If You Don't Call It A "Brokered Convention," Maybe No One Will Notice You're Stealing Trump's Nomination

Friday the Washington Post cobbled together a mini-National Review Against Trump OpEd featuring American right-wing luminaries-- overwhelmingly proven crackpots-- like Haley Barbour, William Kristol, the Newtster and Eric Cantor. It was a wide array of establishment GOP positioning on what to do about the existential threat a Trump nomination poses to their party, if not their nation.

Barbour, an RNC chair in the mid-90's and then governor of the Great State of some secessionist hell hole from 2004-2012. He got the OpEd off the ground by spouting the official GOP establishment party line on how to steal the election from Trump and hand the nomination over to Ryan. Utter bullshit: "As one who intends to support the Republican nominee, I recognize that this choice is in the hands of millions of GOP primary voters, as it should be. I expect a candidate to go to Cleveland with the necessary 1,237 delegates to be nominated on the first ballot. If not, we will have a contested convention, a rarity in modern U.S. politics. But it won’t be a 'brokered' convention. There is nobody who can 'broker' it. In the unlikely case of a contested convention, the delegates will have to work through the process; no wise men exist who can control or broker such a convention." There are no brokers; there is no one pulling the strings from behind the curtain. We is a democracy!

Before being kicked out of Congress and politics, Newt Gingrich rose from crackpot backwoods/backbench Georgia bomb-thrower to a spectacularly failed House Speaker, a miserable 2-decade sojourn. He pointed out faux-sagely that the two most likely nominees of the GOP lumpen-proletariat, Trump and Cruz, "represent a widespread rebuke to party elites" and posits that for those hated elites (who banished him from Washington to a career of book peddling and hucksterism) "it is time to accept that ordinary Republicans-- their own voters-- want an insurgent outsider." Predictably, he's perfectly content with Trump and the silly-historian inside warns them not to mess with him. "In the event of a Trump nomination, the question will be whether the party elites suicidally do to their nominee what they did to Barry Goldwater in 1964 or come around to supporting him, as they did with Ronald Reagan in 1980. It’s easy to forget that the establishment similarly disliked Reagan, whom they viewed as an outsider, before he became a Republican hero. In 1964, the anti-Goldwater elites at the top of the party not only caused the defeat of their own party’s nominee for president because they despised him so intensely; they also crushed House and Senate Republicans in the process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) should hope that today’s elites consider how much better it was to work with Reagan than it was to destroy Goldwater." He demands the nasty, vitriolic Mitt walk back his unwarranted personal attack on poor Donald.

Irving Kristol's kid, Bill, who runs a website called the Weekly Standard, doesn't agree with Newt at all and doesn't share Barbour's greasy subtlety. "How should Republicans respond to having Donald Trump as our front-runner? With the determination to defeat him... [E]even if Trump were to be the official nominee, there would be no reason not to mount an independent Republican candidacy in the general election. Either way, we can prevail-- or go down fighting, with flags flying and guns blazing."

Jim Leach was an Iowa congressman for 3 decades, sandwiched between 2 exceptionally mediocre Democrats, Ed Mezvinsky, the bribe-taking, prison-bird father of Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, and the current disappointing nonentity, Dave Loebsack. Leach's unimaginably silly solution-- let Trump win but put in a military dictator as VP to control him.

The political establishment must begin by recognizing that it is responsible for the public cry for change. Americans are reaching out for new approaches to governance because we are still engaged in the two longest and most debilitating wars in our history and are still coping with a job-eroding recession. The lessons of these man-made events are self-evident. The case for going to war with a country that did not attack us and attempting to “finance” it with tax cuts was frail. Likewise, the case for allowing large financial institutions to overleverage and play Russian roulette with the economy was nonexistent. The point is that multitrillion-dollar misjudgments were made by a political-ideological complex that misunderstood the national interest and ignored the common good.

That doesn’t mean that all is wrong with the United States or that radical change is the answer. What is needed is better judgment: tax policy that emphasizes fairness rather than social splintering; foreign policy that highlights negotiation rather than military adventurism; politics that is based on shared convictions and mutual respect.

