Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The Senate voted either unanimously or close to unanimously to impeach Blagojevich, and right as it was being announced from the Illinois Senate, the feed to CNN cut off abruptly, and my first thought was “Blago blew up the tv station.”
Harry Ellis is upset:
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will soon issue a statement contending that Obama’s promise to “put an end to petty politics” is “threatened” as the White House and their allies “are making political threats rather than crafting a bipartisan economic stimulus plan.”
He’ll call on Obama to “immediately disavow” plans by liberal interest groups who have announced their intention to run attack ads against the Republicans. These groups, organized under the Americans United for Change umbrella, coordinate regularly with Congressional Democrats and are in touch with White House officials.
Earlier, an Obama aide said that the White House was not directly involved in these most recent efforts and had not encouraged its allies. The plans were reported in the Politico by its chief political reporter, Mike Allen.
“Let us be clear: attack ads will not create jobs or help struggling families but will only serve to undermine our nation’s desire for bipartisanship. Instead of thinking about winning at any cost, we should all be thinking about creating the jobs Americans need,” Cantor intends to say.
What bipartisanship? You just voted, to a person, against the bill designed ostensibly to help Americans. You were too stupid to even send a few votes over to the bill that was going to pass anyway, because you wanted to show “party unity” and preferred to act tough and deliver a slap to the face to Obama. Suck it up and deal with your own actions, because you got what you wanted- none of you voted for it. A clear message was sent. Was that not your plan?
And here is a song for you:
At what point did the entire GOP turn into a bunch of whiny emo twerps? How did I miss that happening? How are they going to keep us safe from terrorists when all they do is talk about not “bending over and taking it” and Democrats being unfair? This is just getting pathetic.
*** Update ***
By the way, commenter Cleek, who runs a fine blog of his own, nailed this the other day in the comments:
Obama’s going to the Hill to give the GOP a very public opportunity to say “no” to his first big attempt at bipartisanship. and he’s bringing along a bunch of cameras and reporters to document it.
now, when McConnell says it’s all the Dems’ fault and that the talk of bipartisanship was a sham, there will be a lot of HD evidence to prove that he was lying.
Sure is looking like that is how things are playing out.
His words were not quite as elegant as earlier rallying cries, such as “Shoot if you must this old gray head,” or Hale’s “I only regret that I have but one life to give my country,” or even the most recent ‘NoBAMA‘ from the PUMA crowd, but Blagojevich showed up to his impeachment to defend himself:
“I’m here to appeal to you, to your sense of fairness, your sense of responsibility, and to the truth,” Blagojevich said in a closing address that lasted less than an hour.
It was the first time he had appeared at the impeachment trial, which began Monday.
“I’m asking you to acquit me and give me a chance to show my innocence,” he said. “And if you’re not comfortable with an acquittal, then extend this process, and get more evidence, if you can get it, to show that I did something wrong or give me a chance to bring my evidence in.”
He then left the chambers without answering any questions or doing anything to prove his innocence.
As DougJ noted, the Red State Strike Force is sounding a little emo, and since a half or more of our content is based on the actions of Red State and others like them, it is in our best interest to keep their spirits lifted and to keep them soldiering on. As such, we offer this video to cheer up our wounded soldiers:
Cheer up, little soldiers.
Even I didn’t think the Red State Strike Force would get disheartened this quickly:
XXXX:
I got an email yesterday. The correspondent wrote:
“I truly appreciate and support your efforts; however I have to admit my total frustration in having failed to stop the Treasury nomination, it is an offensive move. I called everyone but end up talking with one of the volunteers at the Senator’s offices and I truly wonder about this strategy effectiveness. Maybe we need to pursue a different approach. Please advise.”
We are not meant in the course of our activism to be always successful. We will have moments of success and they will be large and they will be small. But sometimes we will not be successful.
The persistent widow in Luke 18 had to keep going to the judge who “neither feared God nor cared about men.” She “kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.'” She persisted and the judge finally said, “Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”
It is the same with an activist. We must persevere.
Yesterday the Politico ran a story on Jim DeMint filled with invective from anonymous Republican staffers in the Senate. They hate Jim DeMint because he perseveres. He is not always successful, but sometimes he is. And if he perseveres, at some point, he will prevail.
DeMint, in the article, said something very wise about the present Republican leadership. He said “that lawmakers in both parties ‘only respond to pain.'”
Again, we don’t expect to be successful all the time. We will have set backs. That is the nature of the game. We must also accept that some people have good reasons for doing what they do, though we disagree with them. But we must also expect and demand that we are respected as the base of the party. We must fight and our fight must frequently induce pain on our own side. It is frequently the only way to make headway.
