From this morning's WaPo:
Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear:
The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.
"The White House determines which members need visits," said an internal e-mail about the previously undisclosed Rove "deployment" team, "and where we need to be strategically placing our assets."
That's the start of the article describing what the Post went on to call a "highly coordinated effort to leverage the government for political marketing."
But really, doesn't every administration use the benefits and trappings of incumbency to maximize its political reach? Sure they do, as the article correctly points out.
But Rove, who announced last week that he is resigning from the White House at the end of August, pursued the goal far more systematically than his predecessors, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of his strategy to establish Republican electoral dominance.
And how did this far more systematic approach manifest itself? How do we see it effecting the everyday lives of ordinary Americans?
[I]t played out in its most quintessential form in the coastal Connecticut district of Rep. Christopher Shays, an endangered Republican incumbent. Seven times, senior administration officials visited Shays's district in the six months before the election -- once for an announcement as minor as a single $23 government weather alert radio presented to an elementary school. On Election Day, Shays was the only Republican House member in New England to survive the Democratic victory.
What sort of targeting are we talking about?
The White House briefings also frequently identified key media markets where Republicans most wanted their message out. A Post review of trips announced by several Bush Cabinet members during the 2004 election showed that their travel fell neatly into the markets listed on a slide included in briefings that year.
Examples?
Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao made 13 official visits in the last two months of the election, never straying more than 50 miles from the media markets on Rove's office list
Aside from her home town of Denver, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton visited just five cities in the first two months of 2004, according to the public announcements. But that pace changed between June and November, when -- in visits to 37 cities -- she hit the target election markets 32 times, the announcements show.
All very interesting. But is there any there there? Well, sure. At least one instance (of perhaps as many as 100, investigators are now finding out) has been determined to be an outright Hatch Act violation, despite the care Rove's defenders say he took to stay within the bounds of law. So not only is there there there [how often do you get to say that?], but what's there is this:
"What we are seeing is the tip of a whole effort to make the federal government a subsidiary of the Republican Party. It was all politics, all the time," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the oversight committee, said last week.
What's so galling about the scheme, though, is that both the crime and the cover-up are so easily disguised as "just politics" -- allowing the easy invocation of the "they're trying to criminalize politics" defense.
What do I mean? Well, which of Rove's political briefings was first found to be a Hatch Act violation? It was the one conducted at the General Services Administration (GSA) under the direction of Administrator Lurita Doan (who, shockingly, "can't recall" anything about it!). And who does the Post say was one of the chief beneficiaries of Rove's manipulation of government resources through the likes of Doan? Chris Shays of Connecticut.
And who's investigating Rove's activities, including holding the hearings that led to the identification of violations by Doan? The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. And who's the third ranking Republican on that committee? Chris Shays of Connecticut.
Now watch how My Left Nutmeg documented the defense Shays put on once Doan found herself on the hot seat:
SHAYS: Ms. Doan, I think you're a remarkable person. I think you're a beautiful person. I regret that you've been treated the way that you've been treated....
...You know what? I just want to thank you for your service. I hope it doesn't discourage other people like you to get into this. And I will say this to you, I find it -- and this is my own view -- but I find it when an African-American happens to be a Republican, somehow she is treated differently by Congress, and unfairly so.
What drama! What passion! And what a coincidence that Shays should be one of Lurita Doan's most dogged defenders!
Virtually the entirety of the federal government becomes co-opted as an arm of the Republican political machine, and gosh if it isn't aimed at reelecting the people best positioned to muddy the waters of an investigation into just such a violation of law. Glory be!
Who could have foreseen such a thing?
UPDATE: Well I'll be darned! Seems emptywheel has similar thoughts about Tom Davis, who just happens to be the first ranking Republican on the Government Oversight committee! Time to watch the watchers!
And that's not all she finds:
See, for the most part, we're talking about civil Hatch Act violations. And the punishment for civil Hatch Act violations? To be fired from your job. Shall we review the names of those most involved in leading this process?
* Karl Rove
* Sara Taylor
* Scott Jennings
* Barry Jackson
* Ken Mehlman
* Susan Ralston
Rove, Taylor, Mehlman, and Ralston are gone, and Jackson is rumored to be leaving. Add in Monica Goodling, who only admitted to her massive Hatch Act violations after she resigned. So how are you going to hold the White House responsible for its massive Hatch Act violations, if the people involved have already mooted the only punishment available?
