From TPM:

Another Congressional Republican is headed for the door. Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) will reportedly announce tomorrow that he is not seeking re-election.

President Bush carried his district with 53% in 2004, and Weller was re-elected with 55% in 2006. With those non-landslide margins in a district that simply was not targeted, we might just see the Democrats trying for a pick-up in a possible wave election next year.

Weller is perhaps best known for a series of land deals in Nicaragua and for his marriage to Guatemalan Congresswoman Zury Ríos Montt, daughter of former right-wing dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.

From The Star Tribune:

U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., announced this afternoon that he will not seek a 10th term.
Ramstad, 61, was first elected in 1990 and represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes the western suburbs of Minneapolis.

“Now it’s my time to do something else,” he said during a Monday afternoon news conference.

By Steve Holland
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidates need to make a “clean break” from President George W. Bush and the U.S. government or they will lose in November 2008, a veteran Republican leader said on Friday.

“If you don’t represent real change, you just gave away the 2008 election,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994 and now is flirting with a White House run.

Gingrich cited the Iraq war, the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago and the inability to control U.S. borders and illegal immigration as evidence of a need for a complete overhaul of the U.S. system of governing.

“Now that may or may not make the White House happy. But I think that’s the whole point about making a clean break,” Gingrich told a group of reporters over breakfast.

He added: “I believe for any Republican to win in 2008 they have to … offer a dramatic, bold change. If we nominate somebody who has not done that, they get to be the nominee but there is very, very little likelihood that they can win.”

Gingrich echoed the view of many political analysts who believe voters are looking for a big change in 2008 and that Democrats hold a natural advantage after eight years with Bush in the White House.

While Gingrich, who has been considering a late entry into the Republican presidential race, said “the odds are very high that I won’t run,” he did not completely rule it out.

He said he would not make a final decision before September 29, depending on whether he feels a candidate from the current Republican group can defeat the Democratic nominee and whether he would be able to raise at least $30 million for a race.

But Gingrich, who represented Georgia for 20 years, indicated that a push he is making for a grass-roots change in how the country is governed, with less partisanship, would take at least five years to develop into a coherent alternative to the current system.

read more HERE

By LIBBY QUAID
The Associated Press

DURHAM, N.H. - Republican presidential contenders voiced support for the Iraq war Wednesday night despite a warning from anti-war candidate Ron Paul that they risk dragging the party down to defeat in 2008.

“Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor,” shot back former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, “and that is more important to the Republican Party.”

Huckabee was in the majority, Paul very much in the minority on a University of New Hampshire debate stage when it came to the war. The politically unpopular conflict has emerged as the dominant issue of the 2008 race for the White House.

The issue flared near the end of a 90-minute encounter in which all eight men on stage welcomed former Sen. Fred Thompson to the race with barbed humor and pointed advice.

“This is a nomination you have to earn,” said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “Nobody’s going to give it to you. Nobody’s going to grant it to you.”

read more HERE

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The New York Times

WEST PALM BEACH, Aug. 31 - If the White House retains any hope of persuading moderate Democrats to support the president’s strategy in Iraq, Representative Tim Mahoney of Florida would seem to be a top prospect. A fiscal conservative from a mostly Republican district, Mr. Mahoney visited Iraq in July and acknowledged seeing military progress.

Allies of the Bush administration are paying for television advertisements that are running in Mr. Mahoney’s district, including one featuring the teary mother of a marine killed in the war saying: “We are starting to see results. The price is being paid. Don-t give up.” But Mr. Mahoney says that he and his constituents have made up their minds and that it is time for Congress to force a change.

“There is consensus that it’s time to do something different,” said Mr. Mahoney, who won the seat vacated by Representative Mark Foley, who resigned last year after disclosures that he sent sexually explicit e-mail messages to House pages. “America has made a decision that it wants to move out.”

Mr. Mahoney added: “Republicans are probably more vocal in my district than Democrats. Those ads are driven to Republicans - that’s who they are trying to appeal to because they have lost Republican support for this war.”

read more HERE

Sometimes you hear the squeak of a hinge when someone steps out of the closet. Then there are those times when the entire door gets booted down!

