Twisting The Knife

Digby noted that A Man Called Petraeus was ramping up his 2012 strategy. It continued today:

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Central Command, Army General David Petraeus, said on Wednesday that both he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen had endorsed an assessment by the top commander in Afghanistan that says more troops would be needed.

"Obviously I endorsed, the chairman endorsed... Gen. (Stanley) McChrystal's assessment and description," Petraeus said at a counterinsurgency conference in Washington.

It's a little more complicated than that. Spencer Ackerman was there.

Question time. Trainor reminds everyone not to ask about Afghanistan. Did Petraeus’ strategy review ahead of the Obama administration include a resource request? Twenty counterinsurgents per thousand civilians was the recommendation in the counterinsurgency field manual, Petraeus says. “Concentrate your efforts in the areas where the insurgency is… most threatening the population.” He references Bruce Riedel’s strategy review for the Obama administration on Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, and shows a slide of insurgent activity focusing on the Afghan south and east to demonstrate where counterinsurgency efforts ought to focus.

Unprompted, Petraeus defends Obama’s review of Afghanistan strategy. “We said we expected some form of assessment that we thought would take place in the fall,” he said, and muses on the Afghan election. There have been “events like election that looks like it may not produce a government with greater legitimacy in the eyes of the people.” He praises Gen. McChrystal’s “superb” counterinsurgency guidance and his “highlight[ing] of the need to change the culture” by such things as obeying Afghan traffic laws. As for the resources McChrystal will request, Petraeus says, “the resource options piece will be in in a few days as well.”

It looks like Petraeus is content to let Obama walk into his own problem here. He asserts an endorsement of the McChrystal strategy, but is solicitous of the President's review process. Of course, with each passing day the Pentagon and the neocons can team up to bang on the "indecisive" President (Mitt Romney's already calling him Hamlet), so Petraeus can just sit on the sidelines, offer a hint of approval for escalation, expect everyone in the media to run with that and slowly constrict the President's options.

Petraeus is a better politician than anyone the Republicans have, at least from where I'm sitting.

Sarah's Exit

I was away all day. Anything happen?

Just a couple words on this Palin thing. It could very well be, and probably is, a realization that an elected official in Alaska can't maintain the schedule necessary to run a Presidential campaign, and that these things begin earlier and earlier and she needed to be on the road as soon as possible. I think she could have stayed governor until 2010 and still made the campaign appearances necessary, but obviously she and her handlers didn't.

But the timing of the announcement just doesn't make any sense. The Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend is when you dump news you don't want anyone to know about. There's also the matter of that virulently negative Vanity Fair article, the consequent backbiting between some of the peripheral players, and then those leaked internal campaign emails depicting Palin in a bad light. You can argue that this pushed Palin to resign because she needed to get control of that story, and only a road tour would do it. But you could also view the leaked emails as a shot across the bow. Clearly the McCain people, who obviously hate her, have a wealth of material on her, and if she stayed perched up in Alaska they could control the spigot and destroy her drip by drip.

There's also the matter of the $500,000 in debt from legal defenses, which can easily be made on the lecture circuit, with the added benefit of raising name recognition. But I cannot help but think that this hastily arranged resignation got her out of Alaska before something very damaging hit her, and Palin must think that she can avoid harm by resigning first and then depicting the matter as inherently partisan and political, with no need for an independent investigation because she's no longer Governor. Max Blumenthal hints at something here.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

Seems like a small chink in the armor, but this is almost precisely what brought down Ted Stevens in Alaska, so it probably has more resonance there.

From a political perspective, this hurts, but not too much. Expect a couple months of Palin's supporters in full victimization mode, claiming that everyone from the mainstream media to David Letterman forced her out of her job. She thrives on the politics of resentment, and this just seems like a "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" moment.

...I finally watched that press conference, and she may as well have been speaking in German. I have no idea what she just said. I do appreciate David Kurtz' three-word assessment: Real winners quit.

Anything Happen While I Was Away?

I was out this morning until now, anything up?

Anything at all?

After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair. Wiping away tears, he apologized to his wife and four sons and said he will resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.

"I've been unfaithful to my wife," he said in a bombshell news conference in which the 49-year-old governor ruminated aloud with remarkable frankness on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. He said he spent the last five days "crying in Argentina."

Sanford, who in recent months had been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, ignored questions about whether he would step down as governor.

At least one state lawmaker called for his resignation. As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for "moral legitimacy."

Oh, that. Anything else? Slow news day.

