If The GOP Has A Soul, There's A Big Battle For It Right Now

Yesterday, and again this morning, former Pennsylvania Republican Governor Tom Ridge pushed back against the extremists who have captured the Republican Party. His special target: Pig Man. Bush's former Secretary of Homeland Security, was a guest on John King's CNN show where he chastised Limbaugh for his "shrill" vicious attacks on people instead of ideas. He's concerned that the GOP needs to restore itself as a national party and that the way Limbaugh is going about it is counterproductive.

Rush Limbaugh has an audience of 20 million people. A lot of people listen daily to him and live by every word. But words mean things and how you use words is very important... It does get the base all fired up and he's got a strong following. But personally, if he would listen to me and I doubt if he would, the notion is express yourself but let's respect others opinions and let's not be divisive."

This morning a much larger audience watched one of the last nationally popular Republican leaders, Colin Powell, who has been harshly criticized by the far right, try to move his party back towards the mainstream, pointing out that Limbaugh is nothing more than a well-paid entertainer who has used his own contemptible racism as a tool to attack his (Powell's) ideas. It was a very powerful appearance and I suggest you give it a listen if you missed it:



Powell didn't mention that Limbaugh and Cheney were both selfish and hypocritical draft-dodgers and phonies-- but he got the point across pretty well. He did mention that “Rush will not get his wish, and Mr. Cheney was misinformed; I’m still a Republican.”

Powell, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who identified himself as a Republican only after leaving the military, said he felt that the Republican Party should be more inclusive than it has been. Noting the party’s substantial losses in last fall’s elections, he said: “You can only do two things with a base. You can sit on it and watch the world go by, or you can build on it.

“In almost every demographic indicator, the Republican Party is losing. North, South, East, West. Men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanics.” “Are we simply moving further to the right,” Mr. Powell asked, “and by so doing opening up the right-of-center and the center to be taken over by independents and to be taken over by Democrats?”

From our You Can't Make This Stuff Up Dept.: If Tom Ridge becomes the next senator from Delmarpenn, who's gonna lobby for Albania?

Click on it to enlarge, and then scroll down, scroll down, scroll down, almost all the way, and . . . there, stop! This is former Pennsylvania governor and "founding" Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's "registration statement" under the "Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended." And who is he representing? Albania, fercripessakes? (I swear I'm not making this up. Heck, you're looking right at it!)

by Ken

So I was reading this DailyKos diary by Jed Lewison about how Tom Ridge "will announce whether or not he's running for Senate within the next two weeks." Now I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Tom Ridge. In fact, the one question about him that interests me is that of his actual existence, as opposed to being, say, some sort of mass hallucination escaped from a particularly wicked Tom Tomorrow cartoon. Doesn't most everyone in a Tom Tomorrow cartoon look (and for that matter talk) like Tom Ridge?

[As always, click to enlarge.]

TWO POSSIBLE PROOFS FOR THE ACTUAL
EXISTENCE OF THE ALLEGED TOM RIDGE

1. The Empirical Proof

Get together a pile of stuff, like gumdrops and twigs and pennies and rotten eggs and tomatoes, and systematically hurl the stuff at the alleged Tom Ridge (note the creepy, dead-on resemblance between the "real" Tom and every character in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon strip above). If the stuff goes right on through, we've proved once and for all that there really is no such thing. However, if the stuff is interrupted in its trajectory by the alleged Tom Ridge, that just proves that there's something there, not that the something is an actual living, breathing person.

2. The Scientific Proof

With a chisel or a hacksaw or something, chop off a chunk of the alleged Tom Ridge and shoot it over to the lab for scientific analysis. (Just to be safe, you might want to break off a chunklet and send it to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. I don't mean to cast aspersions. I'm just saying, better safe than sorry. Am I right?) In theory, the lab should be able to tell us not just whether there is such a thing as Tom Ridge, but what sort of thing it might be. Would plastic sheeting and duct tape be sufficient to protect us against it?

Now, since our Tom has been dragged into the Arlen Specter story, I'll play along -- up to a point, anyways. Here's Jed Lewison's take:

[I]f Ridge does decide to run, he's going to need to figure out in which state, because it turns out he has a claim on running in at least three of them.