Dysfunctional governance is an American embarrassment. Donald Trump is a flawed candidate, but the establishment must look long and hard in the mirror as it attempts to carve out an alternative path. If Trump’s greatest strength is that he is not thee, perhaps the party would be wise to coalesce around balancing whoever is nominated at the convention with an element of non-political gravitas: a vice presidential choice from the outside, such as Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Cantor has nothing to say worth commenting on and Ari Fleisher, Bush's gay press secretary for most of his first term warns about the end of the GOP, which leased Trump it's name "so that he can temporarily affix it to the campaign he is building. He’s a wrecking ball, swinging through the Republican Party, destroying the GOP positions on entitlement reform, free trade and Planned Parenthood. But if he’s the nominee, his wrecking ball will swing through the Democratic Party, too. Republicans have long dreamed of growing the party with blue-collar, working-class Americans, and especially against Clinton, Trump has a chance to gain these new voters. Many low- and middle-income workers who know this economy isn’t working for them are Trump voters-in-waiting."

Thanks, Ari, for making our case:

If even Steny Hoyer grasps the folly of Glass-Steagall repeal, maybe it can be undone

"As someone who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, maybe that was a mistake."

-- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD),
as reported by Bloomberg (see below)

by Ken

We've talked a fair amount here about the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which barred commercial banks (i.e., banks that accept customer deposits) and investment banks (i.e., banks that deal in issuing securities) from engaging in each other's activities. It seems pretty clear to most economists that the 1998 repeal of Glass-Steagall, which allowed the same financial holding company to own both kinds of institutions, led rather directly to the free-for-all of financial products being sold which nobody understood and to the general acceptance of wholly unacceptable levels of risk in lending.

Now it appears that even a corporate stooge like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (if you look up "corporate stooge" in the dictionary, you find his picture) has gotten the message, as reported today by Bloomberg:

House Discussing Glass-Steagall Revival, Hoyer Says

by James Rowley and Christine Harper

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House is considering reinstituting the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which barred bank holding companies from owning other financial companies, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said.

A renewal of the 1933 law “is certainly under discussion” by House members, Hoyer told reporters in Washington today. The Glass-Steagall law was repealed in 1999 to help pave the way for the formation of Citigroup Inc. by the $46 billion merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group Inc.

“As someone who voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, maybe that was a mistake,” said Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.

Hoyer made the comments when asked whether Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration could do more to persuade banks to make more business loans and get credit flowing into the economy. Obama met yesterday with the chief executive officers of U.S. banks, urging them to lend more money. . . .

Agreeing with our Steny, rather surprisingly, is former Citibank Chairman John S. Reed, who --

apologized in a Nov. 6 interview for helping engineer the bank’s merger with Travelers and for his role in building a company that took $45 billion in U.S. assistance. Reed also recanted his advocacy of the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

The 1998 merger depended on Congress repealing Glass- Steagall before a five-year deadline that otherwise would have required Travelers to sell its insurance underwriting business.

“We learn from our mistakes,” Reed said in the interview. “When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders,” Reed said. “Right now, I’m looking at this as a citizen.”

Repeal of Glass-Steagall, says the Bloomberg report, "also would reduce the need for the taxpayer bailouts that added between 9 percent and 49 percent to the profits of the 18 biggest U.S. banks in 2009, according to Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research in Washington."

Still unpersuaded, however, are former Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA) and our one and only Federal Reserve chairman, "Big Ben" Bernanke.

Leach, former chariman of the House Financial Services Committee (and now director of the National Endowment for the Humanities), "said in an April 22 speech at a conference on financial reform sponsored by Boston University Law School and the Bretton Woods Committee": “Changes in Glass-Steagall did not precipitate this crisis.”

Big Ben, meanwhile,

told the Economic Club of New York on Nov. 16, “Plenty of firms got into trouble making regular commercial loans, and plenty of firms got into trouble in market-making activities.”

