It’s now becoming obvious that the Congressional Republican leadership, buttressed by the institutional GOP, the White House, and most conservative media, have adopted a three-pronged strategy for minimizing the damage associated with the Abramoff scandal and related outrages:1) False Moral Equivalency: the “everybody does it” defense for GOP corruption may not be morally or intellectually respectable, but it does benefit from its consistency with the views of a large and abiding segment of the electorate, who assume absent compelling evidence to the contrary that indeed “everybody does it.” Democrats have to pound away on the unusual, unprecedented (at least since the Gilded Age) and systemic nature of Republican corruption to overcome this argument. (Tom Toles’ cartoon today is a simple and useful example of the picture we must paint). And countering this false equivalency is another powerful reason for offering a strong and comprehensive reform agenda and a new set of rules that Democrats openly ask voters to hold themselves accountable to.2) Scapegoating Hopeless Cases: The “few bad apples” defense is obviously designed to lay all the blame for GOP corruption on people who are already destined for disgrace, if not a stretch in the hoosegow. That’s what’s already happened to Abramoff, and may now be happening to Tom DeLay (though the slippery Bug Man, if he manages to get re-elected this year, should not yet be counted out, given his long-standing ability to control his colleagues without officially taking on the mantle of maximum leadership). And that’s why it’s critical for Dems to consistently draw attention not only to the many and longstanding ties between disgraced figures like Abramoff and Scanlon to the highest figures in the GOP, but to the pattern of abuse of power and money madness that suffuses the whole Republican machine. In other words, Abramoff’s follies are examples of the problem, not the problem itself.3) Embracing Minimal Reforms: The most devious strategy of all is for GOPers to suddenly proclaim themselves interested in a reform agenda of their own, as reflected by the laughable designation of Sen. Rick (K Street) Santorum as a point person for Senate Republicans on lobbying reform. And aside from deriding the hypocrisy involved in such efforts, Democrats must focus on offering reforms that Republicans cannot afford to co-opt, such as making it a federal crime to offer lobbyists access to the legislative process in exchange for partisan affiliation or campaign contributions.Contra those Democratic commentators who say we should just forget about corruption and focus on the GOP’s ideology and policy positions, I strongly believe the GOP three-pronged defense can and must be countered in ways that constantly connect corruption to the ideology and money-driven political strategy of the entire Republican Party from top to bottom. It may be the only way to batten on the powerful anti-Washington sentiment out there, while assuaging cynics that Democrats actually offer an alternative approach to governing.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 22: Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Can’t Decide Which Bad Ticket She Wants to Join
One of the odder phenomena of the 2024 presidential election is a certain 2020 Democratic candidate who has strayed very far since then. I took a look at her options at New York:
A month ago, when ex-Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential wannabe Tulsi Gabbard showed up at a Mar-a-Lago event, I wrote about the logic that could make her a highly unconventional but not entirely implausible 2024 running mate for Donald Trump. Once a major backer of Bernie Sanders, Gabbard’s trajectory toward MAGA-land has been steady since she left the Democratic Party in the fall of 2022, a main course she served up with a side dish of jarring candidate endorsements (e.g., of J.D. Vance). Even when she was still a Democrat running for president, though, her orientation was more MAGA-adjacent than you might expect, as Geoffrey Skelley explained in 2019:
“Gabbard’s supporters … are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016, hold conservative views or identify as Republican compared to voters backing the other candidates. …
“In fact, Gabbard has become a bit of a conservative media darling in the primary, with conservative commentators like Ann Coulter and pro-Trump social media personalities like Mike Cernovich complimenting her for her foreign policy views. In a primary in which some 2020 Democratic contenders have boycotted Fox News, Gabbard has regularly appeared on the network. Just last week, Gabbard even did an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, a far-right political outlet. She’s also made appeals outside the political mainstream by going on The Joe Rogan Experience — one of the most popular podcasts in the country and a favored outlet for members of the Intellectual Dark Web, whose purveyors don’t fit neatly into political camps but generally criticize concepts such as political correctness and identity politics.”
So her parting blast at Democrats as controlled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” didn’t come out of nowhere.
But much as Gabbard might be an outside-the-box running mate for the 45th president, it does seem there is another 2024 presidential candidate whose extreme hostility to mainstream institutions and difficult-to-categorize views might make him a better match for her: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And sure enough, according to NBC News, the wiggy anti-vaxxer is interested in Gabbard:
“The four-term former member of Congress from Hawaii is now getting consideration for both former President Donald Trump’s and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tickets, two sources familiar with the candidates’ deliberations told NBC News.”
The prospect of choosing between these two politicians appears to have left Gabbard feeling she’s in the catbird seat:
“As one source said, Gabbard would be more likely to seriously consider running as Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee had she not been swept up by the possibility of serving with Trump. This person said Gabbard ‘was enticed’ by the chance of serving on Kennedy’s ticket but is now focused on the possibility that Trump will select her.
“’My understanding is that Tulsi is convinced that Trump is going to pick her,’ this person said. ‘Had that not been the case, she probably would have gone with Kennedy.’”
Since Kennedy has scheduled a running-mate reveal for March 26 in Oakland, we’ll know soon enough whether he chose Gabbard and Gabbard chose him. Others rumored to be on his short list include New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and California entrepreneur and major RFK Jr. donor Nicole Shanahan.
As NBC notes, it’s more than a bit unusual for people to be considered for multiple presidential tickets:
“[I]t’s exceedingly rare for a politician to attract interest from more than one presidential ticket or party. (Ahead of the 1952 election, Democrats and Republicans led dueling efforts to draft another politically ambiguous veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, for the presidential race.)”
It’s hard to say what Tulsi Gabbard would think of this comparison. After all, Ike was a bit of a warmonger.