan and his partner arrive in Thailand and start interrogating AZ with the help of CIA officers stationed in Thailand.
Immediately after Abu Zubaydah was captured, a fellow FBI agent and I were flown to meet him at an undisclosed location. We were both very familiar with Abu Zubaydah and have successfully interrogated al-Qaeda terrorists. We started interrogating him, supported by CIA officials who were stationed at the location, and within the first hour of the interrogation, using the Informed Interrogation Approach, we gained important actionable intelligence.
The information was so important that, as I later learned from open sources, it went to CIA Director George Tennet who was so impressed that he initially ordered us to be congratulated.
Several days later (early April): Upon learning that the FBI was having success with AZ, Tenet sends CIA CTC team to Thailand.
That was apparently quickly withdrawn as soon as Mr. Tennet was told that it was FBI agents, who were responsible. He then immediately ordered a CIA CTC interrogation team to leave DC and head to the location to take over from us.
During his capture Abu Zubaydah had been injured. After seeing the extent of his injuries, the CIA medical team supporting us decided they were not equipped to treat him and we had to take him to a hospital or he would die. At the hospital, we continued our questioning as much as possible, while taking into account his medical condition and the need to know all information he might have on existing threats.
We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM's role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived.
"Within a few days" (early April): CIA CTC team arrives and takes the lead, with FBI continuing to assist. CIA starts with clothing and sleep deprivation. (Note, AZ's ICRC narrative starts when he wakes up naked, so if all sources are telling the truth, he doesn't remember the early interrogations with the FBI and so his entire narrative lacks about a week. He describes later being shackled to the bed, which the CTC claimed was their means of depriving sleep. He says the sleep deprivation lasted two to three weeks.)
A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.)
April 2002: CIA OGC lawyers begin conversations with John Bellinger and John Yoo/Jay Bybee on proposed interrogation plan for Abu Zubaydah. Bellinger briefed Condi, Hadley, and Gonzales, as well as Ashcroft and Chertoff.
Early to mid April 2002: Soufan and his partner resume control of interrogation. (After two to three weeks of sleep deprivation, AZ describes briefly being given his clothing back.)
The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.
We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.
This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.
Mid to late April: CTC regains control of interrogation, introduces noise and temperature manipulation. (Note, AZ describes this as happening at the same time as the sleep deprivation.)
After a few days, the contractor attempted to once again try his untested theory and he started to re-implementing the harsh techniques. He moved this time further along the force continuum, introducing loud noise and then temperature manipulation.
Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.
Late April: Soufan and his partner resume control of the interrogation. (AZ describes a period of mixed interrogation where clothes were given back as a reward.)
Again, however, the technique wasn't working and Abu Zubaydah wasn't revealing any information, so we were once again brought back in to interrogate him. We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him, but eventually, we succeeded, and he re-engaged again.
May 2, 2002: The US "un-signs" the International Criminal Court treaty.
May 8, 2002: Jose Padilla taken into custody based on material warrant signed by Michael Mukasey and based on testimony from Abu Zubaydah.
Mid-May 2002: CIA OGC lawyers meet with Ashcroft, Condi, Hadley, Bellinger, and Gonzales to discuss alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
Mid-May 2002: CTC requests the ability to use the small box confinement. (AZ says the confinement boxes were used two and a half to three months after he was captured, so around Mid-May to June.)
Once again the contractor insisted on stepping up the notches of his experiment, and this time he requested the authorization to place Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box, as the next stage in the force continuum. While everything I saw to this point were nowhere near the severity later listed in the memos, the evolution of the contractor's theory, along with what I had seen till then, struck me as "borderline torture."
As the Department of Justice IG report released last year states, I protested to my superiors in the FBI and refused to be a part of what was happening. The Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a man I deeply respect, agreed passing the message that "we don't do that," and I was pulled out.
Mid-May 2002: Soufan leaves Thailand.
Mid to late May 2002: Small box confinement and walling used, per AZ.
Early June: Soufan's partner leaves Thailand.
July 10, 2002: Date of first interrogation report from Abu Zubaydah cited in 9/11 Report.
July 13, 2002: CIA OGC (Rizzo?) meets with Bellinger, Yoo, Chertoff, Daniel Levin, and Gonzales for overview of interrogation plan.