“The separation of those two things per se would not necessarily lead to stability,” Bernanke said.

#

Not All Republicans Are As Enamoured Of McCain As Ron Fournier Is-- Hagel, Lugar And Specter Sing Biden's Praises

The lobbyists and Rovians running the Double Talk Express are trying to keep everyone on message in preparation for the expected firestorm when McCain announces the inevitable, namely that empty suit Mitt Romney, a man he can barely stand being in the same room with, will be his running mate. The message (courtesy of McCain shill Ron Fournier): Obama's choice of Biden is an indication that Obama would make a bad president. Can't wait to hear what Fournier and the rest of the magpie brigade have to say about Mitt on Friday.

I can't imagine McCain and the lobbyists are too happy about what they're hearing from veteran Republican senators who have worked with Joe Biden for years and years. No doubt the comment that rankles McCain most comes from Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel-- an actual Vietnam War hero, not some loser who got shot down bombing civilians from 20,000 feet and then spent the rest of his miserable life trying to capitalize on his imprisonment. "Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama," said Hagel. "His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden's selection is good news for Obama and America."

Now, don't expect similar reasonable words from the right-wing extremists like Cornyn (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), McConnell (R-KY), Wicker (R-MS), or McCain's Mini-Me (R-SC) and the others who have been as consistently rubber stamping Bush's economic and foreign policies like McCain. However, two other high ranking Republicans with a great deal of credibility have also issued statements of praise for Obama's selection of Biden. Dick Lugar (R-IN) put out a press release: "I congratulate Senator Barack Obama on his selection of my friend, Senator Joe Biden, to be his vice-presidential running mate. I have enjoyed for many years the opportunity to work with Joe Biden to bring strong bipartisan support to United States foreign policy." Arlen Specter (R-PA), who serves on the Judiciary Committee with Biden and often rides Amtrak with him to Washington, was also "off message," at least from a Double Talk Express POV: "No one on the Democratic side knows more about foreign policy than Sen. Biden. He's been an articulate spokesman on the subject. He also knows about domestic policy. He's been a leader on crime control."

And although he's no Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller in terms of controversy, another very respected Republican will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Monday evening: Jim Leach, a moderate Republican ex-congressman from Iowa. Currently a professor at Princeton and the interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Leach served in Congress for 30 years. He was chairman of the Banking and Financial Services Committee and was widely respected on both sides of the aisle as a man with deep convictions, although he has always been reviled by the far right extremists who have turned the Republican Party into a kind of Taliban. Maybe this is why Leach, Hagel, Specter, Lugar and many other decent Republicans are having serious doubts about their own party and, especially, about their own party's nominee, this year and see Obama/Biden as a viable alternative to 4 more years under McSame:

More Republicans Abandoning McCain For Obama

Mike Huckabee sent out a fundraising letter today smearing Barack Obama-- hey, Huckabee may be a Christian minister but, let's be real: he's a Republican through and through and we see what comes first in his world-- and trying to raise money for GOP extremists John Cornyn (R-TX), James Inhofe (R-OK), Sam Graves (R-MO). He neglected to mention that Cornyn, Inhofe and Graves don't really need any money from working folks. They get all they need from Big Oil. All three have voted for every single bill Big Oil has pushed to lower its taxes and raise the price of gasoline and each has been very well-rewarded. Cornyn to the tune of $1,313,825; Inhofe $1,076,573; and Graves $63,983. But less dishonest Republicans, including many who know and have worked with John McCain are taking a very different approach than Huckabee-- forgetting partisan politics and putting their country first.

Led by a former Bush fund-raiser and a former U.S. Senator who bolted the G.O.P. several years ago, a group of current and former Republicans disenchanted with Senator John McCain and supportive of Senator Barack Obama are banding together to start a “Republicans for Obama” effort.

Rita Hauser, a New York philanthropist who raised money for both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, is helping to organize the push to draw Republicans away from Mr. McCain and will serve as a spokeswoman for the group, alongside former U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, who was one of the most moderate Republicans in the Senate and became an independent after he lost his seat in 2006.