By James Carville
from FT (Financial Times)

There is an old joke that campaign veterans toss around war rooms, bars and BS sessions. We say there are people who have worked in campaigns who say that they have lost some - and we call those folks operatives, managers, strategists, consultants; and then there are people who work in campaigns and say that they have never lost, and we call them liars.

The joke reflects an obsession with winning as the real benchmark of success in politics. By that measure, Karl Rove’s career has to be deemed a success. He built the Republican party of Texas into one of the most powerful state parties in America.

Nationally he has pulled off some of the most unexpected and impressive victories of modern political history. (I will not be debating the 2000 election for the purposes of this article, but I also will not be crediting him with it, so let us just move on to the next cycle.)

Mr Rove picked up seats in what was an almost historically impossible context in 2002. Then in 2004, he engineered one of the most remarkable feats in American politics. He got Americans to re-elect a president who they really did not want to re-elect. Even the Republican defeat in 2006 was predictable and well within the range of historical norms so, by this sport’s standard of winning and losing, there is still no black mark on Rove’s record.

If we concluded our analysis in 2007 and confined our judgment merely to Mr Rove’s immediate electoral record, we would have no choice but to judge him a spectacular success. There is no doubt that Mr Rove won elections. He has perhaps one of the most remarkable win-percentages in modern American politics.

read more HERE

How to make friends and influence people…….problem is, they will probably say, oh ok….you’re right. Solidarity it is. Party before country!

From the Hill:

By Jackie Kucinich

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) called for comity Wednesday during a meeting of the Republican Conference after House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to Senate colleagues who have begun to favor a change in course in Iraq as “wimps.”

Wilson declined to comment directly on what Boehner had said during the closed-door meeting, but she noted that “Senator [Richard] Lugar’s (R-Ind.) speech was one of the more thoughtful speeches [she had heard] in the Senate in a long time.”

The lawmaker added that the war and the thoughts of her colleagues about the conflict “should always be taken seriously.”

Wilson, a former Air Force officer and Republican centrist, questioned the Bush plan to increase troop levels in Iraq but voted against Democratic-backed Iraq war measures.

According to sources, Boehner and Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) were urging solidarity among House Republicans, explaining that they must distinguish themselves from their Senate colleagues.

A spokesman for Boehner said his comments were in no way meant to trivialize the war or the senators- decisions. Rather, they were meant to emphasize the importance of allowing the troop surge to work and to urge GOP lawmakers to reserve their judgment on the situation until September, when Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to brief Congress fully on the progress in Iraq.

“The leader’s comments were intended to illustrate the fact that we just recently voted to give the troops our full support - including ample time for the Petraeus plan to work - and that too much is at stake for Congress to renege on its commitment now by approving what can only be described as another partisan stunt by Democrats,” Boehner spokesman Brian Kennedy said.

“Their bill will have no impact if passed, other than to give America’s enemies something to gloat about.”

By TOM RAUM
from YAHOO! NEWS

WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney, who thrives on secrecy while pulling the levers of power, is getting caught in the glare of an unwelcome spotlight.

Once viewed as a sage and mentor to President Bush, Cheney has approval ratings now that are as low as - or lower - than the president’s. Recent national polls have put them both in the high 20s.

Bush’s decision to spare former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison sentence has focused new attention on the vice president and his possible role in the commutation.

Cheney’s relentless advocacy of the Iraq war, his push to expand presidential authority and his hard-line rhetoric toward North Korea and Iran are raising concerns even among former loyalists now worried about the GOP’s chances in 2008.

It seems Cheney fatigue is settling in some Republican circles.

Republican strategist Rich Galen, who worked for both Bush and Bush’s father, said he is finding less interest or enthusiasm for Cheney. “Republicans have, in essence, moved on and focused on who to get behind in 2008,” Galen said.

Cheney has drawn criticism and ridicule from Democrats for his close ties to Libby and for his contention - later modified - that his office is not “an entity within the executive branch.”

