The Republican Criminal Conspiracy
by Matt Stoller, Tue Mar 06, 2007 at 11:31:23 AM EST
I spend most of my time covering Democrats and the progressive movement. There are plenty of others who are very very good at dealing with the right-wing media spin, the overall venality of Republicans, and the complacency of the media. That's not usually what I write about, even though I respect very much those who do and support vigorous criticism of the Republican Party. It's been obvious to a lot of us for years that the Republican Party on at least a national level is no better than a criminal syndicate with control of nuclear weapons, a resource rich country, and an incredibly capable military.
This doesn't leave much room for bipartisanship on most matters, since I no longer consider conservatives or Republicans credible actors in the political system. It's also a very scary prospect, and one that most political observers and reporters want to hide from because they don't want to believe that things are really this bad. But they are. I've also been in favor of impeachment since 2003 when there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq, and quite surprised that there hasn't been a stronger institutional response to Bush. I've never advocated impeachment as a strategy, though, since going through that process requires a lot of preparation that we frankly have not done yet.
It's days like today that suggest the whole game is unraveling.
The Libby verdict is very exciting --- Howard Dean and other Dems are all calling on the president to promise not to pardon Scooter. The right is spinning like tops. Fox news commentators are lamely saying that the verdicts don't make sense because they acquitted Libby on one count. Bob Novak said the Bush administration had no "guts" because they agreed to allow an "unsupervised" special prosecutor to investigate them when they could have just shut down the investigation from the beginning. (G. Gordon Liddy couldn't have said it better.) It's a bad day for the Republicans.And it's getting worse. I would suggest that everyone keep at least one eye on the next brewing legal scandal. It's looking more and more obvious like the Bush administration fired all those US Attorneys because they were investigating Republicans or allegedly dragging their feet in investigating Democrats. In Washington state the federal prosecutor was pressured to investigate "voter fraud" where there was none.
With the vice president's office being completely discredited today and using the justice department for political purposes, we are now officially in Nixon territory.
Firing prosecutors for not sufficiently going after Democrats or for going after corrupt Republicans is a whole different level of corruption. This is new territory. You see, from what I understand, prosecutors tend to be Eisenhower-style Republicans who are tough on crime, and Defense Attorneys tend to be Hubert Humphrey Democrats who believe strongly in civil rights and protecting the weak. But lawyers also tend to be professionals. And this whole purge is throwing the culture of professionalism in legal circles upside down - liberal blogs like TPM are attracting readers who are culturally traditional Republicans, and it's conservative Republicans in Congress who are going after prosecutors for prosecuting criminals. It's the Scooter Libby's who are begging for mercy and justice, and the Bushniks that are 'soft on crime' and spitting on our troops through their mistreatment of veterans care.
Democrats in Congress are holding aggressive hearings and even the most conservative Democrats smell opportunity. What Senator Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson did is just not acceptable. In the short-term, this opens up the same opportunity people of character had during Nixon's second term - the ability to set our system back into balance. Longer-term, a whole generation of politically neutral and ambitious prosecutors and professionals have been exposed to the conservative movement, the media, the wise men of Washington, and the progressive movement for what they really are. These are future Mayors, Governors, Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents, and they are being defended by liberal bloggers and Democrats in Congress against an onslaught of corrupt Republicans and a lazy media spearheaded by people like Time Magazine's Jay Carney, who called the prosecutor purge a conspiracy theory.
It's impossible to deny what you have personally experienced. Being on the receiving end of a whole lot of unprofessional, corrupt, and dishonest behavior by Republicans brings a lot of clarity to your politics. That's what Bush and his cronies have done for a whole lot of ambitious and intelligent people who will never forget what they are experiencing now. If a conservative is a liberal who was mugged the night before, then a liberal is a conservative who got in the way of a Republican used car salesman. Bush has built a liberal factory.
Tags: George Bush, Iraq, Josh Marshall (all tags)
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