Maybe some people think that mocking Tom DeLay is a matter of shooting fish in a barrel, but insofar as The Hammer has fantasies of becoming the Big Fish of the right-wing blogosphere, it’s worth the effort to fire a few rounds when he lifts his gills from the water.Via Jonathan Schwartz, we have this snippet transcribed from a recent DeLay radio interview, wherein he compares himself to Holocaust victims:

I am so outraged by this whole criminalization of politics. It’s not good enough to defeat somebody politically. It’s not even good enough to vilify somebody publicly. They have to carpet bomb you with lies and made up scandals and false charges and indicting you on laws that don’t exist. … It’s the same thing as I say in my book, that the Nazis used. When you use the big lie in order to gain and maintain power, it is immoral and it is outrageous…It’s the same process. It’s the same criminalization of politics. it’s the same oppression of people. It’s the same destroy people in order to gain power. It may be six million Jews. it may be indicting somebody on laws that don’t exist. But, it’s the same philosophy and it’s the same world view.

It’s breathtaking, eh? I mean, really, is there anyone in American politics who has done more to demonize political opponents, and encourage–big hint: the endless investigation of, followed by the impeachment of, Bill Clinton for “high crimes and misdeameanors”–the criminalization of politics? And while I know people like DeLay consider any legal restrictions on campaign financing some sort of totalitarian assault on the power of money, is it possible he really believes he’s been indicted on “laws that don’t exist”? Given his amazing inability to see the beam in his own eye, it’s probably not that surprising that DeLay is willing to go right over the brink and commit an offense that ranks right up there with Don Imus’, not only cheapening the Holocaust by comparing it to his battles with the Texas justice system, but judging his loss of power as equivalent to the sufferings of those in the death camps. Imus has, at least, apologized repeatedly. DeLay seems determined to compound his disgusting behavior, and confirming its premeditated nature, by reiterating it on every available occasion.

The much-commented-upon willingness of conservatives to overlook Rudy Giuliani’s heretical views on social issues is about to get the acid test. In an interview today with CNN’s Dana Bash, Rudy reiterated his past support for using public funds to pay for abortions in every case where abortion itself is legal. He also, incidentally, reiterated his support for a constitutional right to choose as well.Bash was apparently trying to get Giuliani to admit a flip-flop by showing him a 1989 tape where he told a women’s group he supported public funding of abortions. Asked directly if this was still his position, he said “Yes,” and elaborated:

“Ultimately, it’s a constitutional right, and therefore if it’s a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected,” Giuliani said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in Florida’s capital city.

Wow. This means Giuliani supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, the law that currently prohibits use of Medicaid dollars for abortions in all cases except those involving rape, incest, or endangerment of the life of the woman. First enacted in 1977, the Hyde Amendment is one of the anti-abortion movement’s few genuine trophies. And unlike such contrived issues as bans on so-called “partial-birth abortions,” the Hyde Amendment has a very significant effect. The National Abortion Federation web site quotes a Guttmacher Insitute study suggesting that “20-35% of Medicaid-eligible women who would choose abortion carry their pregnancies to term when public funds are not available.” This is a very big deal. I’ll be amazed if Rudy’s conservative critics, and his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, don’t jump on this issue powerfully and immediately. What interests me is whether Giuliani fully understood the political implications of his interview with Bash. If he did, I guess you have to admire his suicidal chutzpah.

For decades now, columnist Robert Novak has served as the unofficial but very real loudspeaker in national politics for the serious conservative activists of both the economic and cultural variety. Throughout the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush years, Novak was the guy who could be counted on to express the unhappiness of the Right with any deviation from its agenda by Repubican leaders. And most famously, it was Novak who, back in 1998, did George W. Bush the giant favor of a column calling him the ideological son of Ronald Reagan rather than his own father.That’s why it’s noteworthy that the Prince of Darkness today placed his imprimatur on the all-but-official candidacy of Fred Thompson, in no uncertain terms:

In just three weeks, Fred Thompson has transformed the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. It is not merely that he has come from nowhere to double digits in polls. He is the talk of GOP political circles because he is filling the conservative void in the field.