July 17, 2002: Tenet met with Condi, who advised CIA could proceed with torture, subject to a determination of legality by OLC.
July?: Waterboarding and other combined techniques.
Late July 2002: Bybee discusses SERE with Yoo and Ashcroft.
July 24, 2002: Bybee advised CIA that Ashcroft concluded proposed techniques were legal.
July 26, 2002: Bybee tells CIA waterboarding is legal. CIA begins to waterboard Abu Zubaydah.
August 1, 2002: "Bybee Memo" (written by John Yoo) describes torture as that which is equivalent to :the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
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And now we learn the cost of cutting corners on the stimulus package:
Eleven weeks after Congress settled on a stimulus package that provided $135 billion to limit layoffs in state governments, many states are finding that the funds are not enough and are moving to lay off thousands of public employees.
... As the stimulus plan was being drawn up, there was agreement among the White House, congressional Democrats and many economists that a key goal was to keep states from making big layoffs at a time when 700,000 Americans were losing their jobs every month.
The House passed a stimulus bill with $87 billion in extra Medicaid funding for states, as well as $79 billion in "stabilization" money to plug gaps in states' budgets for education and other areas.
But in the Senate, the stabilization funding was cut by $40 billion to secure the support of the three Republicans who were needed for a filibuster-proof 60 votes -- Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- as well as to gain the support of conservative Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
On the bright side, if you're an abuser living in Arizona, they might not bother to investigate complaints:
Arizona has already laid off 800 social service workers this year and is facing the likelihood of deeper cuts over the next two. The state no longer investigates all complaints of child or elder abuse.
The best part of the article is Susan Collins (R-ME) defense of her insistence on the cut:
The fundamental purpose of the stimulus bill is to save and create jobs and help get our economy moving again. The bloated House-passed bill stood no chance of passing the Senate.
Because it would save jobs?
And on the idiot front:
Apparently missing the article’s point — that the stimulus should have included more budget stabilization funding for states — the House GOP featured the article on their website today, suggesting that the report vindicated their unanimous opposition to the recovery act. Later in the day, they linked to the article on twitter and gleefully quipped, "Look how many layoffs the stimulus created"
I'm not gonna get outraged about this, just point and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh...
It'll be even funnier if the media bites. You know, "The Democratic Party, otherwise known as the Democrat Socialist Party..."
The laughs from America’s favorite comedy troupe just keep on coming:
A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”
***Two other resolutions — to urge Republican lawmakers to reject earmarks and to commend them for opposing “bailouts and reckless spending bills” — are also on the agenda, but language that would have denounced Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican turned Democrat, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting for President Obama’s stimulus package has been dropped.
Steele didn’t want the special session to be held at all. The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then. But the special session is being viewed by some in the party as a “comeuppance” for Steele and an implied criticism of his performance and behavior in his first 100 days in office.
Maybe they could build an effigy of Specter and denounce that.
And just say it again. They are meeting, according to the Politico, to call the Democrats names, to call Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins names, to fap about spending bills, and to give their chairman his “comeuppance.” For that, they are calling an “extraordinary” meeting.
Too funny. And I honestly didn’t know anyone used the word “comeuppance” outside O Brother, Where Art Thou?
But the shrinking GOP has invested quite a bit of time and energy into coming up with a new name for Democrats. Roger Simon reports:
A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the "Democrat Socialist Party."
Notice, these clowns can't even get the grammar right. The "Democratic Socialist Party" would merely be moronic; the "Democrat Socialist Party" is both moronic and an insult to the English language.
Regardless, the effort is a breakthrough moment in political inanity. Members of the Republican National Committee are holding a special meeting so they can officially ask Democrats to change the name of their political party to something Republicans prefer. In fact, the resolution, which might as well have been written in crayon, concludes that the RNC is "calling on" the Democratic Party to embrace the GOP-endorsed name. It adds that Democrats "should agree" to the re-naming.
If Democrats disagree, the RNC has promised to stomp its feet and hold its breath.
If you're thinking the RNC might need a "time out," we're on the same page.
Richard Posner, a well-known conservative and Reagan-appointed federal judge, argued this week that "conservative intellectuals" no longer have a political party. For some reason, the Republican National Committee appears anxious to prove Posner right.
Re: John’s post below.