Bush last week commuted Libby’s sentence for his conviction of lying to investigators about his role in leaking the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame. Plame’s husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, was a prominent critic of the administration’s case for invading Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

Bush said the sentence was excessive. The president kept the issue alive by saying he would not rule out an eventual full pardon for Libby.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

“It’s not so much that he is an embarrassment, it’s that there is an exhaustion,… People are tired of defending him.” -GOP analyst Rich Galen, on President Bush

Yet the GOP continues to back Bush every inch of the way. Hypocrite much?

The Unsilent Treatment

Bush fatigue in the GOP.
(Howard Fineman, Newsweek)

June 11, 2007 issue - Knowing Newt Gingrich, I was a little alarmed when his secretary told me where he was. “He’s in Hawaii, doing Pearl Harbor,” she said. I envisioned him in Snoopy goggles and scarf, strafing the islands in a biplane, shouting slogans at liberals below. Turns out “Pearl Harbor” is his latest historical novel; our hero had deployed himself to the Pacific theater for book promotion and a vacation.

As for bombs, he’d dropped them back in Washington-on the White House. The former Republican Speaker denounced his own party’s sitting president as a hopeless incompetent, a Jimmy Carter clone. “You hire presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it …” he told The New Yorker (clearly thinking about it). The news wasn’t what Newt said, but the silence that followed.

Karl Rove not only didn’t call Gingrich on the carpet, he did not call at all-not because he agreed with him, of course, but because what was there to say? None of the GOP’s innumerable 2008 candidates defended George W. Bush, whose name they rarely utter in any context, anywhere. In Congress, Republicans privately called to thank Gingrich, claims his press aide, Rick Tyler. “The general view was that it was long past time for someone to speak up,” he says.

Coming from someone always on the cutting edge of cutting people down, Gingrich’s bombing run signals a new twist in the GOP’s every-man-for-himself ‘08 survival strategy: it may not be enough to ignore Bush; you may need to attack him to prove your bona fides to the public at large. “It’s not so much that he is an embarrassment, it’s that there is an exhaustion,” says Rich Galen, a GOP analyst who has worked for both of the Bushes and Gingrich. “People are tired of defending him.”

Article at MSNBC.com

Some things never change……….

WASHINGTON (AP) — A half dozen federal investigations into the activities of Republican lawmakers are raising new worries for GOP leaders who hope to regain the House majority they lost last fall.

In recent weeks, two veteran Republicans surrendered prominent committee seats after FBI agents raided the offices of family businesses. Others have long-running investigations hanging over them. Some conservative activists are criticizing the party’s handling of the matters.

Democrats say at least six GOP House members are under some degree of Justice Department scrutiny, although Republicans question whether all the inquiries are active.

In pure numbers, Republicans are approaching the magnitude of their problem at this stage of the 2006 election cycle. Eventually, nine House Republicans faced FBI investigations. Four stepped down, and two - Reps. Randy “Duke” Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio - are in prison. Of the five who sought re-election, three lost and the other two remain under ethical clouds.

More at AP

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

After the growing disaster that is the Bush presidency, we really need good leadership in the White House. Who will answer the call? Who will work tirelessly for a better America for average citizens and not just for corporations and the rich? Who can rise above partisan politics to be a uniter, not a divider?

Gingrich Slams Current Election Politics

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer
Thursday 5/17/07

RALEIGH, N.C. - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the 2008 White House candidates are “demeaning the presidency” by focusing on the race rather than ideas.

“We have shrunk our political process to this pathetic dance in which people spend an entire year raising money in order to offer nonanswers, so they can memorize what their consultants and focus groups said would work,” Gingrich said.

In a speech to the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank, the prospective Republican candidate said he will not consider running until he has created a wave of reform.

He plans to spend the next several months preparing for a series of workshops that he will coordinate. They begin Sept. 27, exactly 13 years after he and other GOP leaders released the “Contract With America” that helped their party regain control of the House. Ten Republicans and eight Democrats have declared their candidacy for president. Gingrich took particular issue with how they have presented their ideas in crowded debates.

“This idea of demeaning the presidency by reducing it to being a game show contest … is wrong for America, and I would never participate in it,” he said.
Read more »

WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) - A group of 11 Republican members of Congress have delivered a blunt warning to President George Bush on the handling of the Iraq War.