The Dark One briskly dismisses Thompson’s rivals:

Sophisticated social conservative activists tell me they cannot vote for Giuliani under any conditions and have no rapport with McCain or Romney. They do not view Sen. Sam Brownback, representing the social right, as a viable candidate. They are coming to see Thompson as the only conservative who can be nominated.

But here’s my favorite part of the column: Novak’s explanation of Thompson’s specific appeal to the Right:

Their appreciation of him stems not from his eight years as a U.S. senator from Tennessee but from his role as Manhattan district attorney on the TV series ” Law & Order.” The part was molded to Thompson’s specifications as a tough prosecutor, lending him political star power.

So that’s how Thompson gets to be the Heir of Reagan, eh? He’s pretended to be an ideal conservative on the screen. If Fred’s bandwagon gets to rolling, expect Rudy Giuliani–who actually was a successful prosecutor in Manhattan–to have great sport with Thompson as his Mini-Me.

The first quarter fundraising numbers for the Republican presidential candidates are trickling out now, and their Big Three money men have demolished all past records as well. It was certainly being rumored that the Mittster would have a great quarter to offset his recently dismal poll ratings, but his $23 million haul was pretty amazing. Giuliani reported $15 million, and John McCain came in at about $12-and-a-half million. The McCain numbers are bad news for the some-time front-runner, given his Establishment Candidate status, although, as Markos points out, McCain’s dollar-to-donor ratio is quite low, meaning he’s raising smaller contributions from benefactors who haven’t hit the legal limit. But the bigger news is that Romney, Giuliani and McCain–all of whom have serious vulnerabilities as candidates–or going to be hard to catch by the rest of the field.

Last Thursday, in the wake of Harold Ford’s kickoff speech as chairman of the DLC, the Washington Times published a toxic little article entitled “Ford Splits With Democrats On Iraq,” by Brian DeBose. It somehow interpreted a comment by Ford warning against too precipitious a withdrawal from Iraq as meaning he opposed the withdrawal language in the supplemental appropriations bills passed by both Houses of Congress. The article–surprise, surprise–led to fiery posts at DailyKos and at MyDD suggesting that Ford and the DLC were supporting Bush, dissing all Dems, etc., etc.Ford put out a statement on Friday disputing the WaTimes piece and making it clear he supported the supplemental, withdrawal language and all. I’m not holding my breath in anticipation of an acknowledgement of the statement by the WaTimes, Kos, or Matt Stoller. And none of the three are likely to pay any more attention than they already have to the main point of Ford’s speech last Wednesday, which was to deplore the obsessive focus almost everywhere on fundraising by presidential candidates in lieu of a discussion of policy and ideas.The main progressive blogospheric rap on the DLC has been the organization’s “divisiveness” in failing to tow the party line (except on those occasions when progressive bloggers don’t want to tow the party line, either). Fine; make that case if you wish, though it would be nice if everyone accepted that there’s a debate that must precede the definition of the party line in any given circumstance. But when a right-wing reporter just invents an “intra-party fight,” it would be prudent to check with the source before immediately piling on. To the extent that many folks on the Left think the DLC exercises vast influence in the Democratic Party, you’d think they would be a little less eager to assume the organization or its chairman will always go in the wrong direction, on the evidence of the Washington Times.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

We won’t get the official numbers for a few days, but on the Democratic side at least, presidential campaigns are beginning to informally release their first quarter fundraising totals, and as expected, the amounts are staggering.According to Jerome Armstrong at MyDD, Clinton will lead the pack with $26 million in the quarter, followed by $21-22 million by Obama, $14 million by Edwards, $6 million by Richardson, $4 million by Dodd, and $3 million by Biden. The previous record for off-year fundraising in a quarter was $8.9 million by Al Gore, in 1999. And to place this in even sharper perspective, John Edwards turned heads four years ago with first-quarter fundraising of just over $7 million. Looks like he may double that haul this time around, while significantly trailing two other candidates, who will triple it.There’s less information available thus far on GOP fundraising, though the buzz is that Romney will do quite well, and McCain may (on the evidence of a last-minute fundraising appeal) fail to meet expectations. But one number that is interesting comes from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who says he raised about $500,000 in the quarter. Huckabee has consistently been rated as a viable darkhorse candidate by a lot of pundits in both parties. Yet he only raised a sixth of the cash brought in by Democrat Joe Biden, who has largely been written off by the commentariat.This pattern suggests that the front-loaded primary schedule for 2008 may actually have a greater impact on the GOP field than on Democrats, despite some very serious vulnerabilities shared by GOP frontrunners Giuliani and McCain. Raising money a half-mil a quarter ain’t going to get close to the price of admission to the early states, much less the massive Feb. 5 sweepstakes.