Rebranding the other party sounds silly until you think about how the media works. Last Sunday the popular news chat shows featured Dick Cheney, John McCain and Newt Gingrich. Although I don’t remember which, another recent show discussing Sonia Sotomayor invited…three Republicans. When Republicans control the government, major news shows skew Republican. When Democrats control the government the shows still lean right. Judging by the people in charge of scheduling these things, Americans really, really want to know what Republicans, who they hate, think about everything.
Let me explain how this will work. FOX News will work in the silly name at the margins, through crazy people like Glenn Beck and in the guise of ‘talking about it’ (a lot). Each Sunday Newt and John Boehner and (hey, why not) Tom DeLay will use the Nazified name as if they never used anything else. The host might talk about it, at first, but how often will they keep bringing it up? Hosts mostly don’t challenge obvious lies or intentional goofs like using ‘Democrat’ as an adjective so it isn’t clear how many would even object.
After a while Roger Cohen and people like him will correct themselves to account for this new reality. “Democratic Party or Democrat Socialist Party? Opinions differ.”
Why not? The same trick already worked once.
I write to inform you that I have just concluded a special extraordinary session of me, in which I unanimously adopted the following resolution:
WHEREAS the Urban Dictionary defines "Poopyhead" as "The single most offensive thing you can call someone. It's like the atom bomb of arguments. Men fear it's omnipotent and awesome power. It it literally unmatched and all humble themselves in the presence of it's divinity. Few have survived to tell of it..." [sic];
WHEREAS the Republican Party, in its present incarnation, is deserving of any number of schoolyard epithets;
WHEREAS something has to stop them from making fools of themselves, and neither reason, decency, good sense, nor the prospect of an endless series of electoral defeats seems to do the trick;
WHEREAS the time therefore seems ripe to deploy "the atom bomb of arguments"; therefore be it
RESOLVED: that I, the member of me, recognize that the Republican Party is dedicated to reorganizing American society along poopyhead ideals; and be it further
RESOLVED: that I, the member of me, do call upon the Republican Party to be honest and truthful with the American people by acknowledging that they have devolved into a party of schoolchildren and should, therefore, agree to rename themselves the Grand Old Poopyheads.
Sargent: Top Conservative Blogger Calls For Boycott Of NRSC Over Crist
Uh oh — the conservative backlash against the national GOP for its endorsement of moderate, stimulus-supporting Governor Charlie Crist in the GOP primary continues apace.
Top right wing blogger Erick Erickson of RedState.com is now calling for conservatives to stop giving money to the NRSC over the endorsement of Crist, who is running against conservative former House Speaker Mark Rubio.
Erickson denounced the NRSC’s decision to endorse Crist as “wholly unacceptable,” adding: “If the NRSC thinks this is smart, we must not waste our time or energy with them. Join me in pledging no money, no help, no aid, and no support for the NRSC’s efforts in the 2010 election cycle.”
Relatedly, in response to my claim yesterday that the Florida GOP primary was shaping up as a battle royale for the soul of the GOP, Republicans argued to me that Crist’s overwhelming establishment support, and Rubio’s near-total lack of name recognition, guarantee that this won’t be any kind of huge battle at all.
But primaries are notoriously volatile and unpredictable, and there’s a long way to go until Election Day 2010. Rush Limbaugh could start savaging Crist, and right-wing bloggers are trying hard to cast the race as a fight over the GOP’s future. If the traditional news orgs start telling the story this way — as they did with the 2006 Joe Lieberman primary — this primary could indeed shape up as a battle royale over the party’s soul.
By the way, the boycott-NRSC movement already has a Facebook page.
NRSC spokesperson Brian Walsh sends over a response to the news that a top conservative blogger is calling for folks to stop giving money to the NRSC over its endorsement of moderate Charlie Crist in the Florida GOP primary:
“The Republican Party is a big tent party that welcomes different points of view. Obviously there is a small group of folks who would prefer to see 30 ‘pure’ Republican Senators with a litmus test for candidates. They’re certainly welcome to that viewpoint. We’re focused on rebuilding the party, winning elections and ultimately regaining the Majority so that bills like card check never see the light of day.”
The statement is noteworthy, and not just because of its apparent slap at the desire for “pure” Senators. It seems to come down firmly in favor of the idea that ideological diversity, and not an uncompromising adherence to core conservative values, is the only way for the GOP to mount a comeback.
