Virginia Foxx and The "W" Word... Plus Darrell Issa... And Nigeria

Help send her back to North Carolina permanently by clicking on her nose

Look at that picture. Think about the outrageous, harmful behavior and extreme positions. I think I've been extraordinarily disciplined in not using the "w" word to describe her. I admit, it always comes to mind. But there is really a sordid and disgraceful history when it comes to accusing women of being the "w" word. The case can be made against Virginia Foxx without resorting to it. And I think Blue America and our allies at the Americans For America PAC did just that with our newest TV ad. We want to get it up on cable channels from Forsyth County to Watauga County and we need your help to do that. Even a $5 or $10 contribution will help make sure we don't have to leave out Mt. Airy or Clemmons, Kernersville, Statesville or even Ashe County. You can contribute by poking her picture in the eye above-- or, less gruesomely, by clicking on this Blue America link. Look at the ad and decide for yourself. Billy Kennedy would make as good a Member of Congress as Virginia Foxx has been an atrocious one. She was voted by our readers the worst of the worst. If you think the ad will help end her miserable career, dig deep and help us get it on TV. Unlike other PACs every cent goes up on the air. We're all volunteers and no one takes any salaries, percentages, commissions and we hire no consultants and take no money for "expenses." Donate $10 and that's an ad in Stokes or Iredell County on CNN or MSNBC.



Now back to the "w" word. It was in my mind not because of Foxx's unfortunate demeanor but because of a column Paul Krugman write for the NY Times a few days ago, It's Witch-Hunt Season. Krugman wasn't talking about Virginia Foxx though. He was, without ever mentioning his name, talking about Darrell Issa, who, unfortunately, hasn't drawn a credible Democratic challenger the way Foxx has.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment-- at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again-- except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals-- even very moderate liberals-- legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in the New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton... And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

Darrell Issa has been bragging about turning Congress into a full-time witch hunt if the GOP takes back the House and he replaces Henry Waxman as the Chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa? The crook whose background includes serial car theft and weapons charges? Yeah, the guy with the yellowish teeth in the photo on the right. Witch hunts are bad, one of the most vile traits of organized human behavior-- and the concept transcends backwards Republican congressmen from northern San Diego County. In fact, the mentality in Issa-land isn't unlike the mindset in Akwa Ibom.