Tweet Of The Day- HRC

Please, someone, give Bob Dole a cookie.

Where are media calls for Trump to go away Maggie? https://t.co/3ulgpFX3rm

— Jacqueline Zavala (@sweetnfreee43) July 22, 2021

Haberman is impressed by how blunt Dole is when the the self-described "Trumper" stated "He lost the election and I regret they did, but they did." After six months of the Biden presidency, what could possibly have been his first clue?

There is no law that says that Donald Trump- or any losing presidential nominee- must go away. None, that is, unless the loser is Hillary Rodham Clinton (below in November, 2018 but it could have been at any time).

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Now It's "Court Packing"

It is true, as Digby maintains, that (Bob) "Dole previewed the nasty attitude that animates the right today. He may have been more of a legislative pragmatist, but his rhetoric was Gingrichian before Gingrich was cool."   Still, as she concedes, Dole was a singularly humorous politician and accurate when

Asked on “Fox News Sunday” if the Senate was broken, Dole responded that “it is bent pretty badly.”

“It seems almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget, or legislation,” said Dole, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1996. “We weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.”

Dole came back to the Senate last December to support a United Nations treaty to bar discrimination against people with disabilities, which failed after a vast majority of Republicans declined to support it.

Dole said in his Fox News interview that he isn’t sure there would be a place for him and other big-time Republicans of his generation, like Presidents Reagan and Nixon, in the current GOP.

“Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it,” said Dole, who called himself a “mainstream conservative Republican.”

The former Kansas Senator and 1996 GOP presidential candidate made these remarks Sunday- before the latest indication that the Repub Party has become a hyperpartisan gang of ruthless rogues.  On Tuesday, Dole's charges were verified when Jennifer Bendery of The Huffington Post revealed

Republican senators are fuming about President Barack Obama's attempt to fill empty seats on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, charging him with "court-packing" and alleging that his push to confirm nominees is all politics.

But not only is Obama not "court-packing" -- a term describing an attempt to add judges to a court with the goal of shifting the balance, not filling existing vacancies -- but Republicans' efforts to prevent Obama from appointing judges amount to their own attempt to tip the scales in their favor. What's more, some of the GOP senators trying to prevent his nominees from advancing previously voted to fill the court when there was a Republican in the White House.

As it stands, the powerful D.C. Circuit has 11 seats, three of which are vacant. Obama has signaled plans to put forward nominees for all three open slots as soon as this week. But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other Republicans are pushing legislation that would eliminate those seats and keep the court where it is: with eight judges, four of whom were appointed by Democrats and four of whom were appointed by Republicans.

Grassley has argued that the court simply doesn't need to have three more judges because it has a lighter workload than other circuit courts -- a stance that Democrats say overlooks the fact that the court is second in stature only to the Supreme Court and takes on particularly complex cases. But Grassley has also suggested that Obama is trying to pack the court.

"I'm concerned about the caseload of this circuit and the efforts to pack it," Grassley complained during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, charging the administration -- six times -- with court-packing. Of course, Grassley was quickly corrected by a colleague, who said that court-packing isn't about filling existing vacancies.

Still, Grassley isn't alone in making these charges. During floor remarks last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Democrats of plotting with the White House "to pack the D.C. Circuit with appointees," and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) worried aloud that Democrats may "decide to play politics and seek -- without any legitimate justification -- to pack the D.C. Circuit with unneeded judges simply in order to advance a partisan agenda."

Even The Wall Street Journal piled on last week, arguing in an editorial that the D.C. Circuit "doesn't need new judges to handle the workload" and filling those vacant seats would be akin to "packing the court for political ends."

Despite Bendery's claim to the contrary, it is not "a sign of just how partisan the Senate has become when a president's effort to nominate judges for empty seats is equated with court-packing."  It is a sign of how partisan the Repub congressional party (as well as the WSJ) has become.

