There have been a lot of weird “stars” on “Dancing With the Stars,” but perhaps none more so than former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The former exterminator known on Capitol Hill as “The Hammer” will be part of the cast for the ninth season of the ABC reality show, which debuts Sept. 21. His competition includes Donny Osmond, Macy Gray, Kathy Ireland, Kelly Osbourne, Natalie Coughlin and Michael Irvin. “I couldn’t believe they asked me to do this,” DeLay said. “It didn’t take me five minutes to agree. I’ve been working out like crazy.” Wonder how a guy who titled his memoir “No Retreat, No Surrender” will handle being judged by the likes of Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba.
You couldn’t make this up: Rod Blagojevich does Elvis (as Fabio looks on). “Now I’m going to sing a song, because you can’t vote against me anymore,” the ousted Illinois governor told a Chicago block party crowd, before putting hair and hips into “Treat Me Nice.”
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, contends that the GOP is too tied to Southern Republicans. Columnist Kathleen Parker, herself a Southerner, agrees. “It is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon, and becoming increasingly associated with some of the South’s worst ideas,” she wrote. Parker noted a poll showing how only 47 percent of Southerners think Obama was born in America. “Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity,” she wrote. But she also recalled how the GOP has been pandering to Southerners for decades, noting Nixon’s Southern political strategy. “Before the party of the Great Emancipator can rise again,” she said, “Republicans will have to face their inner Voinovich and drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie.”
It took four years, but former Rep. William “Cold Cash” Jefferson was finally convicted Wednesday of charges that included accepting bribes and engaging in money laundering. The Louisiana Democrat could get more than 20 years in prison, though he is still free on bail pending an appeal. Jefferson was filmed in 2005 taking $100,000 in bribes from a government informant, and FBI agents found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer.
“The red-blue contrast is often overdrawn. But it’s a sensible way to understand Obama’s summer struggles,” wrote columnist Ross Douthat. “On health care, energy, taxes and spending, he’s pushing a blue-state agenda during a recession that’s exposed some of the blue-state model’s weaknesses, and some of the red-state model’s strengths.” Douthat noted how Texas has survived the national recession pretty well while California has been a fiscal disaster area. “In state capital after state capital,” he wrote, “the downturn has highlighted the weaknesses of liberal governance — the zeal for unsustainable social spending, the preference for regulation over job creation, the heavy reliance for tax revenue on the volatile incomes of the upper upper class.”
Pondering the new adventures of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza led his latest list of possible women presidents with retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., also mentioning Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and Florida CFO Alex Sink (for the Democrats), and former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and former eBay president Meg Whitman (for the Republicans). Of Kathleen Sebelius, Cillizza wrote: “Before she became head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sebelius was in the mix for vice president — thanks in large part to her resume as a two-term governor from ruby red Kansas. Those who know her best insist she needed more seasoning before stepping into the limelight nationally, but that’s just what she’ll get as a member of the Obama Cabinet. And, she certainly has the political pedigree; her father, John Gilligan, served as the governor of Ohio.”
Vice President Walter Cronkite? Frank Mankiewicz, director of Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, writes in the Washington Post that the idea was discussed but rejected, on the assumption that the CBS newsman would decline. (McGovern eventually went with Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who withdrew after revelations of his hospitalizations and shock treatments for depression.) According to Mankiewicz, Cronkite told McGovern decades later, “I’d have accepted in a minute; anything to help end that dreadful war.” But would it have mattered? The ticket of McGovern and replacement running mate Sargent Shriver lost to President Nixon 61 to 37 percent.
As she stepped down Sunday as Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin said she didn’t need a title to fight “for what is right, and for truth.” For most politicians, quitting midway through a first term wouldn’t further their careers. But Palin makes her own rules. Her immediate future appears to hold an Aug. 8 speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, work on her book and campaigning for like-minded Republicans, as well as more speaking out via Twitter. But “there is absolutely no plan,” she told the Associated Press. Meanwhile, a New Republic article paints a grim picture of her final months in office and relationship with state legislators. None of her major bills passed, and “she managed to alienate most of the 60 members of House and Senate,” said an aide to one GOP lawmaker. “It wasn’t a matter of burning bridges — she blew them up.”
