In recent days, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has been under fire from members of his own Party for making controversial public statements, such as ones that show a lack of confidence in the GOP’s readiness to lead. Yesterday he tried to defend himself by (falsely) stating, “I mean, I didn’t ask for, I didn’t seek this job, I didn’t ask for it.” Today, Steele told the Christian Broadcasting Network that he believes that it was God who put him in the position “for a reason“:
STEELE: I’m not defined by this job. When this job is over I will go back to doing something else. But God, I really believe, has placed me here for a reason because who else and why else would you do this unless there’s something inside of you that says right now you need to be here to do this?
Watch it:
The Minnesota Independent points out that Steele’s statement “mirrors those of fellow Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has asserted several times that she went into politics because God asked her to.”
This morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, Rudy Giuliani spent an entire segment attacking President Obama’s counterterrorism policies. In the middle of the rant, the former New York City mayor and failed presidential candidate called closing Guantanamo “totally absurd” and said that calls to close it were merely efforts to criticize President Bush:
GIULIANI: If he recognizes we’re at war with terror, a lot of things follow from that. They’re enemy combatants. They’re not just mere domestic criminals. Then we don’t close Guantanamo. I mean it’s totally absurd.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He seems to be putting it off for some time.
GIULIANI: You’re darn right he is. I mean this was a criticism of Bush. It was a pure partisan political criticism. When you look behind it, I know people that have gone to Guantanamo, you do, people I respect including Democrats who tell me Guantanamo is better than half the Federal prisons.
Host George Stephanopoulos then noted that Bush himself had said that Guantanamo should be closed. “Yeah because of the pressure,” Giuliani replied. Watch it:
Beyond Bush, a number of other Republicans have called for Gitmo to be closed, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In fact, Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus — who had reportedly once described himself as a Republican — has succinctly laid out the reasons why it’s, in Giuliani’s words, “totally absurd” to keep Guantanamo open:
PETRAEUS: Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activities since 9/11. And again, Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.
Given Giuliani’s loose relationship with the facts, his attacks on Obama’s counterterror policies are truly “pure partisan political criticism.”
Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele surprised his fellow Republicans by releasing a new book, Right Now: A 12-Step Program For Defeating The Obama Agenda. The book, and Steele’s efforts to promote it, have angered congressional Republicans and GOP operatives, who feel he is putting them “in tremendously difficult situations.” In an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show today, Steele tried to deflect criticism of the book by saying that he wrote it before he became the chairman of the RNC:
STEELE: So, all the talk and chatter right now means nothing because my job is determined by whether I do those two things. And I’m happy to do it and I’m around the country. You know, I’ve got this period — I wrote this book before I became chairman and as, because of the clock and the calender, I wind up doing it now. But when you read the book, it is a blueprint for how we move forward. I really believe that. It touches on those things that we lost track of. We can get them back. And we can go forward in a principled way and stand on those conservative principles and win again. We saw that in New Jersey and Virginia.
Listen here:
Steele’s claim that he wrote the book before he was elected to head the RNC on Jan. 30, 2009 is a bit odd considering that it contains many references to events that have happened after his election. For instance, Steele’s book talks about the NY-23 special election, an Obama administration cost estimate that was made public in September 2009 and Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-PA) April 2009 party switch.
Former CNN anchor and anti-immigration reform crusader Lou Dobbs appeared on the O’Reilly Factor last night with an interesting announcement. Dobbs told host O’Reilly that he supports immigration reform with a path to citizenship and also lamented his “combative nature” during the 2007 immigration debate. Dobbs continued insisting that his position on immigration hasn’t changed, explaining that he simply overemphasized border security in the past to the exclusion of legalization and that a “wiser Lou Dobbs” has emerged who is committed to promoting both:
DOBBS: I think the essence of the legislation of 2007 is right: pay a fine, learn English, commit to assimilation in the United States, and begin a path to citizenship…there should also be another guest worker program. [...]
O’REILLY: You sound very moderate. As you said, “I’m the tougher guy here.” Why do you think Hispanics come after you so hard?
DOBBS: I think in part — one thing is my own stupidity. I put forward a statement: rational, effective, humane policy…the emphasis became in the debate of my combative nature the issue of border security first and foremost, versus reforming immigration policy. I’m saying the same thing, but I’m keeping it absolutely combined.