OK, a few things. First, powerful men thinking they're invulnerable? Go figure. These things are actually not widespread; despite the anecdotal evidence, a small percentage of politicians have affairs on their spouses. But to the extent that they are, they are internal matters between these people and their families. Nobody really knows what goes on in someone else's marriage, and I really don't care about my representatives' faithfulness. In fact, none of us should. But where this breaks down is when these sanctimonious "family values" types want to police personal behavior of their constituents when they cannot keep it in their pants themselves.

That's the usual disclaimer. But this Sanford case is much, much different. He left his state, in fact he left the country, for seven days without telling anybody. Setting aside the fact that going to Argentina to "say goodbye" for seven days doesn't make any kind of sense, and if he got away with this I'm sure there would be additional hikes on the Appalachian trail, so to speak, in the future, leaving the country with no proper explanation is a severe dereliction of duty. He apparently lied to his own staff, lied to the Lieutenant Governor, and left his state in the lurch, despite the unpredictability of events (aren't we in hurricane season?). That's probably a firing offense. If I was a South Carolinian, it would be to me, regardless of party.

The larger story is the complete ineptitude of this crop of Republicans to capitalize on what could actually be a treacherous road for Barack Obama in 2012. Sanford has an affair. John Ensign has an affair. Bobby Jindal does an impression of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock in his coming-out party. Newt Gingrich calls Sonia Sotomayor a racist. And on and on and on. If the economy fails to improve, and if health care fails to pass, Obama is actually vulnerable. That is, if there was a second political party in this country.

Somewhere, A Village Was Missing Its Idiot

This is weird:

The whereabouts of Gov. Mark Sanford was unknown for nearly four days, and some state leaders question who was in charge of the executive office.

But Sanford’s office told the lieutenant governor’s office Monday afternoon that Sanford has been reached and he is fine, said Frank Adams, head of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer’s office on aging.

Neither the governor’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford after he left the mansion Thursday in a black SLED Suburban SUV, said Sen. Jake Knotts and three others familiar with the situation but declined to be identified.

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press earlier Monday her husband has been gone for several days and she did not know where.

She said she was not concerned [...] Jenny Sanford said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

So great. He was off typing his awesome campaign book, The Audacity of Nope. But when you're a Governor of a state, can you just go walkabout for four days and not identify anyone of your whereabouts? South Carolina doesn't operate on auto-pilot. There could be a fire, a flood, all sorts of matters requiring executive attention.

Irresponsible selfishness from the chief neo-Hooverist in the GOP.

Pawlenty Readies To Defy Minnesota Courts

That's how I read this announcement:

Two sources have confirmed that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will announce that he will not seek re-election in 2010.

The sources confirmed to WCCO-TV political reporter Pat Kessler that the announcement about Pawlenty's future plans will include an announcement that he will not seek a third term.

The announcement is expected to be made at a 2 p.m. press conference.

Pawlenty wants to run for President, and maybe wants to free his schedule for 2011 (although that didn't exactly work out for Mitt Romney). He also might want to avoid a re-election fight in a blue state after years of budget deficits and recessions. This is a bad time to be a Governor.

But clearly, not having to face Minnesota voters again frees him up to do whatever he deems necessary with respect to the US Senate election. Al Franken will probably get approval from the state Supreme Court within a couple weeks as the winner of the election. At that point the Court will, in all likelihood, request a certificate of election for Franken to be seated. The people of Minnesota want two Senators again. Pawlenty, by taking himself out of the running, removes himself of accountability and can now be free to show Republican primary voters what a good soldier he is. He'll refuse to sign the certificate. Heck, he makes this announcement THE DAY after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Franken-Coleman case. He's practically begging you to make the connection.

Cold-Blooded

Obama has a nice-guy personality that he presents to the world, but his political instincts have always been pretty hard-core. He won his initial State Senate race by forcing everyone else off the ballot after getting their official signatures disqualified. That's what I'm reminded of by today's move sending Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to Beijing as the US Ambassador to China. Aside from being qualified for the job by spending a lot of time in Asia and speaking fluent Mandarin, Huntsman is a rising young star in the Republican Party mentioned often as a potential 2012 Presidential candidate. Just a couple weeks ago, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe labeled Huntsman the biggest threat to Obama in 2012. So the President up and co-opted him.

Huntsman may be playing a long game, getting the imprimatur of a popular President and setting up for a future run way down the road. But I tend to reject the idea that the GOP primary voters would nominate anyone who took a job in the Obama Administration. At any rate, in the short-term, Obama just neutralized the guy his campaign manager saw as the toughest opponent to his re-election.

