The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 326 [View All]

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The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 326

February 25, 2008
Oscar Special!

It's Oscar time again, so let's celebrate by handing out some little gold statuettes of our own. John McCain (1,2,3,4,5) cleans up the top honors, while Ralph Nader (6), Rick Renzi (7), and Bill O'Reilly (8), all walk away with awards. My apologies in advance for the bad language in number 9 - it's Roger Stone's fault. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!



John McCain

Biggest Hypocrite

"As President, John McCain will see to it that the institutions of self-government are respected pillars of democracy, not commodities to be bought, bartered, or abused!"

Not my words, the words of whoever wrote the copy on John "Maverick" McCain's website. Which is funny, because according to the New York Times last week:

Early in Senator John McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself - instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Yup, John "No Special Interests" McCain was so tight with a lobbyist that his own staffers had to warn her off because it looked so damn suspicious. Think about it - Captain Straight Talk says he was "friends" with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, but that's a pretty intense level of friendship. I mean, there's "hey let's get together for drinks next week" friendly, and then there's "Jeez, we gotta do something about the boss and this woman, people are going to think they're banging" friendly.

The right-wing would like you to believe that this is a story about gutter politics and shoddy journalism, but that's a huge red herring. The real story here is that according to Newsweek, "Both the Times and the Post report that McCain accepted more than $100,000 in campaign donations from interests represented by Iseman and her firm before taking actions at Iseman's urging that were intended to benefit the lobbyist's clients."

Newsweek says this is not illegal - but it certainly makes a man who has staked his career on a reputation for ethics and integrity look like a hypocrite - or worse, like a typical, inside-the-Beltway, politics-as-usual Republican. And let's face it, nobody wants to belong to that club this year.



John McCain

Biggest Supporting Hypocrite

Sen. McCain was extremely quick to smack down the original New York Times article connecting him with Iseman and one of her clients, Lowell W. Paxson. "Obviously, I'm very disappointed in the article; it's not true," he said.

Of course, that was before the Times published their follow-up...

In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist.

(snip)

One of the McCain campaign's statements about his dealings with Ms. Iseman was challenged by news accounts on Friday. In discussing letters he wrote regulators about a deal involving another of Ms. Iseman's clients, Lowell W. Paxson, the campaign had said the senator had never spoken to her or anyone from the company. But Mr. McCain acknowledged in a 2002 deposition that he had sent the letters after meeting with Mr. Paxson.

(snip)

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

But come on - this is John McCain we're talking about here. John McCain! The apex of integrity. The pinnacle of probity. The man who never lies!

Sure, the facts may be conspiring to make him look like a liar, but that's hardly his fault.



John McCain

Special Achievement In Hypocrisy

So is McCain, um, soft on lobbyists? According to Raw Story:

Sen. John McCain said Friday that while lobbyists serve as close advisers to his presidential campaign, they are honorable and he is not influenced by corruption in the system.

McCain, who has styled himself as an enemy of special interests, defended having lobbyists working for his campaign. He is the expected Republican presidential nominee.

"These people have honorable records, and they're honorable people, and I'm proud to have them as part of my team," McCain told reporters following a town hall meeting in Indianapolis.

Which is a bit odd, because his http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/cb15a056-ac87-485d-a64d-82989bdc948c.htm">website says:

America deserves and demands a government that serves the country, not itself. Most people believe that elected leaders are more interested in the perks and privileges of office than in public service, and that too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day when issues of public policy are being decided.

John McCain has fought the good fight against the practices that alienate the public from their elected leaders. He has fought for public disclosure of those who lobby lawmakers for a living, and to prohibit them from providing gifts to elected officials.

(snip)

The American people have been alienated from the process of self-government by the overwhelming appearance of their elected leaders having sold-out to the big-moneyed special interests who help finance political campaigns.

Fine words - but a Washington Post story over the weekend notes that in fact McCain has at least 59 lobbyists working on his campaign. One of them - his chief political adviser Charles Black, who also happens to be chairman of one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington - conducts his lobbying business directly from the mothership.

Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain's Straight Talk Express bus.

So in other words, John McCain is like a guy who loudly proclaims that he's perfectly sober while staggering down the street wearing a traffic cone on his head.



John McCain

Worst Fundraising

Yes there's more...

On a day when Sen. John McCain was blasting The New York Times for a story that alleged that he had had an inappropriate, romantic relationship with a female lobbyist eight years ago, he faced a fresh and unrelated dilemma that could also be potentially damaging to his campaign.

You guessed it - he was caught backstage at a dog fight snorting meth off Ted Haggard's naked ass.

Just kidding.

The nation's top federal election official yesterday told the Arizona Republican that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public-financing system as he had requested -- a decision that could dramatically restrict Mr. McCain's spending until the general election begins in the fall.

The prospect of being financially hamstrung by the very fundraising system he helped create is the latest in a series of bitter challenges for the presumed GOP nominee, who still faces a fractured conservative coalition as he assumes the mantle of party leadership.