In a June, 2008 foreign agent registration filing, Ridge listed Maryland as his residence and said that his firm, Ridge Global LLC, was a Delaware corporation. Ridge was also governor of Pennsylvania, leaving him with at least three 2010 races he could consider:

1. Maryland, where he would challenge Barbara Mikulski

2. Delaware, where he would try to fill Joe Biden's old seat

3. Pennsylvania, where he would challenge Pat Toomey for the GOP nomination, and if he won, whoever wins the Democratic primary

In addition to showing that Ridge lives in Pennsylvania Maryland and incorporated his firm in Delaware, the document also shows that in 2007 Ridge earned nearly a half-million dollars representing the foreign government of Albania.

Perhaps more notably, even though Ridge was paid that money in January and November of 2007, he didn't report it until June 2008.

All the polls say that Ridge could mount a viable campaign in Pennsylvania. But as this document shows, if Ridge does run, his opponents will start out with serious questions to raise with him.

Now the question of which state our Tom is fit to represent doesn't much engage me. Is there any state, short of "torpor" or perhaps "disengagement," he could be imagined to be "fit to represent"? Have we really forgotten the frightening lesson of watching the man take his place as his pal George W. Bush's homeland security czar, coming to Washington with the reputation of being "really smart" and performing as a total buffoon? (Can someone who was set to be replaced by Bernie Kerik be said to have ever really existed?)

Nevertheless, we'll kick our Tom's Senate prospects around a bit, right after this dramatic pause to register astonishment . . .

Hey, what the fuck was that? Ridge earned nearly half a million smackeroos representing the government of Albania?

Albania??? Holy Enver Hoxha, Batman!

No, we have not slipped into some cheesy Mad Magazine parody. As a matter of fact, though, if we were attempting some such cheesy parody, and were trying to make up the most preposterous and most pathetic imaginable foreign "entanglement" for our Tom, I have no doubt that Albania would be near or at the very top of our list of possibilities.

So now we know that for 11 months in 2006-07 our Tom was, um, Tirana's man in D.C. For the benefit of anyone who isn't already convulsed with laughter, here is Besar Likmeta's account (on World Politics Review, Sept. 11, 2006) of what our Tom was hired to do:

The primary function of the former secretary's new job is to make the case for the accession of Albania into NATO in Washington. A government spokesman clarified that Ridge will engage a team of consultants and offer his connections to make known Albania's reforms in the United States, while forging homeland security and good governance strategies. In addition to his security expertise and Washington connections, [Albanian Prime Minister Sali] Berisha is hoping to exploit Ridge's experience as Governor of Pennsylvania. In a country in profound need of structural reforms, Ridge is expected to consult with the government on strategies to reform education, the judiciary, agriculture and information technology.

Let me stress: I am still not making any of this stuff up.

So somebody persuaded Prime Minister Berisha that the man he needed to grease his country's way into NATO was . . . Tom Ridge??? (Do I really need to point out how well that worked out?) And for the asking price of $40K a month, our miracle man was, in addition, going to strategize the reform of Albania's educational system, judiciary, agriculture, and information technology?

Oh, good grief, is there anyone who thinks our Tom even knows how to spell all these words?

I can't help wondering how this contact was made. Are we really supposed to imagine that the prime minister's brain trust, while picking its collective brain, scoured the ranks of "the connected" in D.C. looking for just the right "enabler" -- and came up with Tom Ridge??? Did some genius dash off a fax to Jack Abramoff's talent shop asking for a recommendation?

Or, heaven help us, did our Tom perhaps solicit the gig?

Hello, my name is Thomas ("Tom") Ridge, and I am a 60-year-old boy who by way of "experience" served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania and two years as the very first U.S. secretary of Homeland Security. I would like to offer my services -- at any job you can think of, like mowing your lawn in summer, and maybe running a lemonade stand, and shoveling your driveway in winter. I am a hard worker, a "self-starter," and I am determined someday to make something of myself.

So if that's the pitch, and we're Young Tom, where do we send it? Here's a thought: If we look at the alphabetical list of United Nations members, we find under "A":

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan

Given the, er, situation in Afghanistan in the earlier years of this century, wouldn't it be understandable -- as we imagine our enterprising Tom planning to send out his first cold mailing -- if he gave that country a discreet pass? (Perhaps we can find out whether he made contact with folks in Algeria and Andorra?)