...About 20 current and former Republicans make up the group’s leadership committee, including Douglas Kmiec, a Republican who served in the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan and was a supporter of Mitt Romney during the Republican primary [and was denied Roman Catholic communion after he endorsed Obama], and Dorothy Danforth Burlin, a Washington lawyer who is the daughter of former U.S. Senator John Danforth, another moderate Republican.

Later this afternoon the NY Times also reported that former Republican Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa endorsed Obama. Leach worked closely with McCain in Congress and is well aware about how catastrophic a McCain presidency would be for America.

''I'm convinced that the national interest demands a new approach to our interaction with the world,'' Leach, a foreign service officer before being elected to Congress, said in a conference call with reporters.

Leach predicted that many Republicans and independents would be attracted by Obama's campaign but said his decision to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time wasn't easy.

''Part of it is political parties are a distant analog to families and you really hate to step outside a family environment,'' Leach told The Associated Press in an interview.

..."For me, the national interest comes before party concerns, particularly internationally,'' said Leach, who has long been an opponent of the war in Iraq.

''We do need a new direction in American policy, and Obama has a sense of that,'' he said. ''He recognizes that a long-term occupation of Iraq is not only expensive, it's extremely dangerous to the American interests.''

Leach said he was attracted to Obama's call for a dialogue with nations such as Iran that have long been seen as U.S. adversaries.

''He also recognizes that it's preferable to speak with potential adversaries rather than simply shun them,'' Leach said.

And McCain isn't the only Republican under attack by other Republicans today. Right-wing activists in Ohio are reacting against McCain's inevitable choice of empty suit Mitt Romney as his running mate.

WASHINGTON -- Some Ohio social conservatives say they know whom they don't want John McCain to pick as his running mate: former Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney.

In a move that may say as much about their continuing uneasiness regarding McCain as it does about their mistrust of Romney, an alliance of Buckeye State social conservatives is trying to form a group: Social Conservatives Against Romney.

Although McCain is keeping his potential vice-presidential choices a tightly held secret, Romney is said to be on the short list.

"Christians are praying earnestly for the right person," said Diane Stover, a Parma resident who was a delegate for GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, a favorite of many social conservatives, in the Ohio primary. "McCain wouldn't have been our person. But we definitely feel like it would be a huge help to John McCain to pick someone we can be confident will represent the value-voter position. I don't think it helps him (McCain) at all in Ohio if he picks Romney."

...She said she doesn't consider the anti-Romney effort to be anti-McCain, despite saying McCain is not a "real conservative." She said she and other conservatives will support McCain in November, noting that he has had a consistent anti-abortion voting record as a senator from Arizona.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is too inconsistent on issues such as abortion and gay rights "for someone who calls himself a conservative," Maines said.

Other Republicans for Obama include Tom Bernstein who went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him, Reagan policy advisor Bruce Bartlett, Delbert Spurlock, who was Assistant Secretary of the Army under Reagan, ex-Senator (and Governor) Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, Tony Campell, a former GOP congressional candidate from Maryland... and a whole slew of daughters of prominent Republican figures-- from Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon to Rudy Giuliani and Rupert Murdoch. As I've posted before, one of my neighbors, the daughter of New York Republican congressional candidate Sandy Treadwell has Obama signs all over the mansion he bought her. Of course, the real question is, how many traditional GOP voters will found their way out of the Darkness in November?

Meanwhile McCain has former Democrats who have gone over to the Dark Side, Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, currently recuperating from another attack of paranoid schizophrenia, on his team. I wonder what Collin Powell and Chuck Hagel are gonna do.



UPDATE: COLIN POWEL

Bill Kristol rarely knows what he's talking about and usually gets everything wrong. But he claimed to have inside knowledge on Fox today that Colin Powell would be endorsing Obama at the Democratic National Convention. I wonder if he'll apologize to the country for all the lies he told when he was on the team ginning up the war hysteria.