The Carpentariat

Sarah Palin, "screwing" her base?

In my morning column I reviewed the latest GOP attempts to sustain the regular regeneration of Goldwater’s 1964 pace-setting salute to simplicity – to reduce all sociopolitical complexities to the merest of groveling soundbites – and I referenced, principally, Sarah Palin and her Anchorage tribute to talk-radio huckster Michael Reagan, both of whom boldly refuse to take flight from “self-proclaimed intellectuals” and, of course, and “the liberal media.”

Well done, Sarah, and you go, girl.

What I did not reference, however, was one portion of her speech that caught my fancy more than any others. It was irrelevant to my morning column’s topic, so I omitted it, but I still very much wanted to share it with you, which I hereupon do:

She opened her introductory remarks, her introduction to Mr. Reagan, that is, by hailing him as a man who’s willing, and I quote, “to screw the political correctness that some would expect him to try to adhere to.”

“Screw”?

Such a bawdy flourish isn’t likely to endear Ms. Palin to the incurably pious, which is, as we know, her one and only base. So we must also wonder: Is she making an early stab at broadening her … uh, appeal?

She did instantly return to chestnut-alms for the self-righteous, rambling on that her dishonorable domestic enemies do bark at her to “sit down and shut up,” but naturally she won’t, because “I just can't, because I love my state. I love my country.”

Yet not once in her own further defense did she add, “So fuck ’em.” But will we yet hear that from Ms. Sarah, as she works to expand her base? Who knows. And stay tuned.

"Corporatist" Obama?

The Obama administration's senior advisor David Axelrod just appeared on CNN's Sunday morning chat show, "State of the Union," and I was struck by what appeared to be his singular accomplishment: the selling of consistency.

The host, John King, tried tripping up Axelrod on assorted points that King posed as administration flip-flops -- namely, Obama's Cairo indictment of the previous administration for its "war of choice" in Iraq, despite Obama's repeated pledges to avoid looking back; and the issue of health-care mandates, which candidate Obama opposed and president Obama is warming to -- but Axelrod dispatched each with convincing ease.

How did he manage that? The answer is just as easy: With rare and minor exceptions -- such as, for example, the negligible time-extension of U.S. combat troops committed to Iraq -- the Obama administration has, in fact, been astonishingly consistent not only in its policy execution, but its policy transition, from campaign trail to Oval Office.

Whether the matter has been that of sending additional troops to Afghanistan (which I opposed, but that's not the point here) or the broad outlines of health reform or the size of a stimulus package, etc., etc., this administration has been abnormally consistent.

Which goes to the main point that Axelrod's CNN appearance triggered in my mind and which I wanted to quickly raise this morning: Some, unfortunately too many, on the left have concluded that Obama immediately betrayed his liberal or progressive "values" (as if he ever had any, they snidely insert) through, if nothing else, his furtherance of corporate bailouts and what they label as his generous handling of Wall Street.

And here's the real kicker, the item I wished to pointedly address: FDR, the founder of modern progressivism, would never have done that, they invariably add. Indeed, I've received more than a few emails from self-described progressive readers who have cited an imaginary history of FDR in his first 100 Days having boldly assaulted the highest ranks of American corporate power. Obama, they say, is a "corporatist," because he's wimpishly failed to follow FDR's lead.

We shouldn't have to remind the present malcontents that in FDR's first term he was himself assaulted volubly and at times viciously by the left for having mollycoddled, not assaulted, those ranks of corporate power -- principally through the outright corporatist instrument of the National Recovery Administration, which sought to alleviate "destructive competition" through a moratorium on antitrust laws and the creation of "industrial self-government."

That's the nut of it. Roosevelt suffered roughly the same criticism -- from the left -- that Obama suffers today, yet somehow Roosevelt is hailed as the beau ideal of modern progressivism, while Obama is its traitor. Go figure.

A Liz Cheney-Rush Limbaugh twofer: Can it get any better than this?

I wish I could say the radical right's expanding exasperation with its shrinking influence had by now become breathless, but unfortunately (although rather amusingly, too, I must confess) it is all too pumped with windbagged fume and fury which show no sign whatsoever of resigned deflation.