The delegation — headed by Reps. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Charlie Dent, R-Pa. — spent more than an hour with Bush Tuesday afternoon at the president’s private White House quarters, NBC News reported Wednesday.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also attended the meeting, along with presidential political adviser Karl Rove and White House spokesman Tony Snow.

My district is prepared for defeat (in Iraq), NBC quoted one congressman as saying. We need candor. We need honesty, Mr. President.

The Republican congressmen told Bush war news should no longer come from the president or the White House, but should be delivered by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

There is no longer any credibility, one congressman reportedly said.

Bush reportedly told his fellow Republicans: I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I particularly don’t want to pass this off to a Democratic president.

Watch the video report here

If nothing else, republicans are consistent in how they deal with crime (their crime… not the crime of others). First, at all costs, hide the crime. The less people know, the better. If the crime becomes common knowledge, deny having participated in it. Obfuscate! A confused populace is a manageable populace. If it doesn’t appear at this point to be getting any better, tell folks it had to be done or we would have ended up with another 9/11 on our hands. And, last but not least, blame Clinton.

CNN:

The Presidential Records Act, passed during the Nixon administration, requires the preservation of all official records of and about the president.

A White House spokesman defended the use of outside e-mail accounts as an appropriate method of separating official business from political campaign work.

But the use of those accounts by officials discussing the firings — and one from now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff — have led a liberal watchdog group to accuse administration of trying to skirt the law governing preservation of presidential records.
[...]

Neither administration officials nor Republican Party officials would agree to be interviewed on camera after repeated requests from CNN. In a written statement, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said staffers used different computers “to have a separate e-mail account for political activities.”

Stanzel said that procedure was modeled on “the historical practice of previous administrations.” But John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, disputed that.

“It doesn’t appear that they were doing what we did, which was to segregate political activity from official activity,” he said.

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Denial.

For Republicans of all sorts, it’s more than a rhetorical strategy to deflect empirical facts. It’s more than a political philosophy that ignores the reality of others’ experiences. It’s a way of life, dammit.

Not that Republican pundits have ever clamored to recognize the suffering of the poor, or are in the habit of arguing honestly - but it’s hard to ignore that a sizable portion of the Republican party is just not part of the reality-based community. And just like the kid who brags about not reading any books, they’re awfully proud of it.

Consider, for example, Robert Novak still insisting that Valerie Plame Wilson was not a covert CIA agent, even though she testified under oath that she was, she was a NOC, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told Novak not to reveal her identity, and the current, Bush-appointed head of the CIA Michael Hayden definitively stated she was covert (Novak even tries, laughably, to assert that Hayden is a Democratic stooge). Of course, Novak is a vile, partisan hack - but he’s also been horribly reluctant to admit that the Republican’s growing unpopularity might have something to do with a little thing called Iraq.

As Glenn Greenwald demonstrates, the National Review’s Cliff May repeatedly denies objective reality - and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds decides to ignore the evidence as well. As Greenwald remarks:

Just think about that: the lesson which right-wing, Bush-following war supporters drew from the mountain of empirical evidence in this post, as well as from this entire day-long exchange with Cliff May (to say nothing of the November, 2006 election), is that Americans support the War in Iraq and do not want to withdraw the troops. That is beyond jarring.

I suppose it’s academic as to whether they’re hacks or delusional, but it’s likely some special blend of the two.

Meanwhile, Oliver Willis weighs in with “The Deniers.” And he doesn’t even hit the frightening statistics on evolution deniers (48% of Americans, according to Newsweek), or the creationist Christians who have built a museum teaching kids that dinosaurs and humans coexisted - that would be roughly 6000 years ago, when God created the world.

Please, Republicans - for the sake of the children, the poor, innocent children - stop the insanity. You cannot show us fear in a jar of peanut butter, only your own painful stupidity. Please. Put down the Kool-Aid. Take the Red Pill. Cast off your shackles and emerge from Plato’s cave. There’s a whole, wonderful world out there waiting for you.