Lincoln Chafee Is Our Republican of the Week!

A Weekly Friday Feature...

Not unlike other Republicans
I have featured in this once-a-week tribute to members of the Once-Grand Old Party (O-GOP), Lincoln Chafee is, alas, only an ex-Republican. Since his involuntary dismissal from the Senate in 2006, he has been registered as 'unaffiliated', which is a Rhode Island political argot for independent. Not unlike other recent émigrés from the new, Autocratic & Greedy Old Party (A-GOP), Chafee provides an object lesson in modern Republicanism.

His father, the late John H. Chafee, was the archetype of the New England Republican moderate and served as a Rhode Island state legislator, governor, U.S. Navy secretary and as a U.S. senator. As the party drifted right, New England moderates such as Chafee and his father became relics.

As a Republican Senator from Rhode Island, Chafee Jr. was the one Republican who voted against the Oct 2002 resolution authorizing Bush's use of force against Iraq. In 2004, he did not support Bush's re-election. In interviews, Chafee acknowledges now that he made some mistakes the most blatant of which was not bolting the GOP sooner and becoming an independent, as did his friend then-Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont.

But he saw how the A-GOP treated deserters: Jeffords' legislation, which helped Vermont dairy farmers, was demolished. Chafee hung in with the Republican back benchers out of concern for the interests of his state's defense industries, installations, roads and highways, etc., all of which were vulnerable to retaliatory cutbacks.

Even so, A-GOP retaliation came in the form of a primary challenger named Stephen P. Laffey. As his name implies, Laffey was a laughable contender for a Senate seat in New England. He was a right wing nut-job selected by the infamous Club for Growth to siphon off Republican contributions from Chafee. Laffey campaigned using bumper-sticker and talk-show attributions of Chafee such as a "backstabber," a "confessed cocaine abuser," "fickle," "a dull fellow," a "limousine liberal," a "Ted Kennedy Republican" and a "possible member of a Neville Chamberlain fan club," etc.

Thus weakened and, with his state party split, Chafee lost his Senate seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehorse. Chafee looks back on the general election with resentment at the parade of Democratic Bush's war-enablers who trekked to Rhode Island to campaign for Whitehouse such as Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and others.

But revenge is sweet, even if late in coming. This April, Chafee is coming out with his political memoir, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President. This volume is supposed to disclose where the bodies are buried and name the names of the suspected perps and pimps of Busheney's invasion of Iraq, Democrats as well as Republicans.

Some excerpts have been released early:

Few members of Congress were willing to stand up to the schoolyard tough [Mr. Bush] and in the early morning hours of Oct. 11, 2002, weeks before the crucial midterm elections, he bullied them into declaring Saddam an imminent threat.

I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president … Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

… They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.

… The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were. They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

… Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one's hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish. That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.

… how quickly key Democrats crumbled … They went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration's nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?

[...]Few members of Congress were willing to stand up to the schoolyard tough [Mr. Bush] and in the early morning hours of Oct. 11, 2002, weeks before the crucial midterm elections, he bullied them into declaring Saddam an imminent threat.

Chafee's memoirs should make for an interesting read. I hope it's out in the book stores before the Democratic Presidential primary is resolved.

Barack Obama Stars in Super Bowl!

I understand the classic event attracted the largest U.S. television audience in history for a sporting event, and the second-largest audience in U.S. television history. 97.5 million viewers watched all or part of it, and most saw the commercials which cost $2.7 million per each 30-second pop.

Rosa Brooks writes in today’s Los Angeles Times, that Barack Obama’s 30-second appearance in the Super Bowl represents a national mood swing . Amounting to more than political sloganeering , it is an emerging national yearning that puts the Democrats back on the offensive:

We can end a war . . .
We can save the planet . . .
We can change the world. . .

A few years ago, if you'd suggested that a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination consider airing these sentiments in ads broadcast during the Super Bowl, most political pundits would have said you were insane. The Super Bowl, watched by nearly a third of the U.S. population, is about football, beer and machismo. It's not about the antiwar movement, the environmental movement, the antipoverty movement or peace, love and understanding.

But on Sunday, Barack Obama aired a 30-second Super Bowl ad that drew unabashedly on the iconography of the American left -- and no one batted an eyelash. The ad . . . Broadcast . . . to a cross-section of football fans, the message was unashamedly nostalgic and idealistic.

The Obama ad highlights a recent sea change in Democratic politics, one that's impossible to understate.