There is, however, a glimmer of consolation in all this, the suspicion that the GOP is merely play-acting.    Commenting on Gingrich's perspective, James Antle III in The American Conservative laments "Today’s GOP is as much Gingrich’s party as Reagan’s or Nixon’s. Chest-beating often replaces prudence, the party frequently makes use of both libertarian and traditionalist themes without taking either of them very seriously."  Fortunately, many in the party's congressional wing probably don't really believe what they say about court-packing, or much of anything else.

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Panic, Again

You have a middle-aged (or slightly older) white male (that, of course) whom the polls show is running well behind a centrist, charismatic Democratic incumbent in the presidential race. The Republican nominee, himself lacking charisma, hails from the somewhat more moderate wing of the party and is urged by the far right to select a running mate associated with conservative policies, especially lowering taxes on the wealthy.  

The right gets its candidate- and he's younger, more charismatic, a policy wonk, and a white male (that, of course), who is routinely lauded by the mainstream media for his alleged boldness.    He is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing a somewhat competitive district in a state virtually certain to go Democratic in the fall.

That presidential nominee was Bob Dole, the year was 1996, and the vice-presidential selection was Jack Kemp, now deceased.  On Friday, Steve Kornacki of Salon drew the parallel with the race run, and lost, by the longtime Kansan senator. Though he conceded that Dole probably would have lost, anyway, Kornacki noted Dole's credibility was undermined and Democrats given an "easy weapon"  because of "Dole's embrace of the right's economic vision."

Perhaps Bill Clinton would have been re-elected.   But we don't know that.   Nor do we know that John McCain would have been elected had he not overreacted and reached for a "game-changer" and chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate.

But Sarah Palin demonstrably did cost McCain votes.   Additionally, in a year when the GOP nominee could have endlessly exploited his military career running against a candidate somewhat unknown to the American people (many of whom doubted his religion or country of birth), the Arizona senator selected a relatively inexperienced governor from somewhere outside the continental United States.    He destroyed his shot at running as "the American president Americans have been waiting for," practically negated his "America First" theme, and opted to present the duo as a ticket of "mavericks."    Real change, McCain argued, would come from his election rather than that of Barack Obama, a guy vying to become the first black President in the history of the United States of America.

Now, as with John McCain, Bob Dole, and Walter Mondale (who chose the disastrous Geraldine Ferraro, also a member of the U.S. House), Mitt Romney has decided to throw the Hail Mary pass (a time-worn cliche, but darn good).    He tore July off his calendar- and up popped October.

      

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Bob Dole's Fantasy

Jonathan Martin of Politico.com reports an e-mail sent on May 29, 2008 by former Senator (R.-Ks.) and Repub presidential candidate Bob Dole. I repeat these excerpts from the message (confirmed by Dole spokesman Michael Marshall) because they are so entertaining:


There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you. No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.

(I won't read your book) "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job.

That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"


Having no degree or professional experience in abnormal psychology, I can't comment much on the nature of the man behind these attacks. But the issue raised by Dole and others- why didn't he resign?- does remind me of one Cyrus Vance.

Cyrus Vance became President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State in 1977. He resigned in a letter written to President Carter on April 21, 1980 in protest of the upcoming Operation Eagle Claw. On April 24, 1980 this secret military mission was undertaken to rescue the 53 American hostages held in Tehran, Iran. Eight U.S. servicemen and one Iranian civilian died in the failed venture, which contributed to Carter's defeat by Ronald Wilson Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. The resignation was announced on April 28, 1980.

Wilkipedia's entry for Operation Eagle Claw does not mention Mr. Vance, nor do most Americans remember him. He is little remembered, and less so commemorated, despite- or perhaps because- he had the integrity to resign when he strongly disagreed with a policy decision made by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

So when the Bush Administration apologists, sycophants, and hacks castigate Scott McClellan for failing to "quit your cushy, high profile job" (as if they ever would consider such a courageous act), please remember Cyrus Vance. Someone has to.