Now, however the contact was made, it appears that our Tom and his new Albanian clients reached a meeting of the minds in early September of 2006. And in case you were wondering, it appears that you can sign a contract to represent a foreign government without asking anybody's permission, as our Tom did. However, the rules -- okay, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, as amended, if you want to be technical -- say that you've got to file the appropriate registration form with the Dept. of Justice "within 10 days of signing the contract and before performing any duties for the client" (as reported by Roll Call).

This is problematic, as Jed Lewison suggests. It appears that Tom of Albania was on Tirana's payroll, at that $40K a month, from Oct. 2006 through Aug. 2007, and duly filed his registration form with the DoJ on, um, let's see, well, again according to Roll Call: "The time stamp on Ridge's registration stamp with the Justice Department is dated June 12, 2008."

Let's take a second to do the math. I don't have the exact date of the contract-signing, but Besar Likmeta wrote in his above-cited Sept. 11, 2006, World Politics Review report:

In a statement made during a joint press conference at the prime minister's office Sept. 4, Berisha announced that Ridge had agreed to join his government's efforts to become part of [NATO], while providing much needed advice in the fight against organized crime and corruption.

So if we figure the contract was signed by Sept. 4, ten days takes us to Sept. 14, 2006. Sure enough the DoJ received our Tom's FARA form right on time on . . . um, June 12, 2008. Okay, that's stretching the 10-day reporting deadline just a tad. By roughly 637 days according to my quick count. (Remember, 2008 was a leap year.)

What's more, the eventual FARA registration form did not appear spontaneously. It seems that to get it, the DoJ -- "after press accounts surfaced noting Ridge's connection to the country," according to Roll Call -- had to rattle our Tom's cage to get the, er, slightly late paperwork produced. (By the way, those "foreign agents" are also subject to periodic subsequent reporting requirements. Of course in this case the association had already been terminated by the time it was reported.)

That's right, the Bush DoJ! Long since converted, under the watchful eye of VP "Big Dick" Cheney, into Your One-Stop Shop for Legalized Republicrookery. How dumb or crooked would a Republican have to have been to fall afoul of the Bush DoJ's enforcers?

Fortunately, our Tom had a simple, logical, understandable explanation when the feds put the screws to him about his Albanian lobbying activities. He didn't know he was supposed to register. Why, that could happen to anybody! Never mind that this is the man who had been, in those angst-ridden years of the first term of the Bush regime, first as President Bush's homeland security adviser and then as our very first secretary of Homeland Security, the point man in the protection of, you know, the security of the homeland.

Okay, so the need for paid agents of foreign governments to register somehow escaped our Tom's notice. At least he understood the color codes for those national-security alerts we got every time the Bush regimistas felt the need to promote panic in the American body politic. Or anyway he knew somebody who understood the color-coding.


"OKAY, OKAY," YOU SAY, "ENOUGH SNARK -- WILL
OUR TOM BE THE GOP'S PA SENATE CANDIDATE?"

There are, it appears, folks who take our Tom more seriously than I do. Just yesterday WashingtonExaminer.com Political Editor Chris Stirewalt wrote of the possibility of Tom's entering the Pennsylvania GOP Sentate jamboree against anti-tax loon Pat Toomey:

Last week, the conservative former congressman was looking at a likely primary win over Specter followed by a possible victory over a lesser-known Democrat in the fall.

Now, Toomey is the clear front-runner for the GOP nomination but is facing a double-digit loss to Specter next November.

Many Republicans are now hoping that Ridge — former mayor of Erie, former congressman from the western part of the state and former popular two-term governor — will jump in the race.

Prominent GOP operatives who know Ridge and Pennsylvania politics tell me that there are two controlling issues for the 63-year-old former Homeland Security boss: his loss of income from giving up his private security consulting firm and his ability to beat Toomey.

Only Ridge and his accountant know the answer to the first question. Would ending a political career on a high note be worth the aggravation of candidacy and giving up his chance to make some big dough?