Shame on CNN’s Lou Dobbs and some GOP members of Congress for fanning the conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya and therefore isn’t eligible to be president. This canard has been thoroughly debunked, and they know it. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has done his part by joking that Obama and God have something in common — the lack of a birth certificate. Kansas attorney general candidate Kris Kobach repeated that joke at a GOP gathering this month. But as smart Republicans are realizing, nutty conspiracies don’t help the GOP; they only make it look nutty.
“If political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about,” Thomas Frank wrote in a Wall Street Journal column. “It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping.
“This is no small thing, mind you. The piling-up of petty complaints is an important aspect of conservative movement culture. For those who believe that American life consists of the trampling of Middle America by the ‘elites’ — that our culture is one big insult to the pious and the patriotic and the traditional — Sarah Palin’s long list of unfair and disrespectful treatment is one of her most attractive features. Like Oliver North, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, she is known not for her ideas but as a martyr, a symbol of the culture-war crimes of the left.”
Only 22 percent of Americans — and only 33 percent of Republicans — think that Sarah Palin has the ability to be an effective president, according to a new CBS News survey. But since she announced her plans to resign as Alaska governor, contributions to Sarah PAC, her political action committee, reportedly have surged. Meanwhile, perhaps in an effort to be taken more seriously on policy issues, Palin had a commentary in Tuesday’s Washington Post arguing that the cap-and-trade bill before Congress is “an enormous threat to our economy” that “would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”
Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan didn’t pull any punches in expressing her opinion that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is bad for conservatives and was disastrous as a national candidate. Though she credited Palin for being a gifted retail politician, Noonan said Palin “was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. . . . She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. ‘I’m not wired that way,’ ‘I’m not a quitter,’ ‘I’m standing up for our values.’ I’m, I’m, I’m. In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.”
One encouraging sign of life for the Republican Party is that it is recruiting some quality candidates to run for Congress next year, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post reported. One reason for this success is that, though President Obama’s personal approval rating remains high, some of his policies don’t poll as well, which creates openings for Republicans. Another key has been the public disapperance President George W. Bush, who harmed Republican candidates in recent election. The GOP is particularly targeting districts that voted for John McCain in the presidential race but elected Democratic members of Congress.
It’s silly to claim Palin has no chance to win the nomination or the presidency. The fact is, despite a rough campaign in 2008, Palin has been (for what it’s worth at this stage) a co-front-runner in polls of GOP primary voters for 2012, along with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. In a recent Pew survey, she had the strongest favorable-unfavorable numbers of the likely candidates among Republicans.
She has fervent supporters, which would presumably help her in primaries and caucuses. Among the general public, she has a not-great but not-unmanageable 45-44 favorability rating.
Will her poll numbers fall because she has opted to step down early from the Alaska governorship? Perhaps. But the short-term effect of that decision will soon be swamped by judgments people make as they see her out and about, speaking and opining on the issues of the day.
— William Kristol, Washinton Post
What can you say about a public official who ridicules those who would take the “quitter’s way out” — as she faces reporters to announce that she’s quitting? A governor who claims that “the worthless, easy path” would be to serve out the remaining 18 months of her term? An ambitious politician who says that “life is too short” to worry about, you know, boring things such as responsibility or duty?
You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously — or pretended to take her seriously — should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate.
The reasons she gave for stepping down are not just contrived or implausible but literally nonsensical. But I’m stating the obvious. The thing is, Palin’s unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.
— Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
The parents of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., gave $96,000 last year to the staffer who was his mistress and to her family, supposedly “out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time.” The payments roughly coincide with the resignation of the staffer and her husband, who has Ensign’s chief of staff, the Washington Post reported. Ensign had denied that he provided any severance payments or other financial assistance for the couple _ which, I guess, is technically true.
The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has inspired a rewriting of “Casey at the Bat,” which concludes:
“A hundred eyes were on him as he fumbled with his thoughts,
“They watched him struggle with the trouble his actions had done wrought;
“He labored more of other women of whom he shared some wine,
“Though quickly added he hadn’t crossed the forbidden line.”
“Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
“The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
“And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
“But there’s no joy in Charleston—mighty Sanford has struck out.”