Today’s news brings a true blast from the past: Ronald Reagan’s legendary budget director and former Congressman, David Stockman, has been indicted on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice in connection with his operation of an auto parts firm that went bankrupt in 2005. He faces up to thirty years in the hoosegow, along with fines that could reach over a billion dollars. Many younger readers may have never heard of Stockman, who masterminded the massive budget and tax bills that characterized the core of Reaganomics. But he was virtually a pop culture figure in the early 80s, before losing power and eventually being forced out of office after incautiously admitting to journalist William Greider that the Reagan budgets were creating a fiscal disaster, mainly because Republicans had caved in to special interest demands while lavishing unnecessary hundreds of billions of excess dollars on the Pentagon.Shortly after leaving the administration, Stockman published what still stands as one of the best political “insider” books ever written, The Triumph of Politics, which expanded on his Greider interviews in fascinating detail. As the title indicates, the book chronicled the abandonment of the lofty objectives of Reagan’s initial budget blueprint thanks to an orgy of vote-buying and constituency-tending by GOP pols. Two sections of the book particularly stand out in my own memory: Stockman’s angry account of then-Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger’s exploitation of an accounting error to secure a vast increase in the Pentagon budget above and beyond what Reagan had originally proposed; and his graphic description of the bipartisan special-interest bidding war that made the first Reagan tax bill fiscally and morally ruinous, eventually requiring a big fix in the 1986 tax reform legislation. Aside from its historical value, Stockman’s book remains relevant because he so clearly anticipated and analyzed the political dynamics that ultimately produced the systemic fiscal profligacy and corruption of the Bush/DeLay-era GOP. Indeed, it was Stockman who coined the phrase “starve the beast” for the cynical conservative argument that unfunded tax cuts and huge deficits could restrain big government down the road without the political pain associated with specific budget cuts. The Bush-DeLay era of corruption, which pervaded corporate as well as political circles, led among other things to enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. In a special twist of fate, that’s the law under which Stockman has been indicted. I have no idea whether Stockman is guilty as charged, but it would be highly ironic if the man who offered the first and best analysis (and confession) of the moral rot infecting latter-day conservatism succumbed to corruption himself.

Earlier this year I tried, unsuccessfully, to spur some talk in the progressive blogosphere about the provisions made in most Iraq troop withdrawal plans for “residual” forces to fight terrorist cells, deter foreign intervention, and prevent wholesale communal “cleansing.” I did so in the hopes of illustrating a progressive consensus, extending even into the ranks of Republicans, for a formula of eliminating our conventional combat presence in Iraq while acknowledging a continuing obligation to keep the country from going completely to hell in a handbasket–at a time when the obsession with withdrawal timetables and deadlines seemed to obscure this consensus.Well, the subject has finally come up in the blogosphere, but in the context of growing efforts to suggest a bright-line difference between Hillary Clinton and her main rivals. Today at MyDD, Matt Stoller seized on HRC’s discussion of a residual commitment to Iraq to fight terrorists and deter foreign intervention to suggest that she’s beyond the pale for anti-war Democrats:

There is just no way that she can say that she will end the war and that she will continue a military mission in Iraq to contain extremists and ward off Iran. Those are mutually exclusive.