On the second question, though, there’s some hard data.

Recent polling has shown that Toomey enjoys a 40 percent favorable rating among Pennsylvania Republicans and a 3 percent unfavorable rating. Compare that with a 78 percent favorable and a 5 percent unfavorable rating for Ridge. In other words, if Toomey means to have any chance at winning a primary, he would have to attack Ridge.

“Ridge is still in rock star territory with numbers like those,” one prominent GOP pollster said. “The only way [Toomey] can beat him is to light him up — and that will cap his own favorables.”

National conservatives see Ridge as vulnerable because he is a pro-choice, social moderate. And while that may have disqualified him from being John McCain’s running mate, the Pennsylvania GOP hasn’t changed so much that it would limit his prospects there.

As we are frequently reminded, in eerily identical terms, our Tom was a popular two-term governor of his home state. We may yet find out just how popular he is. I can't help thinking this is one of those deals where maybe he was, and perhaps still is, famous for being popular and popular for being famous, and Pennsylvanians may have been happy enough to pull the lever beside his name because they recognized the name, on account of his being so famously popular and popularly famous -- thereby freeing them from having to think about the whole business too hard. Quite possibly they had more important things on their minds.

On one question there is no serious question. People are making an issue of our Tom's Maryland residency, suggesting that it's somehow inappropriate for him to run for office back home. Never mind that Senate residency requirements are flexible to the point of nonexistence, and people have been known to run in states to which they have infinitely flimsier connections. Our Tom was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and apart from his military (and, later, congressional) service spent roughly the first 56 years of his life as a resident -- up to the point when he was called to full-time federal government service by his pal from their time as fellow governors, George W. Bush. (Now this business of being a pal of George W. Bush, I see no problem with that weighing heavily in his disfavor.)

Of course there is that Maryland residence, so if our Tom wants to have at Senator Mikulski, that's okay by me. For that matter, I'm even okay with the Delaware connection. Better still, why doesn't he run in all three states? On the understanding, of course, that if he winds up representing two or even all three states, he does so at only one salary, and with only one staff, at least in Washington (I suppose there would need to be separate staffs in each of the states), meaning that we would in effect get two or even three empty suits for close to the price of one!

In these economically still-parlous times, how can we resist a deal like that?

#

UPDATE: It Looks Like Ken's Albania Exposé Has Driven Tom R From The Race!

Tirana's man in DC has has bowed out leaving the Republicans stuck with either the hard right unelectable Pat Toomey or the squishy rubber stamp Jim Gerlach, who needs to find a new job since he'd be unlikely to hold his House seat next year (having won with 51% in 2006 and 52% in 2008). Or, if they ask nice, maybe Specter would come back. At this point, maybe the Democrats would even give them a nice dowry to take him off their hands! (Don't forget to vote in the straw poll today!)

Is Specter Rotting Out The Senate Democratic Caucus From The Inside? Did Master Chess Player Steele Pawn Him Off On Biden Like A Trojan Horse?

The shitheads at the Senate Democratic policy lunch yesterday gave Benedict Arnold Arlen Specter a strong round of applause, a standing ovation according to Senate Majority shithead Harry Reid (NV). This is all about them-- the Insiders-- and their Insider games that are always so destructive to ordinary working families. (Three senators less given to hyperbole and wishful thinking contradicted Reid and said Specter was applauded but there was no ovation, standing or otherwise.) But even the disgruntlement with the disgraceful deal brokered by Reid and Biden to throw Specter's political corpse a line life and allow him to call himself a Democrat is almost solely based on their own selfish pretensions and not at all on Specter's continued adherence to all things Republican including committing to join the Republican filibuster against Obama's nominees and agenda, from health care to ameliorating foreclosures. He told the NY Times that if there's justice in Minnesota, Republican Norm Coleman will be back in the Senate, not Al Franken.

Specter’s highly publicized switch rankled some in the party over an agreement Reid made with Specter that would allow the Pennsylvania senator to retain the seniority he earned through his five terms as a Republican... Specter claims that Reid has promised to recognize him in the 112th Congress with the same seniority as a Democrat elected in 1980.

In general, Reid seems more enthusiastic about the new Democratic senator from Pennsylvania than several of his colleagues.

