For the House GOP, it’s important to punish those who are right

January 13, 2007

I disagree with him on almost every political issue I can think of, but Rep. Walter Jones Jr. (R-N.C.) seems to have learned a great deal over the last few years, particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq.

Jones, you may recall, came up with the idea of changing the name of “french fries” to “freedom fries” in the House dining hall in 2003. Asked why the move was necessary, Jones said, “This isn’t a political or publicity stunt…. It’s a gesture just to say to the French, ‘Up yours!'” Classy.

That was then. By May 2003, Jones was publicly criticizing the war, saying we invaded Iraq “with no justification.” He lined the hallway outside his office with “the faces of the fallen” and ultimately suggested that lawmakers may have been “given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration.” Now, Jones is as active an opponent of the president’s policy in Iraq as any Democrat on the Hill.

And he’s paying a price for being right.

House Armed Services ranking member Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has disciplined one of his party’s most vocal anti-war members by denying him a minority leadership position on the powerful defense committee.

Hunter, a loyal supporter of President Bush and an outspoken hawk on the Iraq war, recently told Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., that he would be passed over for the Readiness Subcommittee ranking member slot because of his stance on the war, Jones said in an interview Thursday. […]

“We have to pay a price, from time to time,” Jones said of Hunter’s decision.

Jones was one of seven House Republicans to send Bush a letter this week, urging him not to escalate the U.S. presence in Iraq. “This goes all the way back to four years ago, when the president told us we had to go to war over weapons of mass destruction,” Jones said. “I don’t think the president is listening.”

And neither, apparently, are House GOP leaders.

To his credit, Jones has no regrets.

In 2005, Jones teamed up with Democratic Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii to sponsor the first resolution calling on the administration to set a date for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by October 2006.

“Clearly we are giving Iraqis every reasonable chance for a democracy, but at some time in the near future, the ultimate fate of Iraq will, and should, rest in the hands of the Iraqis,” Jones said at the time, advancing an argument now being made by virtually all mainstream Democrats in Congress.

Last year, Jones was one of five GOP lawmakers to vote “present” for a GOP resolution calling for victory in the war on terror and reaffirming the U.S. commitment to prevailing in Iraq.

Jones said he will not be discouraged from opposing the war.

I wish I could say that I’m surprised Jones is being punished for being right about the war, but House Republicans are still House Republicans.

For what it’s worth, House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), a strong advocate of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, said Jones’ treatment was “rotten,” and that he would “welcome” Jones into the Democratic caucus if the conservative lawmaker wanted to switch parties.

Iraq shifted Webb from the Republican side to the Democratic side. That has strengthened the party and the country. I think Jones should be welcomed into the Democratic party. Anyone who can learn from mistakes is more of a Democrat than a Republican anyway.

  • Turns out “with us or against us” wasn’t just a rallying war whoop, it’s a philosophy. One wonders, though, how long any group can operate that way before it disintegrates.

  • The definition of authoritarianism is punishing dissent like the Repubs are doing to Jones to maintain message discipline without allowing debate or dissent.

    The definition of conscience is the change of heart Jones had to realize that the lives of others are more important that party power and cohesion and whether the leader is made to “look good.”

    The definition of democracy is to do everything exactly opposite from the Republican Way.

    NPR has a great narrative by self-labled conservative Rod Dreher on his change of heart about the war and the president. I have to believe Dreher, like Jones before him, is one of a legion of righties who are waking up to find their myth about conservatism, the Republic party and especially of the Bush utterly shattered and completely destroyed.

  • I think Jones is right and I am glad he is sticking to his guns but I think we are getting carried away with this authoritarianism bit. Maybe we could trade him for Jane Harman.

  • This is slightly off topic, but not by much. Yesterday Gates said that Maliki would could lose his job if the this latest BushCo scheme fails. Here is how Reuters reported it.

    At a Senate committee hearing, Gates said on Friday Maliki might have to quit if Iraqi political blocs withdrew their support over his failure to deliver. Following recent meetings between Bush and top Iraqi politicians, there have been reports that Washington is willing to back a new coalition.

    “I think the first consequence that he has to face is the possibility that he’ll lose his job,” Gates said.

    BushCo is advocating true accountablity in Iraq. If you fail, then you must loose your job. This naturally provides those of us who oppose Juniors latest scheme the alternative plan that Junior had demanded today in his weekly radio address. Again from Reuters.

    “Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” he said

    Junior and Dead-eye have failed in Iraq. My proposal, call it the Malki Plan, is the Junior and Dead-eye loose their jobs.

  • Way off topic BREAKING NEWS. From tomorrow’s NYTimes.

    The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

  • I’m having a hard time getting worked up over Jones. The guy’s chose his lot – you lay down with dogs you get fleas. Cry me a river…

  • #12 The guy’s chose his lot – you lay down with dogs you get fleas. Cry me a river…
    Comment by Ethel-to-Tilly

    I agree with Ethel. And if you lay down with dogs you get fleeced.
    As long as Lieberman has leverage I would welcome any Republican crossing the aisles.

  • If the Repugnicans were smart (I know I know) or I guess if they were just canny, they would send a stealth Senator over to the Democrats long enough for the Dems to start telling Lieberman what they really thought of him and when Joe switched they’d reel their faker back in.