There’s one big problem with Matt’s anathema: it would also apply to Barack Obama, John Edwards, and quite a few other Democrats generally considered to be unimpeachably anti-war.Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan explicity calls for a “residual force” to stay in the country to fight terrorists and deter foreign intervention. John Edwards, who has emphasized the need for immediately withdrawing half the current troop deployment, has also talked about a continuing if limited military commitment. And even such withdrawal hardliners as John Kerry, Russ Feingold and Jack Murtha have supported the same kind of commitment through an “over the horizon” force prepared to re-intervene at a moment’s notice, and even a “minimal” force, presumably special ops counter-terrorism units, operating within Iraq.So if Matt Stoller or anyone else wants to make total withdrawal of every single boot on the ground, and a promise to foreswear any residual “military mission” in Iraq, the new litmus test, HRC is not the only candidate who would flunk. In fact, it would pretty much limit the “true progressive” choice to Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.UPCATEGORY: Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey

South-bashing is definitely in fashion in progressive circles these days, but a recent Matt Stoller post at MyDD takes it to a whole new level. Turns out, according to Matt, that the South is responsible not only for what he considers to be the excesses of Cold War politics, but for the labor movement’s support of same.Here’s Stoller’s tortured logic, at some length:

The roots of this [national security] state are traceable directly to an authoritarian South, a one-party unique region in America that has held the balance of power since the 1930s and that was and is dedicated above all to a race-based hierarchical society. Through shaping even progressive legislation, like the Wagner Act, Dixiecrats ensured that broad-based class movements failed. It’s not widely-understood, but the reason the South flipped to an anti-labor stance in the 1940s is because the CIO had tremendous success in organizing multi-racial unions as World War II labor markets tightened. This was a direct threat to Jim Crow, and so Southern Democrats cooperated with Republicans to pass Taft-Hartley, a piece of legislation which basically made labor organizing impossible and turned unions into groups that can only advocate for their own survival. At the same time, there were massive pre-McCarthy purges of leftists and decertifications of leftists unions, leaving unions open to infiltration by the CIA, FBI, organized crime, and bureaucratic inertia. The biggest movement for social justice in American history – the labor movement of the 1930s – ran up against the South, and the South turned it into a pro-Vietnam reactionary force that rejected the New Left in the 1960s.

Wow. This is some serious logic-jumping. The anti-communist orientation of the U.S. labor movement from the 1950s on was in fact rooted in its own traditions, dating back to the rejection of socialism by the AFL before and after the turn of the twentieth century. And the CIO went to great lengths to disassociate itself from its few pro-Moscow affiliates, before, during and after the failure of its efforts to unionize Dixie. Taft-Hartley did indeed negatively affect the labor movement, but not that much initially: the rapid decline in union representation of the work force really started happening in the 1970s. As for the idea that a southern-dictated “reactionary” union posture led to the rejection of the New Left–well, that’s just not true. Aside from the longstanding and principled anti-communism of the labor movement, there wasn’t much about the New Left that was attractive to organized working folks. The cultural attitudes of most New Leftists were anethema to union members and activists. And the New Left’s characteristic belief that upper- and middle-class students and intellectuals represented a new proletariat was offensive to almost all labor activists, including serious socialists. These are fundamental issues that have nothing much to do with the South. Indeed, if the South had never existed, the U.S. labor movement would have, for its own reasons, still been anti-communist and culturally moderate if not conservative. Attributing the distinctive positions of the labor movement to the region where it had almost no influence is a strange non-sequitur. And wrong.

The first thing many people heard about John and Elizabeth Edwards’ dramatic press conference yesterday was a raft of “breaking news” bulletins suggesting that the former senator was going to suspend his campaign, or perhaps even drop out entirely, because his wife had been diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer. Turns out the whole wave of “reports” was based on a single blog post on the site of the new “insider” publication, The Politico, which in turn was based on a single source.Within about forty-five minutes of the “Edwards To Suspend Campaign” reports, the press conference happened, and it became clear John Edwards was going to keep campaigning full speed, with his wife keeping up her own fairly rigorous campaign schedule. So: no harm, no foul, right?Maybe not. What would have otherwise been a press conference disclosing and contextualizing a health condition not known to the public instead became a “surprise” announcement that the Edwards campaign would go on, exposing the candidate to accusations of insufficient concern for his wife’s health, and/or to the suspicion that a suspension or abandonment of his campaign might come later. In other words, the Politico story was grossly unfair to John and Elizabeth Edwards.Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to pile on, first fatuously suggesting that the Edwards campaign leaked the suspension story to create a buzz, and then offensively attacking both John and Elizabeth Edwards for calling the press conference instead of “turning to God.”Methinks it’s Limbaugh who ought to “turn to God” and ask for forgiveness for this latest high-profile act of pure hatefulness.