I wish he would use this kind of strategy against the ConservaDems...

Cheney '12

Maybe he's just happy to be out of the undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney has appeared on the teevee more often than Ryan Seacrest lately. There was Face the Nation. And then another Fox News go-round. And an upcoming AEI speech for the C-SPAN set. While most of the dialogue has been about torture - his favorite subject - Cheney isn't afraid to dive into a diverse issue set, like denying workers the right to organize.

I have to concur with Steve Benen: it certainly looks like Cheney's trying real hard to raise his profile and keep his name in the news.

I'm not trying to start any rumors, but Cheney is certainly acting like a guy who plans to run for something. He's doing lots of media interviews, cultivating his connection with Limbaugh, attacking the president, lying about Democratic ideas, and giving at least one speech at a major conservative think tank about his vision for the future.

Put it this way -- if one of the Republicans with his/her eyes on 2012 maintained this kind of high-profile schedule in Washington, wouldn't the assumption be that he or she was laying the groundwork for a campaign?

Well, either a campaign or a lawsuit, although this could be considered jury tampering in the latter case.

If Cheney did up and announce for President, he would have a cheering section from Erick the Red and his merry band of calcium deficient all-stars:

Put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh camp. Heck, put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh 2012 camp.

If not a Presidential ticket, at least they should be the listened voices on the right — the ones whose advice guides the direction our candidates go.

Yes, the left may laugh at that and encourage it, but they would be wise to think about it.

OK, I'll think about i- no, I'm just going to laugh and encourage it.



It's also fun to watch Erick the Red pining for a terrorist attack that kills thousands of his fellow citizens:

This is an important point to keep repeating because it has the virtue of being true and of lingering in the public conscience. If we are attacked again, and with Obama in charge it is more than likely that we will, the public needs to remember what it was like to have grown ups running the show.

I know that's what I was thinking on 9/11 - "at least we have grown-ups."

Let's close this out with a walk down memory lane of Fourthbranch's Greatest Hits:

Governing Iz Hard

And now I'll wade into the continuing Sarah Palin adventures. No, not her war of words with an 18 year-old, but her serious failure to govern in Alaska.

As the legislative session draws to an end this weekend, Ms. Palin is pushing no major bills, and neither are state lawmakers. Many pivotal alliances between the governor and minority Democrats are obsolete, undone by mutual bitterness from the election. The rush of oil revenues that helped Ms. Palin press for big-ticket projects in the past has been replaced by a budget deficit that will require taking at least $1 billion out of state savings [...]

Twice the governor has rejected Democrats’ choice to fill a vacant State Senate seat in heavily Democratic Juneau; they have responded by rejecting the three Democrats she has nominated. This week, the state Democratic Party held a news conference to criticize Ms. Palin’s trip to Indiana, prompting a sharp retort from the governor’s office insisting that she has spent far more time in Juneau than previous governors had.

The biggest policy fight has been over how much federal stimulus money the state should accept (the governor initially held a news conference to say she would accept only 55 percent of the $930 million available; she soon signaled her willingness to accept more, though not enough for lawmakers). The State Senate, often her foil, took matters to a new level this year by stripping some of the governor’s priority projects from its proposed budget, including some in support of the natural gas pipeline. The Senate has yet to go along with a bill backed by Ms. Palin that would require parental notification and consent before young women under 17 can have abortions.

The governor recently nominated Wayne Anthony Ross, a board member of the National Rifle Association, to be Alaska’s attorney general. Mr. Ross, who is expected to be confirmed, has told lawmakers that he opposes many federal efforts in Alaska like increasing protections for polar bears and beluga whales and limiting resource development. Years ago, he described gay men and lesbians as “degenerates.”

The State Senate seat is really amusing. She keeps sending nominees who recently changed their party affiliation to Democratic to apply for the position, and most recently she sent the names of all three rejected nominees to fill the one seat. The latest nominee's claim to fame appears to be that his wife sold her shoes. Earlier, she tried to change the rules so that a Republican would be eligible for the seat previously held by a Democrat, which, um, didn't work.

Then there's the Attorney General nominee.

Sarah Palin's choice for attorney general once wrote a column defending the statue of a KKK figure as an expression of free speech and mocked the psychology of a college student who protested the display.

