Safavian Arrested on Corruption Charges
But Texas Rep shows why Democrats no alternative for fed up Republicans
David Safavian, the former lobbyist appointed by President Bush to the position of chief acquisitions officer at the Office of Management and Budget, was arrested Monday on corruption charges.
For months, Safavian and his appointment have been the subjects of frequent criticism from ProjectUSA—most recently in our September 6 ezine, "Hurricane? Quick! Call Grover Norquist!"
In that ezine, I argued that, if President Bush is going to receive criticism for the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, then the criticism should, at least, be directed at a legitimate target: the administration's widespread abuse of the patronage system to reward political and financial supporters with top positions in the government.
That ezine unleashed a flood of ProjectUSA-bashing from subscribers accusing us of bashing the president and Republicans in general.
It might be worthwhile for our critics to read (or, as the case may be, re-read) the part in the ezine about David Safavian, keeping in mind the fact that Safavian, according to reports, when he resigned his position abruptly last Friday, had been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Republicans offended by criticism of fellow Republicans, regardless of the criticism's accuracy, should keep in mind Safavian's ties to indicted Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, his stint as chief of staff in the Congressional office of Republican Representative Chris Cannon of Utah, his co-founding of a lobbying firm in Washington with lobbyist Grover Norquist, whose notorious Americans for Tax Reform has been called an adjunct of the Republican Party. These Republicans should then ask themselves: Who is more harmful to the GOP? Safavian? Safavian's cronies within the party? Or Safavian's critics?
Several days ago, I received an email from a supporter, who wrote, "As a historian, I sense the political ground moving out from under President Bush and the GOP." If he's right, I maintain that a blind partisanship among Republicans that punishes all criticism of, say, President Bush, regardless of the criticism's accuracy, will make it very hard to pull solid ground back under the party.
Ironically, the GOP's basher bashers are greatly abetted in letting Republicans slide out of the solid political middle by the Democrats, the awfulness of which many blind GOP partisans cite as the very reason for their blind partisanship in the first place. The issue on which the GOP partisans and the Democrats are in effect joined forces most is immigration, which is fast claiming the primary place in American politics.
Many Democrats seem to subordinate all the big questions of good and evil to the incidental of skin color, and, because most immigrants are not white, for these Democrats, the issue is a racial one only. Consequently, there is only one politically correct position on immigration available.
Democrats are incapable as a party of articulating a popular common sense position on the issue because, by-and-large, immigration policy is not about skin color—at least, not so far. Thus race-obsessed Democrats are left helplessly uttering absurdities nearly every time one of them opens his or her mouth on the subject, leaving Republicans safely milking the cheap labor profiteers for contributions, largely unconcerned that its voter base might punish them by leaving the party.
Who can blame a Republican voter for feeling he or she has no place to go? Consider the recent statement by Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas, as reported by a Texas news outlet:
"Some say these Minutemen are new to Texas. That's not really true. It's just that years ago they used to wear white sheets."
I called Rep Doggett's office here in Washington at 202-225-4865 and left a voice message for Jess the press guy wondering whether Rep. Doggett's assertion that the Minutemen are neo-Klansmen meant that he believed Hispanic members of the group are anti-Hispanic Hispanics.
I left my cell number and, if Jess returns my call, I'll ask him whether the Representative, whose district includes border town, McAllen, TX, (Doggett's McAllen office: 956-687-5921) would refer to the 43% of likely Latino voters who believe the U.S. government is not doing enough to stop immigrants from illegally entering the country* as Klanshombres, too.
If he wouldn't call Hispanic supporters of tighter immigration enforcement Klanshombres, but he will call white supporters of the same policy Klansmen, then he is an obvious racist—too ignorant to form a coherent worldview, too stupid to articulate a political position that doesn't risk offending a majority of American voters, and certainly too out-of-touch to be an alternative for voters fed up with the Wall Street Journal GOP.
But that, unfortunately, is the dominant voice of the Democratic Party, and the reason the Republicans have the breathing room they have.
The big political question is: Which party will be first to toss the dross overboard and take the wheel firmly for the foreseeable future?
Will the Republicans toss over the Wall Street Journal wing of their party and seize back control of the country's immigration policy from the corporate profiteers and their lobbyists? Or will the Democrats cut loose the Nancy Pelosi lunafringe and the group identity power-mongers, planting the Democrats firmly on the side, not of women, not of Hispanics, not of blacks, not of gays, not of unions, but on the side of...Americans?
Blind GOP partisanship will encourage the latter; farsighted Republicans could help counter the blind partisans in their party by publicly supporting an exhaustive investigation into the whole Safavian affair—especially his stint with Congressman Chris Cannon, and their work, with another former Cannon staffer, Thaddeus Bingel, for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Republicans could minimize damage by supporting aggressive prosecution of malefactors, regardless of their positions in the party.
Collaborators like Dick Armey and Ed Gillespie, in the event no crime can be proved, should be unwelcome in the party—for the good of the party and, having shown themselves susceptible to the fallacy that man's defining trait is acquisitiveness, for their own good.
Farsighted Republicans should demand answers.
