Do Republicans, especially those appearing on Joe Scarborough's show Thursday on MSNBC, really think the American people are going to turn on Democrats in 2008?
GOP pundits like Pat Buchanan and Scarborough (himself a former GOP congressman) can yell all they want about how badly Congress is doing in some polls, but isn't it amazing that they never said one word about the culpability of Republican congress members in all this, especially on the Iraq war?
And when one of George W. Bush's officials gets caught violating the Hatch Act, these same Republicans do their best to change the subject instead of responding to the real concerns that are raised against the Bush appointee.
When will the media finally wise up and start providing real balance to the national discussion instead of accepting discredited Republican talking points as fact?
More below
More below.
While Scarborough, Buchanan and Co. were dishing out their nonsense about how Republicans may benefit from Democratic lapses in Congress (especially on Iraq), Republicans on Rep. Henry Waxman's oversight committee tried vigorosly to change the subject instead of deal with the allegations that Bush's General Services Administration head, Lurita Doan, violated the Hatch Act by politicizing the federal workplace.
Here's part of what the Raw Story piece reported:
In a hearing Wednesday examining the findings that Bush appointee Lurita Doan of the General Services Administration appeared to violate the Hatch Act by politicking in a federal workplace, several Republican Congressmen played the race card. On a number of occasions, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led his colleagues in accusing their Democratic counterparts of targeting Doan because she was a black woman and a Republican.
"You're an African-American Republican so you've got a big bull's eye on you," Davis, the former chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said to Administrator Doan at one stage.
Doan was brought before the committee to testify on the Office of Special Counsel investigation that found she violated the Hatch Act during a Jan. 26, 2007 briefing given to GSA political appointees by White House staff from Karl Rove's office. In the briefing, a PowerPoint presentation was given that included slides on vulnerable Congressional districts in the 2008 election where Republicans believed they could regain seats. According to attendees, Doan asked at the end of the meeting how the GSA can "help 'our candidates' in the next elections."
What does race have to do with politicizing the federal workplace in violation of the Hatch Act? Did Davis consider how truly nutty his remarks were before he uttered them?
The accusation had nothing to do with race. It had everything to do with using a key part of the federal government to further the political goals of one political party instead of the interests of the American people at large.
Yes, Democrats in Congress have made their share of blunders in Congress, especially when they did a Neville Chamberlain and tried to appease Bush instead of enforce the wishes of the American people on Iraq, but does that necessarily mean that Democrats will lose their grip on Congress as a result (as Scarborough and his Republican pals claimed on MSNBC today)?
Given the idiotic remarks of Davis in defense of Bush's GSA appointee, Republicans, too, will have a lot of explaining to do. After all, they're the ones who have fought against the best interests of the American people when it came to blocking Democratic attempts to hold Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales accountable for his (and his department's) grotesque misdeeds while at the same time not saying a word in Gonzales' defense.
This is not exactly a complimentary record for a minority party trying to regain majority status, and instead of squealing about Democrats' failures, Scarborough and his Republican friends would be wise to be just as vigorous in speaking about the failures of their fellow party members in Congress to really stand for the best interests of America while at the same time trying to change the subject when confronted with Bush regime failures.