Merely the past 36 hours have confirmed this cheeky proposition beyond any reasonable doubt. Yesterday, for example, the distaff spawn of Dick C. appeared, soon after Obama's Cairo speech, on MSNBC, with Andrea Mitchell, and within five minutes Liz had breathlessly denounced the speech as -- ready?:

... a "disservice," "naive," "troubling," "dangerous," and, just for good measure, she threw in the detached observation that Obama's administration, in general, is "threatening" that resplendent wall of celebrated national security that dear old dad had labored so long and so selflessly to erect.

Liz also got herself so snarled up in pop's web of fabrications and lies -- he never, really, or at least not for long, you see, claimed a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein -- that even Ms. Mitchell felt bound to -- gasp -- gainsay her guest. But Liz, dipped as she is in dad's basement vat of buttery pettifoggery, slipped from Andrea's searching grasp.

Ms. Cheney's was indeed a breezy tour de force of self-serving ignorance; on the other hand it couldn't hold a candle to Mr. Limbaugh's appearance, on Fox News, the night before, in which he pumped both his gasbag and Sean Hannity.

"If al Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love," said the fat whore to the middling one, "they better hurry, because Obama's beating them to it." Oh, golly, what good fun can be had betwixt two such brilliant minds.

But here's my question: How many Republican congressmen scurried to Capitol Hill's pressroom to denounce Rush Limbaugh's calling the president of the United States a traitor?

Answer: Not one.

It seems a liberal's play on an Army general's name is literally cause for Congressional acts of incensed condemnation, but an old broadcasting pal's direct attack, in the same light, on POTUS is only a cause for silence. If only Liz and Rush felt the same.

Newt Gingrich: Bumbling diplomat at large

Newt Gingrich, the GOP's lethally loose-lipped Big Idea Man, indeed had the brainy presence of mind yesterday to renounce all that "racist" lingo of his which was causing Hispanics to fear his party like a five-alarm fire.

So he "backed away," as the LA Times put it, "from those comments" about Sonia Sotomayor's true inner self, "but continued to question whether her philosophy qualified her to become the first Latino on the high court."

In short, he looped back just as he was backing back. He retained the essential accusation, only stripping it of its "r" coloration.

"Racist," he said ungallantly, and I say ungallantly because he made this retraction in a subdued statement -- when have you ever known this guy not to grab the closest microphone to shoot off his eager mouth? -- "should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable.

"My initial reaction was strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct," wrote Gingrich, who just couldn't resist the mealy-mouthed "perhaps."

"The sentiment struck me as racist, and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court have been critical of my word choice."

Can you believe this incompetent clown? He just admitted, without, evidently, even realizing it, that his initial "consideration of Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court" was indeed a whispering-campaignlike and dishonest one.

And that, gentle reader, is merely one small example of the kind of Big Idea thinking and diplomatic discourse that Newt believes would work splendidly well from the White House, circa 2013.

Holy Mother of God, where does the GOP find these abysmal pols and how in God's name do they ever get so elevated?

Dick Cheney has finally hit the bottom of despicability

It is now conceptually impossible that former vice-president Dick Cheney could ever become any more despicable. What an absolute lowlife, even among his twofold ranks of repudiated politicians and confirmed torturers.

One would think that once -- just once -- this slimy, slithering racketeer of boundless, recidivist national torment would actually stand on two human feet and take personal responsibility for something, anything, that went wrong under his watch. Just once. Any admission of real fallibility. Even the Devil would cop to pride.

But not this punk. Hell, if nothing else he hasn't the time, but that's only because he's too busy pointing his stubby little finger at others for all the Bush administration's monumental foul-ups.

I was going to let his typically abrasive National Press Club appearance on Monday pass without comment, because it was, well, so typical, until I read this morning in WaPo about the cloven-hoofed one having "personally over[seen] at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about" the CIA's use of systematic torture, a bull-in-the-china-shop oversight that reinforces suspicion that the U.S. Constitution was debilitated for years by only one principal assassin.

On Monday, however, Cheney made sure to blanket the criminally prosecutable blame: "We all approved it," he said, as he continued his propaganda campaign for the declassification of non-existent proof of torture's non-existent effectiveness.

He also blamed the then-head of the counterterrorism program, Richard Clarke, for "obviously miss[ing]" 9/11's warning signs; and, in effect, he blamed CIA director George Tenet for the colossally imbecilic Iraq War: "The prime source of information on the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was George Tenet.... That is not something I made up, that is not something I thought of. That is what the director of central intelligence was telling us."