That notion risks alienating some conservatives further, of course, so it’s interesting that the NRSC appears to have now placed its chips on it.
Benen: TAYLOR CROSSES RUSH LINE, FACES WRATH....
The other day, I teased Jerry Taylor for a post at the National Review in which he said President Obama wants to convince the public that guys like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh "are the leaders of the GOP at the moment." Taylor said this is premised on the notion that these personalities "are thought to be relatively unpopular with non-movement Americans."
I joked that there isn't any real mystery here; clowns like Limbaugh really are unpopular with Americans outside the conservative "movement." Taylor responded yesterday, and after encouraging me to "cut back on the coffee," he conceded he is "no fan" of Limbaugh and Hannity.
While I will admit to not listening to their shows, the snippets that I have caught over the years have irritated. One can agree with a majority of their vision regarding what constitutes good public policy and who is worthy of my vote while being annoyed by the manner in which their arguments are being made and chagrined by the dubious logic and dodgy evidence being forwarded to buttress their arguments. One can also be driven to frustration by the seemingly endless parade of political red herrings and conspiracy-minded nonsense that I have heard both of them traffic in.
Good for Taylor for having the courage to say so publicly. Indeed, after taking a few mild shots from fellow conservatives at "The Corner," Taylor returned to the subject.
[T]he more people who think Rush Limbaugh leads the GOP, the fewer votes the GOP will get. [...]
Just because Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh agree with us more often than not doesn't mean conservatives should shout "Amen!" when Obama coronates them as leaders of the Republican party or the conservative movement.
Regarding my claim that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity often use "dodgy evidence" to back their claims, I can only plead that on the rare occasions that I've listened, this is exactly what I have found.... [I]f you want chapter and verse on that score, you can't do better than Al Franken's two books on this subject (Lying Liars and Rush Limbaugh). Now, I know that this will double my hate mail, but the fact is that Mr. Senator-Elect is often spot-on regarding the facts when he goes after these guys.
He added that many of Hannity's bizarre attacks on the president are "bark-at-the-moon crazy," which makes Hannity a poor banner-carrier for conservative ideas.
This, not surprisingly, also did not go over well at "The Corner." In fact, Mark Stein called Taylor's arguments "pathetic," and "an embarrassment to National Review." So, Taylor returned to the subject once more.
The question for conservatives is this: Do you want President Obama to succeed in painting the Republican party as the party of Rush Limbaugh? Given his sub-Nixon popularity figures, I can't believe I'm causing a firestorm by suggesting the answer here is probably "no."
Except, of course, he was causing a firestorm by crossing the one line conservatives aren't supposed to cross -- he questioned the value of letting a deceptive, drug-addled radio shock-jock lead a party and movement.
The irony here is that Democrats have worked for months to carefully characterize Limbaugh as the right's driving force and leading authority. Corner-ites, by slamming their conservative colleague for questioning the utility in following Limbaugh, only help reinforce the Dems' point.
The left keeps arguing, "Conservatives are a bunch of mindless ditto-heads, reflexively taking orders from a man who lies on the radio for a living." And the right keeps responding, "You're damn right we are!" It just never seems to occur to the right, Taylor's valiant efforts notwithstanding, that it's rarely a good idea to let Democrats call their shots for them.
It’s pathetic to see conservative politicians repeatedly bowing and scraping and apologizing after offering criticism of the Great Leader Rush Limbaugh, but for a true measure of Rush’s influence look at what happens after Cato’s Jerry Taylor offers some criticism of Limbaugh at the Corner. All hell breaks loose. Katherine Jean-Lopez attacks Taylor. Mark Steyn rebuts that she “should have been harder on Jerry Taylor’s post.” Taylor defends himself then K-Lo fires back expressing shock that anyone would dare accuse a talk radio host of at times deploying invalid arguments* while Rich Lowry agrees that Rush is wrong about stuff but insists that he should be immune from criticism anyway. K-Lo, back for more, gushes that Rush has a large audience so everyone had better get in line.
Conor Friedersdorf has a good response on the merits, but I just find the whole thing kind of mind-boggling. Rush’s defenders understand, I hope, that painting Rush as the all-powerful lord of conservatism before whom all else must submit was, in its origins, a political strategy devised by their enemies, right? So why are they jumping so quickly to prove that the argument is dead-on?