Wayne Anthony Ross has come under intense scrutiny since the Alaska Governor and former vice presidential candidate announced his nomination. His resume includes derogatory remarks about homosexuals, accusations of sexism, and bizarre comments downplaying the fallout of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But his most controversial incident may have come in December 1991, when he penned an op-ed for the Anchorage Times, a copy of which was obtained by the Huffington Post, entitled "KKK 'art' project gets 'A' for courage." ... [T]he column was filled with racial and political insensitivities that, even in the relatively homogenous Alaska, were bound (perhaps designed) to stir the pot.

Considering that this is all happening in Palin's official role as the chief executive of Alaska, it's no wonder that Washington Republicans are souring on Palin's prospects to lead the Party in 2012.

...And the Alaska Senate just did some nailin' Palin, rejecting her Attorney General candidate, Wayne Anthony Ross. FAIL.

Let Them Eat Crawfish Cake

Kicking off his 2012 Presidential campaign, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has decided to screw over poor people.

When President Obama signed the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act last week, it included three different provisions to benefit unemployed workers. The first provided funding to states that allowed for a $25 per week increase in benefits. The second extended the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program which gives 20 weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits to individuals “who had already collected all regular state benefits,” while the third provision widened the pool of people eligible to receive unemployment benefits.

Today, however, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced his intention to oppose changing state law to allow his Lousiana citizens to qualify for the second two unemployment provisions. Jindal said the state would only be accepting money to increase the unemployment insurance payments for those who currently qualify for unemployment insurance.

In all, Jindal turned away nearly $100 million in federal aid for his state’s unemployed residents.

I know a big state on the West Coast that can use it.

For the most part, these "principled" Southern governors have been talking the talk about rejecting stimulus funds but not walking the walk. Jindal is sufficiently crazy enough to go all the way. And of course, he didn't reject the new homebuyers' benefit or anything that would hit someone of less modest means, he rejected aid for the desperate. Unemployment benefits are among the fastest forms of stimulus there are, with really big multipliers, because people in that situation spend the money. But it's considered good strategy now in the Republican Party to try and sink the economy, and it's always been good strategy to harm the poor at the expense of the rich. Jim Clyburn is right here, though I think it's a function of class and not quite race.

The highest-ranking African-American member of Congress on Friday accused Southern governors who oppose economic stimulus spending of indifference to the plight of poor blacks who might benefit from the federal money.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, amplified earlier statements that the governors' hesitation in accepting stimulus money had insulted him because "these four states are in the heart of the black belt."

Clyburn singled out Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi for criticism.

This isn't about traditionally poor communities anymore. Due to the length and breadth of this recession, middle class professionals are now showing up at food banks. And Bobby Jindal wants to make sure that they get no help from the state that they could use to get themselves back on their feet and ready to contribute to the economy again.

Good Presidential material.

...if Jindal wants to really make a name for himself, he could reject federal support to rebuild New Orleans. Now THAT would make him look like a tiger!

Help Me Obi-Wan Gingrich, You're My Only Hope

Pardon me while I snicker.

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Wow, this would be frightening. The guy who shut down the government because he couldn't get a good seat on Ar Force One? Surely he wouldn't crack under pressure. The guy who went from leader of the Reagan revolution to resigning in disgrace in four years? Surely he has the staying power to lead.

Please don't do this, Republican Party. I don't know how we'd compete against gimmick politics and outdated beliefs that the country is still center-right. Don't make us compete against Newt.

(Did I hold the straight face?)

ABC Steps In It?

The initial reports were that Sarah Palin actually started talking about 2012 yesterday in an interview with ABC News, including the line "I'm not doing any of this for naught." After massive amounts of damage control and probably plenty of angry phone calls, ABC revised their own reporting, claiming instead that Palin was talking about this election. An AP story reflects the change.

Asked about 2012, whether she was discouraged by daily campaign attacks and whether she would return home to Alaska, the Republican vice presidential nominee said she was focused on defeating Democrat Barack Obama next week.

"I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken ... I'm not doing this for naught," Palin told ABC News in a taped interview airing on Thursday.

A campaign spokesperson said Palin was talking about being focused on winning the White House this year and is not going to quit despite her critics.

In its initial report on the interview, ABC said Palin was looking ahead to the 2012 election cycle, regardless of the outcome of the November 4 vote.

ABC issued a revised release after the McCain campaign clarified Palin's comment.

This is kind of weird. Are news organizations in the habit of changing their stories completely after campaign aides "clarify" comments? Shouldn't comments speak for themselves?

An Insane Person

Join Rudy 2012? You drop this 12 days before the election, Mr. Mayor? Like you didn't already ruin your reputation thoroughly?

Who in their right mind would give you another $50 million dollars you you could nab zero delegates again?