Democratic leaders tried to ensure that Specter would feel well taken care of. He sat at the leadership table, which is usually reserved for Reid, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said a Democratic senator in attendance.

This almost sounds like a plot to destroy the Democratic brand-- except anyone who's watched Biden in action over the years knows he's too inept to even do that properly. Oddly enough, new polling in Pennsylvania found that although the state's Republicans absolutely loathe Specter and would have voted overwhelmingly for radical right kook, Pat Toomey-- the admitted reason for Specter's fence jump-- Toomey would be slaughtered if mainstream conservative Tom Ridge, a Maryland resident, and the choice of the GOP Inside the Beltway Establishment, runs against him. And furthermore, most Pennsylvania Republicans actually support Employee Free Choice, which Specter was busy undermining yesterday inside the Democratic caucus.

Let's watch very closely to see which Democrats in the Senate stand with Democratic voters and which ones stand with the putrid and corrupt Specter. We already know where reactionary corporate shill Tom Carper (DE) stands. No doubt he was one of the barking seals applauding loudest and longest for a fellow hack scared to death of offending his big campaign donors-- and not nearly scared enough of working families.

Tom Ridge Jumping In Against Snarlin' Arlen In Pennsylvania?

And regardless of who wins, it won't be a Democrat in any real sense of the word

Washington Democrats are outraged that Harry Reid and Joe Biden have given Arlen Specter such a sweet and undeserved deal for "becoming"-- which apparently is next to meaningless-- a Democrat. Specter is still voting with reactionary obstructionist buddies across the aisle on Obama's change program, although, supposedly he's agreed to vote for some watered down version of health care reform in return for Democrats taking him in, financing his campaign, clearing the field of primary opponents, having Obama and Biden show up in Pennsylvania to campaign for him and not forcing him to vote for any distasteful legislation that benefits working families. Considering Max Baucus and Ben Nelson plan to work with the Republican caucus to gut it on behalf of their campaign donors in Big Insurance, God only knows which kind of a crappy bill will come out of the intolerably corrupt Senate anyway. (On top of that, Obama doesn't need Specter to get health care passed since it will be voted on under a budget reconciliation resolution, which means no filibuster is allowed-- i.e., they only need 51 votes, something even Harry Reid could probably possibly deliver.)

Thursday we reported that there was already apocalyptic hysteria on the far right because Orrin Hatch, the vice-chair of the NRSC said that right-wing extremist, Pat Toomey, the darling on the lunatic fringe of the GOP, is not a suitable candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat. "I don’t think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there," said Hatch, honestly, adding that the party needs to find “someone who can win there."

The "someone," of course, is moderate ex-Governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice moderate who is far more popular in Pennsylvania than Arlen Specter. Ridge, the first Vietnam War combat vet to be elected to Congress served 7 terms representing the Erie area, and he's never lost any election. He was a popular two-term governor, a moderate by Republican standards, but by no means a liberal, until resigning in 2001 to become Bush's Director of Homeland Security. Both time she ran for governor, right-wing sociopath Peg Luksik ran against him and, ironically, she's also in the GOP Senate primary next year!

So while Pennsylvania Democrats scramble to find the best candidate to oppose Specter who they now feel saddled with, the rumors about Ridge jumping in are becoming more real by the minute. Roll Call reported today that he's definitely considering a run:

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge is considering running for the Republican Senate nomination in his home state, according to a senior Republican aide with knowledge of the situation.

National and Keystone State Republicans have been publicly and privately urging Ridge to consider a Senate bid since Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) announced earlier this week that he was switching parties and would run for re-election as a Democrat in 2010.

Specter said he switched parties because he could not win a primary against conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is popular with the party’s base but whom many national Republicans believe cannot win the general election-- especially against a 29-year incumbent who is viewed favorably and gets high marks from Democrats. Ridge’s moderate politics and national profile would make him a more viable candidate in the general election.

So here's Pennsylvania, a solid blue state with 1.2 million more Democrats than Republicans and because of more incompetence from Reid and Biden it looks like there may not even be a Democrat running for a Senate seat that was looked at as a sure win for the Dems in 2010! What the hell is wrong with these people!