(snip)

But Mr. McCain's attempts to build up his campaign coffers in advance of a general election contest appeared to be threatened by the stern warning yesterday from Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, a Republican. Mr. Mason notified them that the commission had not granted Mr. McCain's Feb. 6 request to withdraw from the presidential public-financing system.

Hmm, a prickly situation. It seems that McCain only has one way to solve this problem, and that would involve circumventing the campaign law he himself wrote. I think we all know that a man of McCain's integrity and principles would surely never... hold on a minute... according to Andrew Sullivan:

A few days ago I wrote about a loan John McCain had taken out, in which he tried to use his future eligibility for federal matching funds as collateral.

(snip)

I am not a lawyer, and thus have no opinion about whether McCain's loan violates the, um, McCain Feingold Act, or any other provision of federal law. But I did think that this was a pretty transparent attempt to violate its spirit. Campaign finance laws ask candidates to make a choice: either you take federal money, in which case you are subject to a number of restrictions, or else you don't take it, in which case you are not. Getting a loan by using the matching funds you have not yet received as collateral is a way of trying to have it both ways: essentially, you get to spend your matching funds now, but because the money did not literally come from the government, you can delay a decision about whether or not to accept the restrictions that go with them until later. If you can leverage the money into enough wins to generate contributions, you can pay back the loan and duck the restrictions; if not, you've lost anyways, so you might as well abide by them. That's exactly what campaign finance laws do not want candidates to be able to do.

McCain tried to be tricky about this: he didn't use the matching funds he had qualified for as collateral, but he did use the fact that he could qualify for them at any time. That's why he had to give away his legal right to withdraw from the campaign if he lost: to satisfy his lenders, he had to promise to stay in long enough to actually get the matching funds he qualified for, and to give them first dibs on those funds. Whether or not this violates the law -- a law McCain authored -- I have no idea, but it is certainly an attempt to wriggle out of its requirements, and it ought to put paid, once and for all, to the idea of McCain as a straight-talking man of principle.

So let's see - saying one thing and then doing the opposite, getting caught up in a web of lies involving lobbyists and corruption in Washington, demonstrating a complete disregard for the law - this is starting to seem awfully familiar...




John McCain

Least Competent Campaign

One more for luck...

Last week Mike Huckabee announced his intention to stay in the GOP race to the bitter end, and while John McCain is all but guaranteed to win the nomination, Huckabee's quixotic charge can't be doing his much for his nerves - or his wallet. The last thing you want to do when you're the cash-strapped Republican nominee is have to contest a primary in Texas.

Another thing you don't want to do is forget to put yourself on the ballot in Indiana. According to Raw Story:

In order for a candidate to be placed on the ballot in the May 6 contest, his or her campaign must supply 500 signatures in each of Indiana's congressional districts. A blogger and Democratic activist, Thomas Cook of Blue Indiana, discovered that McCain was a number of signatures short in the state's 4th District.

"This is one of the most Republican-friendly districts in one of the most Republican-friendly presidential states," Cook wrote in a Feb. 20 blog post. "And despite all of this high-level help, these guys managed to screw up one of the most basic steps that any candidate can take in the state."

Oops! After Thomas Cook filed a challenge with Indiana's Secretary of State to keep McCain off the ballot, the McCain campaign countered saying that they had 531 signatures in the 4th District. Not so fast said State Democratic Chairman Dan Parker - his staff only counted 496 signatures.

Not that any of this matters. The DNC released a statement last week which noted that:

"Despite the fact that the McCain campaign clearly failed to qualify for the ballot, Republican Attorney General Steve Carter and Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita (who recently endorsed McCain) rubberstamped it anyway, trying to sneak McCain onto the ballot.

What a surprise!



Ralph Nader

Biggest Ego

With the president's approval rating at an all time low (more on that later), the vast majority of Americans unhappy with the direction the country is headed, ongoing occupations sucking billions out of the pockets of the taxpayer, the Republican party rocked by scandal after scandal and dissatisfied with their corrupt presidential nominee, leave it to Ralph Nader to declare last week that, "If the Democrats can't landslide the election this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down."

Apparently Ralph is under the impression that taking back the country is going to be too easy this year, so he's decided to handicap things a little by jumping into the presidential race. Again.

Nader, who rose to prominence by campaigning for auto safety in the 1960s, said he still had a message to offer for those "locked out" by the perennial Republican-Democratic duel.

Wait, let me guess - both parties are the same, right?

Nader described Obama as a "person of substance" but said the senator had allowed his own "better instincts" to be compromised in the White House battle.

McCain was meanwhile "the candidate for perpetual war," Nader said, calling for the impeachment of the "criminal recidivist regime of George Bush and (Vice President) Dick Cheney."

Okay, let's time-travel for a moment all the way back to the year 2000...

If California tips Green enough, Bush could win the state and the whole damn election.

Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn't be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: "Bush."

Not that he actually thinks the man he calls "Bush Inc." deserves to be elected: "He'll do whatever industry wants done."

The rumpled crusader clearly prefers to sink his righteous teeth into Al Gore, however: "He's totally betrayed his 1992 book," Nader says. "It's all rhetoric."