O’REILLY: So you’re a kinder, gentler Lou Dobbs.
DOBBS: I’m a wiser Lou Dobbs.
Watch it:
Politifact found “no point-blank case” in which Dobbs has explicitly opposed legalizing undocumented immigrants, however he did repeatedly refer to the immigration legislation he praised last night as an “amnesty bill” during the 2007 debate. Dobbs also slammed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and President Obama during the 2008 presidential race for supporting “[guest worker] programs that bring in cheap foreign labor at the expense of American workers.” Last month, the anti-immigrant group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC announced it was dropping its support of Dobbs, citing a perceived change of views that “deeply offended his base.”
Despite his new proclaimed emphasis on border security and legalization, during the beginning of the segment a supposedly “wiser” Dobbs told O’Reilly that a recent bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is nothing but a “a list of what the open-borders amnesty crowd wants.” Gutierrez’s bill would establish an earned legalization program with requirements similar to those proposed by Dobbs and also includes several provisions aimed at beefing up border security.
Cross-posted at Wonk Room.
On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele attracted considerable attention for a controversial term he used on Fox News:
STEELE:Our platform is one of the best political documents that’s been written in the last 25 years. Honest Injun on that. It speaks to some core conservative principles on the value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don’t change.
Watch it:
Today, ThinkProgress received a statement from Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) in response to Steele’s remarks:
It’s unacceptable. And while I’m certain Chairman Steele didn’t intend it that way, it’s an offensive phrase in the Native American community.
Cole’s condemnation of Steele is significant, not only because he is a fellow Republican, but also because he is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and the only Native American serving in the House. Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), co-chairman of the Congressional Native American Caucus, has also demanded that Steele apologize: “His insensitive comment undermines and threatens to reverse the progress we have made to correct those wrongs.”
Leeanne Root of Indian Country Today writes that a public apology from Steele — who has been blanketing the media to promote his book — is “well overdue.” “Steele’s use of this racist phrase — on a widely viewed national program, no less — disrespects a community that works hard to educate about the true history of the United States and wants to participate in its productive future,” she writes.
Last month, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) said that California’s Proposition 13 — which requires that a two-thirds majority of the state legislature approve any tax increase — should be a “guiding light” for the nation. And Lungren is evidently not the only one in favor of crippling a state’s ability to budget. In a column yesterday, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore heaped praise onto Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who is calling for Texas to adopt a Prop. 13-type measure:
On Wednesday, Mr. Perry moved to seal the deal with conservatives by calling for a new constitutional set of protections for taxpayers. Call it a Texas-style “taxpayer bill or rights.” Mr. Perry wants the state’s constitution amended to require a two-thirds vote requirement of the legislature for any tax hikes. He also wants state spending capped at the rate of annual population growth plus inflation.
As Time’s Kevin O’Leary wrote, Prop. 13 lies “at the root of California’s misery,” leaving it no choice but to slash its budget during the economic downturn. Harold Meyerson has pointed out that the Republican minority in Sacramento “has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes (increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote).” So the state is left in an untenable position, and reduced to asking the federal government for support. The Wonk Room has more.
As a whole host of Fox News guests and contributors have in the past supported racial profiling, one hold-out has been Geraldo Rivera. As Think Progress has documented, following the Fort Hood massacre, he passionately attacked the ineffective and discriminatory practice on Fox and Friends, where he warned against casting a “gloomy cloud of suspicion” on all Muslims and recounted his father’s fear of racial profiling as a Hispanic:
RIVERA: I think that the great tragedy of [terrorism] is that it will cast a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim GI’s who serve with great honor …. I remember my dad, just very briefly, when we were growing up there would be a notorious crime and my dad used to gather the family and we used to say a little prayer, please God that it’s not a Puerto Rican. …. This is the same thing with American Muslims.
Watch it:
Unfortunately, on Fox and Friends this morning, Rivera reversed his position on profiling people based on their faith or country of origin. After recounting a story about how he was unhappy to be inconvenienced by his brief time on the no-fly list, he explained that “in the old days, Latinos sacrificed” by being profiled during the drug war, and that now Muslims should face similar profiling because “that’s just the way it is“:
RIVERA: How could this guy be on the no-fly list if I was on the no fly list? …. If I’m getting it, why can’t anyone from any one of these suspect countries get one of these hands-on, nothing stops that kind of stuff? …. I believe that we all sacrificed something. In the old days, Latinos sacrificed, Latinos were profiled during the anti-drug war and we had to take it. Now people from these Muslim countries, specifically like Yemen and Iraq and Afghanistan they have to understand that it’s a reasonable precaution, it’s a constitutional classification …. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. …. We need some racial profiling, I’m sorry.
