Before I knew who Ann Coulter was, there was Kathleen Parker. Thumbing through the stridently conservative editorial pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in my 20s and 30s, I found a wide range of hysteriots and hectorizers were allowed to run rampant over the bi-page spread, supplemented of course by a chorus of Amen Corner letters to the editor--or often as not taking the T-D to task for being too liberal. Early on when Parker began to appear, it was mostly still a boy's club, boys who'd been getting senior discounts at the megaplex for years. So her placement in the halls of Talking Point Central was notable for its singularity, although she tried (and still tries) to act like one of the boys.
Parker is nowhere near as ascerbic, unfunny, vicious, wildly uninformed or just plain classless as Coulter. She is, however, a good faith member of the tra-la-la brigade--those conservative writers who divide their time between assailing "intellectual elites," and dismissing complaints from life's losers as good riddance to bad rubbish, never seeming to notice their intellectual elitism. She has a chirpy, consciously Southern belle arrogance that perhaps rankles only me personally. And she is generally happy to run with whatever line is playing in the subconscious message running underneath the New Age music, put into iPods by the White House for media distribution.
Which is what makes her weekend column on Abramoffukah all the more surprising. No matter how she tries to couch it, to wish with furrowed brow and balled up fist that she could do it, she can't avoid the fact that Jack's Fallout is going to swing deep and sharp into Republican flesh:
The strategy seems to be that by widely distributing “blame” across party lines, everyone’s equally duped and, therefore, equally not-to-be-blamed. Dumb ol’ Republicans; dumb ol’ Democrats.
The only problem is, it won’t wash, and it’s bad strategy if Republicans want to maintain a drop of credibility as the ethical party. While true that some Democrats did accept money from Abramoff — and some will get burned — it is more true that this is a Republican problem.
Political Reality No. 1: The party in power gets corrupted.
Political Reality No. 2: Indicted incumbents don’t get re-elected.
Besides, exactly how does one rationalize a golfing trip to Scotland, as Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) enjoyed, compliments of Abramoff? Nobody expects politicians to sleep in Motel 8s or dine at Wendy’s while conducting the nation’s business, but golfing in Scotland doesn’t quite pass the “straight-face” test.
Meanwhile, there’s a critical difference between “directly” and “indirectly.” What “indirectly” means is that many Democrats have accepted funds from the Florida-based law-lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig, to which Abramoff once belonged. He “left” the firm when Abramoff’s questionable practices with Indian tribes were first reported.
Note again for the record (and not for the last time), that Parker does manage to slip the "Democrats got money from Abramoff" line in there, something that should cause you to slap the taste out of the mouth of anyone who tells it to you...such as Howard Dean did today to Wolf Blitzer. Listen to the heavy sigh Mr. Bojangles gives when he can't run with the storyline he's been handed, and abruptly ends the interview. Priceless. But damned if Howard didn't stop the diahhrea!
So she's not going gently into that good reality, trying lamely as she does to blame Democrats for the culture that bred Abramoff's success, waving Johnny Huang's huang around as if it were some kind of rational comparison. And oh how Republican columnists love to talk about being the party of corruption reform, and how this is so bad because it's just not expected of the GOP! But she does get the political ramifications, something many of her colleagues appear not yet to grasp, and is warning her fellows to ignore them at their peril:
What’s clear is that however the Republican Party tries to spin it, this is a huge deal, and it’s primarily a huge Republican deal. It’s also becoming increasingly clear that the ripple effects of Abramoff’s corruption could alter the political landscape come the midterm elections and possibly far into the future.
As one Democratic insider said to me in December just before the Abramoff plea story broke: “For Democrats, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
--TJ
As Adali Atevenson once said "when the republicans stop lying about democrats; the democrats will stop telling the truth about republicans."
I enjoyed your article.
Posted by: bamabarrron | January 12, 2006 at 01:51
As Adali Atevenson once said "when the republicans stop lying about democrats; the democrats will stop telling the truth about republicans."
I enjoyed your article.
Posted by: bamabarrron | January 12, 2006 at 01:52