. . . . All of a sudden, Democrats are on the offensive. "Change" isn't just this year's most ubiquitous campaign slogan, it seems to be something that's already happening out there in the real world, in small towns, on college campuses and yes, even at Super Bowl parties.

Who knows just what caused the shift in mood? Iraq? Katrina? Global warming? Rising income inequality? Disgust with Bush and Cheney? Whatever the causes, Americans seem eager to reclaim a spirit of idealism that many thought ended with the 1960s ….

Obama's Super Bowl ad represented a gamble: a bet that the symbolism of past social movements is now more likely to give Americans a thrill than a chill. And the matter-of-factness with which his ad was greeted -- and Obama's electoral success so far -- suggest that his campaign correctly read the national mood.

. . . .Today, the arguments between the two candidates are over who is best placed to bring about the seismic change that both candidates assume voters want. Is it Obama, with his multiracial background, his youth, his broad appeal and his lack of baggage? Or is it Clinton, a woman who can claim to have learned some painful lessons about when to compromise and when to stick to her guns?

. . . . Whether the idealistic yearning for change endures probably has little to do with who wins and who loses the Democratic nomination (or even the White House). Losses can galvanize social movements just as much as victories, and whoever wins the White House will be president of an America different from the one that greeted Bush's inaugurations in 2001 and 2005. It will be a more hopeful, less partisan nation, one united in its rueful awareness of the ways the Bush presidency went wrong, a nation more ready to pull its socks up and get to work to put things right.

I'm a fan! I'm rooting for the right team and I'm all fired up and ready to go!

Konfusion in Kabul?

General Petreaus has left me confused about Iraq, and now Secretary Gates has me stumped about Afghanistan...

In a congressional hearing yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates implied that the U.S. military had routed the Taliban from Afghanistan. Gates blathered out a rosy assessment that the Taliban has “lost” in Afghanistan and that they had been “thrown out” of the country:

The Taliban no longer occupy any territory in Afghanistan. They were thrown out of Musa Qala a few weeks ago before over Christmas. And the Taliban have had some real setbacks. Probably 50 of their leaders have been killed or captured over the past year, and we know that that’s had an impact on their capability and also on their morale.

I may be in need of some assistance here, in squaring what Rumsfeld Gates's testimony with what I read in the world press and media:

• Bloomberg: Gates called on Germany to move troops from the comparatively placid north of Afghanistan to the Taliban-infested south -- and was rebuffed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.


• AFP: Rice, Miliband travel to heart of Taliban insurgency in Kandahar province address soldiers who are on the frontline of efforts to tackle the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent movement.


• The Times: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband went to Kandahar the heart of the Taliban insurgency ...


• BBC: The Taleban now control swathes of land across south-west Afghanistan and mounted about 140 suicide attacks last year, including some in the capital Kabul.


• Mirror: More than six years after U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban, the Islamist militia's resurgence and spiralling violence has led Washington to call on its allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, a country bigger in size and population than Iraq, but with only a third the number of foreign soldiers.


• Turkish Weekly: NATO forces in Afghanistan are in a “strategic stalemate,” as Taliban insurgents expand their control of sparsely populated areas and as the central government fails to carry out vital reforms and reconstruction, according to an independent assessment released on January 30 by NATO’s former commander.


• NPR: More than six years after they were toppled in Afghanistan, Taliban forces are resurgent. An average of 400 attacks occurred each month in 2006. ...

I might Google-on, if I had time.

I could not believe my bloodshot, reading eyes, so I had to hear it with my ears as well. The cacophony leaves me completely stunned.

Sign(s) of the Times

High Noon Show-Down & Electoral Shoot-Out in 20 States!

I’m claiming that my home and yard are so strategically located that my signage articulates my message to everyone in my precinct, that I really don’t have to walk it with flyers. I live on a three-way corner so that drivers and walkers get my message coming and going, twice a day. If I were actually to get out and walk and ring doorbells, that would be overkill.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Meantime, I’m not reading polls, or posting them. I don’t believe in “counting winnings until the dealing’s done”.

The night’s still young. Maybe I can call in to HQ and see if I can do some phone banking. . .

Dream Ticket?

Yes, even if every progressive has his or her preference, I think almost all would accept it. They can make nice together and maybe even get along. We want them to get along, and both Barack and Hillary understand that, going into Super Tuesday. They would be our dream ticket: Clinton-Obama '08. I can get behind it, if I have to.