Watch it:
Perhaps Rivera should listen to his own response to Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert when satirically asked if bigotry against hispanics could be reduced by redirecting it towards Muslims: “There is a maddening tendency once your group gets over the immigrant bridge to burn the bridge so no one else can get over it. The Irish definitely encountered the same kind of hostility. It must have been some equivalent to right-wing talk show thugs then too.”
As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss has been pointing out, conservatives and hawks are falling all over themselves to hail the failed Christmas Day bombing as a “success.” “This was — this was an attack that didn’t succeed on the scale it was expected to but did succeed,” said Brit Hume on Fox News.
At the same time, conservatives seeking to exploit the attempted attack for political advantage have been contrasting Obama’s record on terrorism with President Bush’s, claiming that the last administration “had a 100 percent perfect track record.” On Fox News yesterday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declared that “after September 11, not one time did the terrorists who are trying to kill us and end our way of life, not one time were they able to attack the mainland United States.” Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed on Good Morning America today that “We had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Watch it:
Ignoring the irony of Rudy “noun, a verb, and 9/11” Giuliani claiming there were “no domestic attacks under Bush,” the logic of the conservative claim that the failed Christmas Day attack represents a mar on Obama’s record while Bush’s post-9/11 record was spotless reveals a stunning double standard. As many, including ThinkProgress, have pointed out, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s failed underwear bombing is nearly identical to Richard Reid’s failed shoe bombing in December 2001, but the conservatives attacking Obama for letting an attack occur on his watch don’t seem to count the shoe bombing as an attack on Bush’s watch.
This was perhaps best demonstrated by Las Vegas Journal Review publisher Sherman Frederick’s column claiming that “the two cases of domestic terrorism since 9/11″ both happened on Obama’s watch. The only way for this to be true is for Abdulmuttalab’s failed attack to count as a case of domestic terrorism while discounting Reid’s failed attack. Additionally, as Media Matters has repeatedly pointed out, several other domestic attacks did occur under Bush’s watch, such as the 2001 anthrax attacks and the 2002 attack against an El Al ticket counter at LAX.
Portugal’s parliament passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage today. The bill “now goes to conservative President Anibal Cavaco Silva who can ratify or veto it, but a veto can be overturned by Parliament.” If approved, Portugal would become “the sixth European country to allow same-sex marriages.” As Joe Sudbay notes, Portugal is heavily Roman Catholic, with more than 84 percent of the population identifying as such.
Earlier this week, RNC Chairman Michael Steele once again set off intraparty squabbling when he told Sean Hannity that he didn’t think Republicans could take back the House in 2010 and that even if they did, he didn’t know if they were ready to govern. In an ABC News Radio interview yesterday, he defended himself by telling his critics to “shut up” and “get a life.”
In a separate, friendly interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show yesterday, Steele claimed that he did not “ask for” or “seek” his RNC position:
MILLER: And I think, I hope this is not where you — listen, I know you’re going to say it’s a great gig. But I, you know you’ve got a lot more in you, man. I hope you’re one of our leaders again soon.
STEELE: No, I, look this, I feel this is part of a calling for me. I mean, I didn’t ask for, I didn’t seek this job, I didn’t ask for it. It wasn’t part of my, you know, charted course in life to wind up as chairman of the RNC. You know, there was a convergence of moments here.
Listen here:
Steele’s assertion that he didn’t “seek” the chairmanship of the RNC is odd considering he had to win an election to obtain the position. In fact, when Steele confirmed his desire to be chairman he told Hannity and Colmes, “I want the gig.” Watch it:
He also issued a press release announcing his “candidacy for the position of Chairman of the Republican National Committee.”
The Environmental Protection Agency “proposed the nation’s strictest-ever smog limits” yesterday. The new proposal calls for restricting the ground-level ozone concentration to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, which is a sharp decline from the 75 parts per billion standard that was used under President Bush.