  • I think Duncan Hunter, R-Calif would say “This isn’t a political or publicity stunt…. It’s a gesture just to say to t Rep. Walter Jones Jr., ‘Up yours!’

    I think they refer to that as Karma

  • I think we should all send the GOP leadership some love, they’re continuing to run to the right, and the country is ready to chop their heads off.

    Run, you bastards. Run hard. Jesus will save you.

  • Now as I see this thing, what we’ve got here is a remnant-like example of what happens when one party gets a lot of power, and the checking/balancing machine breaks down. It causes a whiplash.

    Dems had the bulwark of power once, but they got cocky with it, went too far, broke the checking/balancing machine, and—well, I think we’re all old-enough hands to remember “Unca Noot” and his Contract with America.

    We’ve had to learn some lessons—and they were hard lessons, to be sure of it—but Dems are clawing back into a position of power. We lost it to the GOP because (1) they had a better sales-pitch for their snake-oil than we had for ours, and (2) A whole flock of folk got sick–we’re talking “hug-the-toilet” sick—with the nauseating antics of their own party. OUR party.

    And there’s the trick of this whole legendary pile of bovine excrement. We didn’t “just” win back the Congress; rather, it was a combination of (1) we had a better sales-pitch for our snake-oil than they had, and (2) that same flock of people found themselves hugging that same porcelain receptacle again.

    Getting everybody to embrace the Democratic party—even TRYING to do so—will make “US” the nexgen tyrants. We—become the “mirror image” of the Neocon.

    So—one party always being dominant doesn’t work, and common sense dictates that “pure consensus” isn’t possible, and would be nothing more than the death-knell of issues discussion. Consensus turns us into lemmings. ‘Bots. Pod people.

    But—there’s another way for this thing to play out….

    History teaches that if we abuse our authority, we will have that authority stripped from us by the People. WE become “the unclothed Emperor.” That’s because history also teaches us that there’a a little thing called “the checking/balancing machine” and we had best not be breaking it, if we want to keep our clothes on.

    Now- it might seem that I’ve digressed a few miles from the topic, but there’s a great big “what if?” that hasn’t been considered.

    What if the Dems, the Indies, and the portion of the GOP that hasn’t become mortally addicted to the Neocon sales pitch all got together—with the sole purpose being the reinvention of the GOP?

    Liberal/Progressive policies require a “checking/balancing machine,” if for nothing more than to keep the Left from losing its royal robes again Personally, I like to be warm. It gets downright cold when you’re doing the au-natural thing. Politically, we’re talking head-to-toe frostbite and hypothermia here. Moderates need for us to have that checking/balancing machine, if for nothing else more than to keep the spawn of those nasty little Neocon critters from throwing them under the bus again, some number of years down the road. Conservatives even need the checks and balances that come with a healthy conservative message—and the conservative message being spouted these days is not only “not healthy,” it’s downright diseased. We’re talking along the lines of Smallpox, Anthrax, Ebola, Bubonic Plague, and one gods-awful case of nasal drip with this current bunch of Neocons.

    So what about it? Are politics ready for the injection of “a better breed of GOP?” Think of it as “Political Darwinism….”

    Sorry for the lengthy post, CB….

  • Back in the 1980s in Sacramento, the Republican leader in the California state assembly was Carol Hallett. She hoped someday to be speaker of the assembly, but she never managed to get a GOP majority in the legislature’s lower house. At least part of the reason was Hallett’s dedication to ideological purity in the Republican caucus. As minority leader, she supported the adoption of a “unit rule”, which required all Republican assemblymembers to vote the same on legislation whenever the caucus took an official position. Some Republicans objected, pointing out they were from marginal districts and could not expect re-election if they became party-line members of the caucus. Hallett did not relent. One of the Republicans changed her registration and joined the Democratic caucus, where she was greeted with open arms by Speaker Willie Brown. Brown announced that the legislature’s newest Democrat would always be allowed to vote her conscience.

    May the spirit of Carol Hallett infuse the current minority leadership in the U.S. House, so that their caucus continues to shrink.

    (I worked in Sacramento in those days. I should look up some of the details and post the story.)

  • I’m having a hard time getting worked up over Jones. The guy’s chose his lot – you lay down with dogs you get fleas. Cry me a river…

    I think that’s rather unkind. Also unproductive.

    Jones looked at the facts and came out against the war long before it was politically expedient, and he’s been supportive of efforts of people like Jack Murtha who are trying to end it.

    We may disagree with his choice of party, and even of many of his other stances. But don’t we want our elected representatives to look at the facts with a cold eye and make decisions guided by their conscience, by what they believe to be best for the country?

    I don’t feel sorry for Jones, but I do feel sorry for our country, that his party has seen fit to punish him for his membership in the reality-based community, thereby depriving us of his wisdom and leadership.

  • This is what Frank Rich has to say about Bush’s Wednesday night surge speech. The title for this Sunday’s column should alone prepare you for what awaits: “He’s in the Bunker Now.”

    For close to two years now, I have been making dark jokes about the GOP having to go underground like the Nazis burrowed in their bunkers beneath the Reichstag. But somehow, Rich does it in a way that eludes me.

  • Funny, but I haven’t heard of this letter sent to the WH by 7 Republican lawmakers through the MSM! -Kevo

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