Persevere and fight on.
One way to do so is to get your friends to join us in the RedState Army. We will be sometimes defeated. We will be sometimes victorious. But most importantly, we won’t be idly complaining and yelling into the wind – we’ll be working to make a difference. It is no good to complain and not act. It is very good to act without complaint and fight the good fight until the setting of the sun.
Persevere. And relish victories like we had last night – the House Republicans heard us and stood united against Barack Obama’s socialist stimulus plan.
Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
They’ve gone from Navy Sealesque bad asses to Lukean persistent widows in the course of about two weeks.
Update: I like this especially: “But most importantly, we won’t be idly complaining and yelling into the wind.”
Update #2: Apparently, members of the Red State Strike Force whose fictitious online alter egos live in Kentucky are being instructed to mail balls to Mitch McConnell. Whether it’s their own or someone else’s, I can’t tell.
Award winning Time columnist Mark Halperin is back in peak condition and cranking out teh stupid:
The entire Republican caucus, we now know, balked anyway. Time’s Mark Halperin, naturally, is blaming Obama. From this morning’s appearance on MSNBC:
“This is a really bad sign for Barack Obama to try to change Washington…. He needs bipartisan solutions. They went for it and they came up with zero…. [This] does not bode well for a future that is supposed to be post-partisan. […]
“[Obama] could have gone for centrist compromises. You can say to your own party, ‘Sorry, some of you liberals aren’t going to like it, but I am going to change this legislation radically to get a big centrist majority rather than an all-Democratic vote.’ He chose not to do that, that’s the exact path that George Bush took for most of his presidency with disastrous consequences for bipartisanship and solving big problems.”
It’s hard to overstate how foolish this analysis is.
Halperin believes, for reasons that are unclear, that the paramount goal was to win the support of lawmakers who were wrong and who were advocating bad ideas. It’s not about what works, or what would actually improve the economy in the midst of a serious recession. What really matters is “bipartisan solutions.” Why? Because Mark Halperin says so. Merit be damned — if Democrats liked the legislation and Republicans didn’t, it’s necessarily flawed.
For a trip down memory lane, here is Halperin declaring on This Week that when John McCain could not tell reporters how many houses he owned, it was… bad news for Democrats:
It just never stops. And you really have to watch that video to see how truly warped Halperin’s perception of the world is. I am still stunned that he sat there and said that the Obama campaign had “started” the negative attacks by noting that John McCain could not count his houses. Equally silly is the assertion that this was going to cause the Republicans to bring up Ayers and Rezko, because every knows they wouldn’t have brought that up otherwise.
The man is nuts.
I keep seeing stories like this:
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was unable to sway a group of House Republicans to vote for President Obama’s stimulus package despite inviting them to the White House Tuesday night.
In fact, no Republicans voted for the $819 billion package, which GOP leaders have described as too big and containing too much spending that will not stimulate the economy or create jobs.
In an effort to sway some Republicans, Emanuel invited GOP Reps. Jim Gerlach (Pa.), Charlie Dent (Pa.), Fred Upton (Mich.), Steven LaTourette (Ohio), Mike Castle (Del.), Candice Miller (Mich.), Vernon Ehlers (Mich.), Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.), Leonard Lance (N.J.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Tom Petri (Wis.) to the White House.
The invitation was part of a full-court press the new president and his staff employed as they tried to get at least some bipartisan support for the bill.
Obama invited GOP and Democratic leaders to the White House last week to listen to their ideas, but Republicans emerged from that meeting skeptical of the size and spending in the package.
And while there is no doubt some truth to the fact that Obama may have wanted some Republican support for the bill (or maybe not, maybe he wants them unified in opposition as he is portrayed as making attempts), I honestly think this is part of Obama’s larger strategy. Since taking office, he has visited Capitol Hill, seems very open to Congress and giving them access and lines of communication that they never had under Bush, and seems intent on changing the relationship between the White House and Congress. The Republicans seem to appreciate the effort, despite not providing any votes.
To put it in more crude terms, I don’t think Obama went into things thinking he was going to ply Congress with a few drinks and score on the first date. I think this is a long term strategy that may or may not pay off on other issues, and now that Katherine Harris is no longer in DC, I don’t believe anyone expected an invitation to the White House would sway any votes.
All the media reports seem to portray this as simply Obama chucking a few Manhattans at congresscritters and expecting them to vote his way. There is more to it than that.