“The economy lost more jobs in December and the unemployment rate was unchanged, as a sluggish economic recovery has yet to revive hiring among the nation’s employers,” according to the AP. “The Labor Department says employers cut 85,000 jobs last month, worse than the 8,000 drop analysts expected.”
Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele’s comments this week that he does not think the GOP can win congressional majorities in 2010 and that it is not ready to lead has angered the party’s congressional leaders. “You really just have to get him to stop. It’s too much,” a top Republican congressional aide said.
The New Jersey State Senate rejected a marriage equality measure yesterday, falling seven votes short of the 21 needed for passage. Garden State Equality chairman Steven Goldstein said that the next step will be taking the case to the courts. “We are not waiting out the term of any new Administration to bring equality to same-sex couples in our state,” Goldstein said.
In a paper released yesterday, a group of scientists said that mountaintop coal mining “is so destructive that the government should stop giving out new permits to do it.” “The science is so overwhelming that the only conclusion that one can reach is that mountaintop mining needs to be stopped,” said Margaret Palmer, University of Maryland professor and the study’s lead author.
Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
In the past two weeks, Castle has blasted multiple press releases publicizing stimulus funds awarded to his state. In his most recent release, he not only calls the money “imperative,” but in “announcing” the funds, he tacitly claims credit for securing them:
Washington | January 7, 2010 – Delaware Congressman Mike Castle announced today that $5,230,610 has been awarded to the State to assist families and individuals in need. [...] “As we face the coldest season of the year, it is imperative we provide those programs serving Delaware’s most disadvantaged families and individuals with the resources necessary to house, feed, and protect those in desperate need,” said Rep. Castle. “These grants, totaling more than $5 million, will help the invaluable organizations and programs which are working to help the homeless, hungry, and those facing economic hardship throughout the State.”
Nowhere on the release is the source of they funds or the word “stimulus” mentioned. But the stimulus Castle opposed is the source of the “imperative” funds he now champions:
– The Castle release announces $4,735,313 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care program. According to the HUD website, the Continuum of Care initiative is enabled through $1.5 billion in money authorized by the stimulus.
– The Castle release announces $495,297 to Delaware’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). According to Grants.gov, the FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program is enabled by $100 million in funding through the stimulus.
While Castle’s duplicitous release reeks of hypocrisy, it places him firmly within the status quo of Republican lawmakers. Castle’s leaders in the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA), have lavished praise upon stimulus projects in their districts, while attacking the stimulus as a failure to the DC press corps. And Castle’s prospective leader in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), has also ridiculed the stimulus as a complete waste, while firing off releases boasting about stimulus-funded construction.
In recent days, attention has been turning toward Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), in the failed Christmas Day bombing. Politico’s Laura Rozen wrote that it appears that “knives [are] out” for Leiter. On Tuesday, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove also jumped on the NCTC during an appearance on Fox News, saying that the agency was “where the problem probably occurred”:
VAN SUSTEREN: But somebody had the job, Karl, to coordinate all this information into one center place. I cannot believe that after 9/11, we didn’t figure out that we have to have some sort of central resource –
ROVE: Well, we did. We did. [...]
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, who’s in charge of that?
ROVE: The counterterrorism center is where the problem probably occurred because, look, there are lots of — we know that the State Department passed on the information. We know the CIA received it. We know the counterterrorism center received it.
It was surprising that Rove pointed the finger at the NCTC, since Leiter served with him in the Bush administration. Leiter became NCTC director in 2007, and then was retained by the Obama administration. But maybe Rove forgot these details and remembered them only after his Fox News appearance, because today during another Fox interview, he tried to shift blame away from the NCTC:
ROVE: In fact, the biggest problem is not within the NCTC and the intelligence community — Look, I want to say one word of defense for them. There’s a lot of information flowing through there. It seems to me this should have been caught, but there is a lot of information flowing through there, and the expectation that human beings are going to be perfect 100 percent of the time or that the system of computers and algorithms of detection software is going to be perfect 100 percent of the time is just wrong.
In both interviews, Rove insisted that the real problem was with the Obama administration, who decided to “treat the Christmas Day bomber as a criminal defendant” (just like the Bush administration did with the shoe bomber). Watch the two clips:
Today, the White House defended Leiter against a New York Daily News article that Leiter “did not cut short his ski vacation after the underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner on Christmas Day.” National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough disputed the Daily News’ story, saying that Leiter was “intimately involved in all aspects of the nation’s response to the attempted terrorist attack” and took “six days of annual leave” after the event.
