Category: Dave Weigel

And Her Name Is ‘Quackenbush’

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You need a laugh? I need a laugh. And we are therefore grateful to an erstwhile “rising star” in New York Democratic Party politics:

Albany County District Attorney David Soares today acknowledged a longstanding intimate relationship with a junior female staffer whose siblings have been prosecuted on multiple occasions by his office.
Soares, 42, said he has been involved in a “committed” relationship with legal secretary Stacey Quackenbush, 26, for at about a year. Soares is divorced from his first wife, Tina Pantuso, with whom he has two children.
The district attorney called his relationship with Quackenbush a “personal issue” that is “not newsworthy and certainly not appropriate for public debate or discussion.”
Soares said he is aware of the appearance of a conflict and indicated Quackenbush has been seeking employment elsewhere.
He also suggested a report of his connection to Quackenbush, which appeared Friday night on a local blog — Albanycitizenone.com — was politically motivated.
“I find it unfortunate that my personal relationships are the subject of political fodder less than 24 hours after the announcement of my political opponent,” Soares said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.
“This is clearly a political effort to malign my reputation for the simple reason that my record as Albany County District Attorney is one that I am proud of.”

(Hat-tip: Dave Weigel on Twitter.) Four relevant points:

  1. As we have recently seen, it is not generally an effective public-relations tactic for politicians accused of wrongdoing to suggest that the accusations are “politically motivated.” Well, of course, they’re politically motivated! People who make accusations are your enemies, not your allies, and politics is a contact sport.
  2. When a public official is having a sexual relationship with his workplace subordinate, this is wrong per se. Why? Because taxpayers are in effect being compelled to hire girlfriends for the public official. It’s one thing if two file clerks at the county courthouse fall in love. It’s another thing entirely for the judge to be banging a file clerk.
  3. It was not until the eighth paragraph that this story mentioned that Soares is, in fact, a Democrat.
  4. His girlfriend’s name is “Quackenbush”!

That there’s funny, I don’t care who you are! Merry Christmas!

Unfortunately, Dave Weigel Is Right

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This should make you as sad as it makes me:

There are 10 Republican candidates for president running in two campaigns. In Campaign No. 1, the nominee will be chosen in a matter of months, starting with caucuses in Iowa, then a primary in New Hampshire, then primaries in South Carolina, Florida, and so on—boring stuff, we’re all used to it. Mitt Romney is dully, ploddingly doing exactly what he needs to win this campaign. And then we have campaign No. 2. A tag team of quotable, viral-video-ready TV stars are taking turns as frontrunners. The press stages rigorous guessing games about which of them is going to surge next.
Campaign No. 2 is suspenseful and entertaining. Sexual harassment! Migraines! Ellis the Elephant! Donald Trump’s hair! Campaign No. 1 is as boring as the second draft of a Henry James novel. So it’s been a really long time since we paid attention to campaign No. 1. . . .

Go read the whole thing and try to tell me Dave is wrong, especially about the ridiculously implausible “Gingrich surge.” Anybody who thinks Newt’s going to be the Republican nominee should be sure and bring a hat to the GOP convention next August, because I will be glad to eat your hat — and my hat, and every damned hat in Tampa — if Newt wins.

Of all the headlines I can guarantee you’ll never see, “Newt Wins Republican Nomination” is at the top of the list, or at least a close second to, “Tabitha Hale Puts Stacy McCain on BlogCon Panel.”

UPDATE: I’m laughing at this part of Dave’s article:

Prefab Newtmania reached its dizzy heights on Monday night, when Monica Crowley got a chance to interview the man on Fox News.
“So, I am looking at these polls,” said Crowley, “and you are enjoying something of a surge. To what do you attribute that uptick?”
Tough question. “I think part of it is just substance and real solutions,” explained Gingrich.
“You are such a serious conservative intellectual,” challenged Crowley.

It’s like Chris Matthews interviewing Obama or something.

Doug Hoffman Forgives Newt Gingrich?

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When Professor William Jacobson called this to my attention, I could scarcely believe it, yet Dave Weigel has the story:

So what does Hoffman think? Is Newt to be trusted?
“I support all the candidates running right at the moment,” said Hoffman. “Any one of them would be better than the current president, and that definitely includes Newt Gingrich. Newt apologized to me for not endorsing me, and that’s water over the dam, I think.”
Right before the election, Gingrich apologized publicly for endorsing Scozzafava. Sometime after the election, he called Hoffman to tell him personally.
“He was very sincere in his apology,” said Hoffman. “He was given misinformation as to what this race was all about, and what the other candidate was all about. The people in this district, the sort of local leaders who had endorsed Scozzafava, fed him the wrong information. I don’t think it was an error in his judgement. I would advise other conservative Republicans: Don’t hold this against him.”

Wow. Just . . . wow.

Dave e-mailed me his story and I told him I’d already seen it, but replied to the effect that perhaps, after 14 years in Washington, I’ve finally “gone native.” Anybody in Washington who got screwed over as badly as Hoffman got screwed over by Gingrich would insist on exacting their bloody retribution as a matter of principle, as a warning to anyone else who might be tempted to do the same.