But, as mentioned, we can always look at the upside: Dick Cheney simply cannot get any more despicable.

Sestak is still stirring, and agonizing

Pennsylvania's Rep. Joe Sestak, Sen. Arlen Specter's present cause of only moderately sleepless nights, appeared yesterday on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" to re-reannounce that he's still strolling, not running, for the Senate nomination.

Sestak said -- again -- that he's "personally" committed to taking on Specter, but the critical "go" for his still quasi-campaign remains an undispensed grant from his family, which more likely means that he doesn't have all his finance ducks yet lined up. Repeated network appearances for the purpose of saying you're in, but not yet, added to past declarations of family support, make no sense otherwise.

One can easily appreciate Sestak's quandary, which is to say, the money's hesitation. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Specter-supporter arm-in-arm with President Obama and V.P. Biden, had also appeared on MSNBC earlier to predict that in a Sestak-Specter match-up, Sestak would "get killed."

Specter, said Rendell, will raise exponential multiples of whatever Sestak can, plus the sitting senator for 30 years has been an attentive constituent-services pol and, as mentioned, he has the president's, as well as the influential governor's, machine support. Ouch, ouch, and ouch.

Matthews opened the interview by showing the latest Quinnipiac poll, and a seemingly devastating showing it was: Specter by 29 points. Yet these are volcanic political times, and in Pennsylvania, Obama just may have bet the wrong farm.

Matthews, a Philadelphia native who knows Pa. politics, positively radiated Sestak-supportive glee in reviewing Specter's abhorrent record of key support for the Bush administration's key and immensely destructive policies. The host was clearly encouraging Sestak to make the run and was pointing the way; through pounding on Specter's record, Pennsylvanians might decide that forgiveness, despite Rendell's confidence in his man, is out of bounds.

So, Rep. Sestak, why not? Last night you seemed genuine in your protestation that, for you, the Senate is no career-climbing move. You achieved that, you said, with your admiral's stars. So why not make this a national campaign? -- raise your money online from around the country, from coast-to-coast progressives, from veritable legions who'd love to see Specter sent packing.

You just might pull it off. What, really, do you have to lose?

A Michele Bachmann revue

In my morning column I helpfully, even heroically, I think, suggested to the GOP that it abruptly sever relations with sizable portions of its base, but I had no time or space to recommend that it do the same with some of its own Congressional caucus.

Like ... Minnesota's Rep. Michele Bachmann, about whom I began to offer, here, an itemized list of sound reasons, in my own words, as to why the GOP should disown her, until I realized -- well, duh -- the most precise indictment of Michele Bachmann is, of course, Michele Bachmann in her own words.

For instance how soon we forgot that on one fine day just a couple months ago, Ms. Bachmann referenced the "Hoot-Smalley" Tariff -- a Hoover administration bill she somehow accredited to FDR's Depression-exacerbating hands.

Or two summers ago, when foreign-affairs specialist Michelle reinforced the chief reason behind our divine and continuing mission in Iraq: To wit, in the Green Zone "there's a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it's on that proportion. There's marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked about was there is water everywhere. [Saddam] had manmade lakes all around his personal palace -- one for fishing, one for boating." Ooookay.

Or in March before last, when she meditated that the scariest "massive Big Brother intrusion into our homes and our lives" is -- ready? -- these "newfangled, hippie-environmentalism, group-sex fluorescent light bulbs."

Or how about this March, as Congresswoman Bachmann pleaded with her fellow Minnesotans to be "armed and dangerous" against President Obama's plan to turn down the global heat, which, in Michele's opinion, "has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States."

Or a month later, when biologist-physiologist Bachmann wondered why would we ever want to regulate "carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, [since it] is a natural product of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs on Earth. It is a part of the regular life cycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can't even exist without it." Now why didn't climatologists think of that?

Or perhaps one month earlier, when this congresswoman of the people convulsed in deliberative agony that we are "Running out of rich people in this country."

Finally, although there are others and this surely won't be the last, the grandmammy of 'em all, the one that launched Rep. Michele Bachmann into the public limelight and electorate's heart, from October 2008, her desperate plea on "Hardball" that investigations be launched into "anti-American" members of Congress; adding that as for Obama, "I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views," too. And "that's what the American people are concerned about."

That's not quite all they're concerned about, Michele.