Today in his speech on the attack, Obama made clear that he wasn’t interested in playing the blame game. “Ultimately, the buck stops with me. … When the system fails, it is my responsibility,” he said.
Transcript: More »
Today on his radio show, Glenn Beck wanted to discuss the census. “Apparently the census has come out,” he said. Beck’s co-host then chimed in, “Yeah and there’s a little confusion because there’s three boxes you can check if you’re a certain race. … I don’t know what the race is because there’s three different terms for them. Black, African-American, or Negro.” Instead of having any consideration to take issue with the term “Negro,” Beck launched into a tirade against “African-American”:
BECK: African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa and now you live in America. Ok so you were brought over — either your family was brought over through the slave trade or you were born here and your family emigrated here or whatever but that is not a race.
Listen here:
Previously, Beck has said that he doesn’t have “a lot of African-American friends, and I think part of it is because I’m afraid that I would be in an open conversation, and I would say something that somebody would take wrong, and then it would be a nightmare.” And recently on his Fox News program, Beck hosted a group of black conservatives and complained that some of them refer to themselves as “African-American.” “Why not identify yourself as Americans?” he asked, adding, “I don’t identify myself as white, or a white American.”
On Monday, RedState.com editor Erick Erickson defended some of his controversial tweets on The Colbert Report, telling Stephen Colbert that he compared White House health care spokesperson Linda Douglass to Joseph Goebbels because she had been “referring to those people who were opposed to health care as being brownshirts.” As ThinkProgress noted, Douglass never said any such thing. Douglass appeared on Colbert’s show last night to correct Erickson’s lie, calling it “completely false” and “crazy, made-up stuff.” Watch it (about 4:00 in):
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Drag Me to Health – Ezra Klein & Linda Douglass | ||||
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Since the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, conservatives have been attacking the Obama administration for failing to “connect the dots,” with many calling specifically for the resignation of Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. They have criticized her for initially telling CNN that “the system worked,” even though they dishonestly took her quote out of context to do so.
Appearing on Fox News Tuesday, RNC chairman Michael Steele said, “I agree with the Republican leadership that’s called for [Napolitano's] resignation.” Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted, “Secretary Janet Napolitano should resign, saying ‘the system worked,’ undermines the confidence of Americans.” And yesterday, a group of prominent conservative activists sent Napolitano a letter demanding her resignation.
But a former head of the Department of Homeland Security said much of this criticism is “misplaced.” Tom Ridge, who served under President Bush, defended Napolitano, explaining that blame for the incident does not rest solely on her shoulders:
RIDGE: [Neither the] Secretary of Homeland Security, nor can the department, act on anything until they get the information. … And the Department of Homeland Security could not have revoked the visa. The Department of Homeland Security could not have put this name on the National Counterterrorism Center. … So while there is obviously some criticism pointed in the department’s direction and at the Secretary, I think by and large it is misplaced.
Watch it:
Ridge certainly knows more about how DHS operates than many of Napolitano’s critics. A preliminary review suggested that a “systemic failure” is to blame for allowing suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the plane with explosives, President Obama said last month. And White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday that a comprehensive review to be released later today will cite holes in airport security and problems sharing information between intelligence agencies — not a specific person or agency.
Last month, Ridge also defended Napolitano against the right-wing attacks on her initial statement, saying, “I don’t think any right-thinking person actually believed that Secretary Napolitano thought the system worked.” “I think what she was referring to was that after the incident occurred, there are certain procedures and protocols to put in place,” Ride said. “That worked smoothly.”
Transcript: More »
On the Wonk Room, Igor Volsky highlights a new study in Health Affairs that shows how misguided — and political — Republican lawmakers’ opposition to health reform legislation is. “States with the most to gain under health care reform are overwhelmingly represented by Republicans, while those states likely to do worse are much more likely to have Democratic senators,” conclude the study’s authors. From their findings:
[T]he states most likely to “win” as a result of health care reform are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. All of these states have a relatively high number of uninsured and all are in the bottom half of states in terms of cost under both financing mechanisms. … Among the states most likely to “lose” are Delaware, Nebraska, and New Hampshire as well as the District of Columbia. Each of these states has a relatively lower-than-average proportion of uninsured residents, and each would fall in the “High Cost” category under either of the financing options. There are four states — Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, and Rhode Island — that while also “Low Benefit” are “Low Cost” as well.