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has decided to resign. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will take over on July 26, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional ‘lame duck’ status in this particular climate would just be another dose of ‘politics as usual,’ something I campaigned against and will always oppose,” Palin said at a news conference in Wasilla. “It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success.”
What’s next? “I look forward to helping others — to fight for our state and our country, and campaign for those who believe in smaller government, free enterprise, strong national security, support for our troops and energy independence.”
If this is her way of building up her executive experience and reform record toward a 2012 presidential run, it’s a funny way to do it. “We’ve seen a lot of nutty behavior from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that,” GOP strategist John Weaver said. Then again, there is nothing conventional about Palin.
Pressure is mounting on South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford to resign after he admitted this week that he “crossed the lines” with several other women, though he said he never had sex with them. “A lot of us are talking to him behind the scenes in hopes that he’ll make the right decision about what needs to be done,” Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said today. Sanford says he is trying to reconcile with his wife, but that could be difficult given that he told Associated Press he still loves Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine woman Sanford called his “soul mate.”
The uproar over David Letterman’s unfunny joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter demonstrated that even a deft comedian gets his timing wrong. According to the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs, the late-night tally of jokes about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy included, as of mid-March: Conan O’Brien, 20; Jay Leno, 15; Letterman, eight; Jon Stewart, four. Some were twofers, joking about the sexual activity of John Edwards and pro hockey players. “Saturday Night Live” even did a joke about incest — just a few weeks before Sarah Palin was a guest on the show. Letterman didn’t help himself by getting his teenage Palins confused in the latest joke. But “why did this one draw such a reaction?” asked Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Michael Smerconish. “Letterman’s timing was waaaay off.”
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s extramarital affair has 60 percent of South Carolinians ready for his resignation, according to a SurveyUSA poll. Larger majorities thought he had no right to disappear without informing the public (63 percent) or his staff (77 percent) of his whereabouts. The Charlotte Observer editorialized: “If you’re a governor, you do not go off without staying in touch with your office — whether you’re backpacking on the trail or bawling in Buenos Aires.” The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., stopped short of calling for Sanford’s resignation but called it “inexcusable” that he left the state vulnerable by refusing to “take the simple step of turning his authority temporarily over to the lieutenant governor while he was out of the country.”
At least South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford doesn’t have to wonder whether anyone would miss him if he disappeared. But doesn’t his six-day AWOL episode — and the confusing revelation that he wasn’t really hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff initially said, but in Argentina “to do something exotic” — damage his GOP star power and chances to be the 2012 presidential nominee? UPDATE: The governor admitted he was in Argentina having an affair. Definitely not a good career move.
David Letterman apologized for his joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter, but that didn’t stop him from poking fun at his protesters. His top 10 list Tuesday was on “things overheard at the ‘Fire David Letterman’ rally.” It included:
“Isn’t there always a crowd demanding Letterman be fired?”
“Can we also get CBS to bring back ‘Gunsmoke’?”
“When does Cheney get here with the waterboarding gear?”
“He should apologize for that hairpiece.”
David Letterman apologized Monday for a sex-related joke he made June 8 about Sarah Palin’s daughter. Last week he tried to clarify that he meant to refer to Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, and not her 14-year-old daughter, Willow. But he directly apologized Monday to “the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke.”
Some had called for some sort of censorship of Letterman, but columnist Kathleen Parker wrote how that would be “far more dangerous to the land of the free than any inappropriate one-liner.” Parker argued that “the best defense against rude comics is not ‘some kind of protection,’ but the rallying cry of people who demand more from their society and themselves.”
“Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment,” columnist Paul Krugman asserts. “Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the RNC haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that ‘some’ called Dr. Tiller ‘Tiller the Baby Killer,’ that he had ‘blood on his hands,’ and that he was a ‘guy operating a death mill.’ But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House. And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.”
The biggest challenge facing the GOP is not that Rush Limbaugh is the “main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” according to a new Gallup poll. Rather, it’s that 47 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed couldn’t name a main GOP spokesman. Within that leadership vacuum, Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich were picked by 10 percent of those surveyed, and former Vice President Dick Cheney was next with 9 percent.