Yeah, that Al Gore was totally full of shit about the environment, wasn't he? His 1992 book Earth In The Balance was just a bunch of fluff that the guy never backed up.

Oh wait a minute, here he is winning the Nobel Peace Prize.


Meanwhile, back in 2000...

Gore "groveled openly" to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win."

So let me get this "Nader plan" straight:

2000

• Run for president


• Tell everybody that there's no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush


• Reveal that it would be better if Bush wins because then the parties will "diverge from one another"


• Sit back and watch Bush spend eight years shredding the Constitution, voiding decades-old international treaties, illegally invading other countries, wiretapping American citizens without a warrant, politicizing the Department of Justice, appointing radical conservative Supreme Court justices, whipping the religious right into an apocalyptic frenzy, sinking the economy into recession, robbing working Americans to pay for generous tax cuts for millionaires and generally destroying America's reputation around the world

2008

• Run for president


• Tell everybody that there's no difference between Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and John McCain

Gee, I wonder what comes next? Let me guess - reveal that it would be better if McCain wins because then the parties will "diverge from one another."

Jerk.



Rick Renzi

Best Indictment

You know, one of these days we might have a week go by where a prominent Republican doesn't get indicted for corruption. Unfortunately last week was not one of those weeks.

Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Renzi of Arizona, a state co-chair for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, was indicted on corruption charges stemming from land deals in his state, Justice Department officials said on Friday.

The 35-count indictment stemmed from plans by Renzi and a business associate, a real estate investor, to benefit from a land-exchange deal in Arizona in return for Renzi's support for necessary federal legislation, according to court documents.

(snip)

The indictment, which included charges of conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and official extortion, also accused the three-term congressman of embezzling premiums from clients of an insurance business to fund his congressional campaign.

Renzi, who has had a solid conservative voting record since first being elected to Congress in 2002, also was accused of concealing his receipt of more than $733,000 from the associate in 2005.

Renzi will now join the hallowed ranks of John McCain's Co-Chair Hall Of Fame, alongside such legends as The Guy Who Counted Jews For Nixon and The Guy Who Tried To Buy Sex From A Cop.



Bill O'Reilly

Stalest Falafel

Last week at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Michelle Obama said, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change." The Obama campaign later clarified this as "Of course Michelle is proud of her country, which is why she and Barack talk constantly about how their story wouldn't be possible in any other nation on Earth. What she meant is that she's really proud at this moment because for the first time in a long time, thousands of Americans who've never participated in politics before are coming out in record numbers to build a grassroots movement for change."

And predictably, the radical right went nuts. But not Bill O'Reilly! Responding to a caller on his radio show, Bill sensibly decided to take the high road:

O'REILLY: You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they're thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them. And, you know, Bill Clinton and I don't agree on a lot of things, and I think I've made that clear over the years, but he's trying to stick up for his wife, and every time the guy turns around, there's another demagogue or another ideologue in his face trying to humiliate him because they're rooting for Obama.

That's wrong. And I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama...

Wow - Bill, that's very gracious of you! How unexpected!

Oops - wait a minute... I've left a bit off the end of the full quote.

O'REILLY: That's wrong. And I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.

Well I guess he's a reasonable man. Michelle is perfectly safe - for now. Bill's just saying that maybe she should watch her mouth in future, otherwise he might have to round up a posse and hang that uppity negro from a tree.

Honestly, how can Michelle Obama possibly suggest that she hasn't always been proud of her country when upstanding Americans like Bill O'Reilly rule the public airwaves?



Roger Stone

Tiniest Penis

Meanwhile, Roger Stone - the famed GOP operative who was last featured on this list after he left obscene voice mails for Elliot Spitzer's 83-year-old father (see Idiots 305) - was back in the news last week with a new 527 organization intended "to educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is."

The name of Stone's organization is Citizens United Not Timid. Get it? Here, allow me to spell it out for you. Citizens United Not Timid.

Clever stuff, huh?

Curiously, Stone continues to be invited to give his opinion on national television, which you have to admit is a little strange. I mean, how does that phone call go? "Hi, Mr. Stone? Mr. Roger Stone? The guy who leaves obscene voice mails for the elderly and runs an organization that describes Hillary Clinton as a 'cunt?' Yes, do you have ten minutes to spare this afternoon for a bit of political analysis with Tucker Carlson?"

Bizarre. But anyway, it seems that the conservative strategy for 2008 is pretty clear - black people who are deemed sufficiently unpatriotic by Bill O'Reilly should be lynched, and women are cunts. Sounds like a winning election year message to me!



George W. Bush

Worst President Ever

And finally - remember this guy?


Yes, he's still the president - but America doesn't have to like it. Last week the American Research Group released its latest poll results, and found that George W. Bush's overall job approval rating is currently... wait for it...


Bush has now beaten his father's anemic 29%, Richard Nixon's resignation-eve 24%, and Harry Truman's all-time-low of 23%. Yes, Our Great Leader is truly sprinting to the finish line - but only to escape the angry mob who are in hot pursuit.

See you next week!

-- EarlG