Volsky writes that “if Senators and Representatives dropped their ideological allegiance and voted to advance the interests of their constituents, the health care reform effort would actually attract bipartisan support.”
Just hours after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor in Michigan, began politicizing the event. Hoekstra baselessly claimed President Obama had not paid enough attention to Yemen — the base of Abdulmutallab’s radical affiliations — and even tried to raise campaign funds off the incident.
Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the failed terror attack was good for Hoekstra, even adding that it was “probably” the reason the leading Democratic candidate for Michigan governor dropped out of the race:
GINGRICH: In Michigan, I think Pete Hoekstra is putting together such a good campaign and has gotten such a boost out of having been intelligence committee chairman now with the attempted attack on Detroit that Pete really is becoming a dominant figure in the state.
I think that was part of why Lt. Governor Cherry probably dropped out. He’s faced with a president who clearly couldn’t have defended Detroit. We were lucky that the terrorist didn’t know how to set off the bomb or we would have had a huge disaster.
Watch it:
Republicans have no shame in playing politics with terrorism and have a habit of leading on that terror attacks and serious national security crises are good for their side, a point exemplified by a comment from Charlie Black, top aide to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ), during the 2008 presidential campaign:
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.
This morning on CNBC, Gov. Sean Parnell (R-AK), who assumed office after Sarah Palin’s sudden departure to become a professional right-wing partisan, spoke to the hosts of Squawk Box about issues concerning his state. As the leader of an oil-based economy, Parnell chided the Obama administration for seeking to curb the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. However, during the interview, he said he “gives the President kudos” for supporting the Alaskan natural gas pipeline construction project, an infrastructure effort stalled under then-governor Palin. Asked about the national spotlight Palin has brought Alaska with her conspiracy-fueled tirades and baseless smears against Obama, Parnell conceded that the attention has been “some sour with the sweet”:
QUINTANILLA: I was going to say, do you think she’s bringing attention to Alaska all in a positive way or has there been some sour with the sweet?
PARNELL: You know as well as I do there’s been both. I have the greatest respect for Governor Palin and she’s put Alaska on the map. [...]
KERNEN: One of the largest infrastructure projects in history is your pipeline, natural gas pipeline, that would seem like a natural for the stimulus. […]
PARNELL: Well listen I’ll give the President kudos for that one. He says the natural gas pipeline is one of his five green projects.
Watch it:
As the Alaska press has noted, although Parnell ran on a ticket with Palin, he has a markedly different style and character. He is often willing to work with both Democrats and Republican in the legislature, and has shown an interest in advancing social issues. While Palin constantly sought publicitly, Parnell has prided himself on accomplishing goals by working quietly behind the scenes.
Last month, conservatives attempted to politicize the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day by complaining that President Obama waited three days before publicly addressing it. “The President waits 72 hours before we hear from him, and it’s over 72 hours from the time of the incident to the time that the President spoke today,” said Karl Rove on Dec. 28, not noting that his old boss waited six days before commenting on the 2001 attempted shoe bombing.
But conservatives are now claiming that he waited 10 days to respond. On CNN’s Larry King Live last night, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that Obama responded “10 days too late“:
GIULIANI: I think the president has to make a major correction in the way he is dealing with terrorism because I think he has mishandled the situation. First of all, it was 10 days too late. This is something you react to immediately, not 10 days later after your vacation. The president of the United States, when there is a potential massive attack on this country, which is what this guy was going to do, should have been on top of this immediately, not 10 days later, 11 days later, 12 days later.
When King pointed out that “President Bush took six days once in a similar incident,” Giuliani responded that “six days is less than 10″ and that he believed “that six days was before the September 11th attack.” King then clarified that “Bush waited six days on the shoe bomber,” to which Giuliani responded, “that’s correct.” Watch it:
The attempted shoe bombing by Richard Reid took place three months after September 11 on December 22, 2001. President Bush didn’t say a single word about the incident until a press conference six days later, where he simply said that he was “grateful for the flight attendant’s response” and that “we’ve got to be aware that there are still enemies to the country.” In contrast, when President Obama first spoke about the Christmas Day plot on Dec. 28, he gave a lengthy statement in order to “update the American people on the attempted terrorist attack.”
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