{"id":13834,"date":"2007-12-06T16:00:25","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T21:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13834.html"},"modified":"2007-12-06T16:00:25","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T21:00:25","slug":"sexual-imagery-i-could-do-without","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sexual-imagery-i-could-do-without\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual imagery I could do without"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the estimable David Kurtz<\/a> put it, this<\/a> is “too much Freud from a guy named Dick.”<\/p>\n

Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.).<\/p>\n

In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the big spending and energy debates of the year.<\/p>\n

Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.”<\/p>\n

But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My, my. A woman House Speaker is wielding power over men chairing committees, and Dick Cheney is mocking them for lacking “big sticks”? Seriously<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Some Dems were subtle<\/a> in their defense of Reps. Dingell and Murtha…<\/p>\n

Reid (D-Nev.) said “Dingell and Murtha still carry very big sticks. If they’ve lost any pizzazz, I haven’t seen it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and some were more direct<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who as Democratic Caucus Chair is the party’s fourth-ranking House leader, replied: “Some of us were surprised that the president didn’t have a bigger stick when he could have stood up to Dick Cheney.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch.
\n
\nI’m tempted to ignore the substance of Cheney’s ridiculous comments, but I suppose as long as we’re here, I should note that his criticism doesn’t actually make any sense.<\/p>\n

Pelosi runs the House efficiently, but the notion that powerful committee chairs like Dingell and Murtha have been rendered, shall we say, politically impotent is a real stretch. Both have shown a lot of influence in recent months, Murtha on Iraq policy, and Dingell on energy policy.<\/p>\n

Cheney’s never seen “any previous speaker” keep a caucus in line like this? I suppose that’s an unexpected compliment from the hostile VP, but I think his memory is awfully short.<\/p>\n

Was Cheney around, say, last year? Or the year before? Or perhaps 2005 and\/or 2004? The House Republican leadership ran an efficient operation that tolerated no dissent or independent thought at all. If there were widespread defections from GOP committee chairs or back-benchers, they hid well.<\/p>\n

Pelosi, in contrast, has Blue Dogs in the caucus, and a couple of dozen more progressive Dems who are afraid of their own shadow, and jump every time some right-winger yells, “Weak on terror!”<\/p>\n

In Cheney’s worldview, a powerful House Speaker who struggles to maintain party loyalty is some kind of shrew, and committee chairman who follow the Speaker’s lead are eunuchs.<\/p>\n

Cheney’s mind is just a dark, scary place, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the estimable David Kurtz put it, this is “too much Freud from a guy named Dick.” Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.). In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}