If it took one Clinton eight years to clean up four years of Bush I, it figures it will take another Clinton plus an Obama 16 years to flush the toilet after the current Busheney.

But, there's still a difference between them. It takes a Senator Obama to make this statement, and without a teleprompter:

Well, you know, I -- I think it is important for us to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. And -- (applause) -- so I have said very clearly I will end this war. We will not have a permanent occupation and we will not have permanent bases in Iraq. (Applause.) When John McCain suggests that we might be there a hundred years, that I think indicates a profound lack of understanding that we've got a whole host of global threats out there -- including Iraq, but we've got a -- a big problem right now in Afghanistan. Pakistan is a great concern. We are neglecting potentially our foreign policy with respect to Latin America. China is strengthening. And if we neglect our economy by spending $200 billion every year in this war that has not made us more safe -- (applause) -- that is undermining our long-term security.

But I do think it is important for us to set a date. And the reason I think it is important is because if we are going to send a signal to the Iraqis that we are serious, and prompt the Shi'a, the Sunni and the Kurds to actually come together and negotiate, they have to have clarity about how serious we are. It can't be muddy. It can't be fuzzy. They've got to know that we are serious about this process.

And I also think we've got to be very clear about what our mission is, and there may be a difference here between Senator Clinton and myself in terms of the force structures that we would leave behind. Both of us have said we would make sure that our embassies and our civilians are protected. Both of us have said that we've got to care for Iraqi civilians, including the 4 million who have been displaced already. We already have a humanitarian crisis and we have not taken those responsibilities seriously. We both have said that we need to have a strike force that can take out potential terrorist bases that get set up in Iraq.

But the one thing that I think is very important is that we not get mission creep and we not start suggesting that we should have troops in Iraq to blunt Iranian influence.

If we were concerned about Iranian influence, we should not have had this government installed in the first place. (Applause.) We shouldn't have invaded in the first place. It was part of the reason that I think it was such a profound strategic error for us to go into this war in the first place -- (applause) -- and that's one of the reasons why I think I will be -- just to -- to -- just to finish up this point, I think I will be the Democrat who will be most effective in going up against a John McCain -- or any other Republican, because they all want basically a continuation of George Bush's policies -- because I will offer a clear contrast as somebody who never supported this war, thought it was a bad idea. I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place. That's the kind of leadership I intend to provide as president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.)

Barack would have to provide the brains and judgment, of course. But the first woman and first black at the top of our executive branch, at the same time?

This is a ticket which could make history. Good history. For a change.

This Space Is Reserved for Praising a Redeemable Republican

Susan Eisenhower is our Republican-of-the-Week.
One day a week, every Friday, we make this effort in behalf of bipartisanship. Susan Eisenhower was nominated by D.B. Cooper. For the merits of his recommendation, refer to his comment below.

R.I.P., Red October

1 Oct 1994 - 31 Jan 2008
A.K.A. Brandeis, Diceman, Bando, Redoct, B-Dawg, Bandokins, Mr. Dawg, Special Dog, Alpha Dog, Marine.






This guy was a Dawg among dogs. In his day, he:

• Dominated different off-the-leash parks like a congenial and gentle bouncer in his immaculate, three-piece suit which no quadruped or biped would dare sniff or touch without permission.
• Made the Brown Trout Doberman Pinscher calendar three times in four years.
• demonstrated Frisbee and tennis virtuosity with breath-taking hang-times and over-the-shoulder catches.
• Learned how to swim and surf at the age of seven so that predatory Labradors could no longer steal his Frisbees or sticks.
• Serially killed intruders (no cats!) in home and yard, recording a two-digit body-count.
• Risked his life foolishly pursuing coyotes and Snowy Plovers for hours.
• Always welcomed grandchildren (6!) as a host, playmate and protector.
• Never lost a family wrestling match or game of 'lap-nip'.
• Maintained a perfect record as a watch-dog for one and a third decades, barking only at barkable offenses.
• Learned how to walk the neighborhood without no stinkin' leash. (the most reliable early morning, crack-of-dawn blogger in the neighborhood).
• Served as extra, living, and breathing bed-warmer and blanket in winters.
• Exhibited perfect table manners - always walking through the house after a meal to find and thank the cook.
• Enthusiastically washed dishes 24-7 (never drying!).
• Loved, parks, hills, forests, beaches and car rides - even if they were just for errands - to the very end.

We aged and grew wise together. From where will my wisdom come now? In the end, the best we could give you is a comfortable, painless release from a long life, fully lived. No tears from here. Only cheers....