If you let yourself be treated like a doormat, you can’t complain about the footprints on your back. Capische?

Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot. How would Newt have reacted if Hoffman had done to him what he did to Hoffman?

Even if it was a sincere mistake — Gingrich being “given misinformation,” as Hoffman says — wasn’t Gingrich obligated to double-check his facts before going on Fox News the third or fourth times to praise Scozzafave and trash Hoffman? At the time, everybody who knew anything about the NY-23 race knew Newt was wrong, and yet he refused to walk-back his endorsement of Dede until after she quit and endorsed the Democrat.

“Water over the dam”? Doug, you’d be Congressman Hoffman today if Newt hadn’t spent two weeks in October 2009 going on TV — again and again and again — to badmouth you as a dangerous extremist.

This forgive-and-forget turn-the-other-cheek stuff is fine as a moral ideal, but moral idealism and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee in Washington, and in the time it takes to drink that cup of coffee, you’ll get backstabbed by a half-dozen of your “friends” who figure you for a weakling. It’s like being the slowest wildebeest in the herd when a hungry lion leaps out of the bushes down by the watering hole. Next thing you know, vultures are picking your bones.

So Doug Hoffman has forgiven Newt Gingrich, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to emulate Hoffman’s Christian example.

“You Still Have to Answer for Santino, Carlo.”


‘This Crazy Blogger, Stacy McCain’

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Crazy blogger at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Sept. 13, 2011

Dave Weigel quotes Creepy Joe:

Joe McGinniss is no longer surprised at the hate engendered by his new biography, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. “Did you see this crazy blogger, Stacy McCain, saying he’s starting a legal fund for Todd Palin?” he asks. The blog post appeals for $25 donations to SarahPAC to “help defray Todd’s legal expenses when he shows up at McGinniss’s first book signing and pounds that scurvy worm into a bloody pulp.”

Don’t read the rest of it, unless you’re interested in a stale rehash of the familiar litany of blind-sourced smears. But do contribute generously:

TODD PALIN LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Because Creepy Joe Might Actually Get
the Ass-Whupping He So Richly Deserves

PREVIOUSLY:

Dave Weigel on the Undecided Iowans

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There is a lot of genuine ambiguity among Republicans here:

Romney leaves Pella and makes his way an hour up the road to Des Moines. He’s the honored guest at a Polk County Republican fundraiser at the home of Nick Van Patten . . . Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and other candidates have already been to previous county party fundraisers, and these people aren’t necessarily sold on Romney yet.
“He’s got a big fish hook in him,” warns Jack Salzeider, a commodities trader who wears one ring made of gold from the Black Hills of South Dakota and one ring that contains a slice of every stone that’s mined in Arizona. “That’s Romneycare. I’m still waiting to hear from Rick Perry — he might be the guy.”

This is the same vibe I describe in my American Spectator column today, but I thought it might be worthwhile to show you how this “I’m not quite sure yet” vibe is perceived by another reporter. Weigel may be a sarcastic closet liberal, but he does actual reporting, which is what counts.

Dow Drops 266 Points, Both Sides Race to Claim Defeat in Debt-Deal Compromise

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Who didn’t see this coming? For months we were warned that financial catastrophe would ensue unless Congress raised the debt ceiling. So Congress raised the debt ceiling and . . . financial catastrophe:

Stocks plunge as economic concerns grow

Associated Press
NEW YORK — A sell-off is erasing all of the year’s gains in the stock market, which has hit its longest losing streak in two years.
All three major stock indexes fell today as investors reacted to more signs of weakness in the U.S. economy and poor earnings from several big companies.
The S&P 500 fell 33 points to close at 1,254. The Dow lost 266 to end the day at 11,867. The Nasdaq composite fell 75 to close at 2,669. . . .

Meanwhile, in an event unprecedented in the history of spin wars, conservatives and liberals rushed to claim that the other side won.

Emily Miller of The Washington Times proclaims that the GOP caved and gave Obama everything he wanted, but Dave Weigel at Slate calls it “a generational defeat for liberals”:

It ended with scenes straight from a Nora Ephron movie, or one of those weaker West Wing episodes with Kristin Chenoweth as the way-too-competent consultant. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the House to cast her first vote since surviving a bullet to the brain. The House and Senate passed a debt-limit deal that got the votes of Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. The crisis concluded with a Rose Garden speech, as if someone had just won a war.
All of that obscured the truth about the debt crisis. The truth: It was completely insane. It was, as Democrats say, largely unprecedented and mostly unnecessary. It was, as Republicans say, fogged up with hype that made the politics and market moves uglier than they needed to be. The inevitable tick-tocks of the deal and the slide shows of winners and losers obscure the fact that Washington just blew two months negotiating a 10-year budget cut right before it was about to knuckle down and … negotiate the 2012 budget. . . .
In the Bush era, Republicans once deemed the debt-limit hike as “passed” in another funding bill. In February 2009, Democrats simply added an $800 billion hike in the debt limit—from $11.3 trillion to $12.1 trillion—to the stimulus bill. There was a consensus: Play with the debt limit and you lose. That was true until July 2011, when Republicans played with the debt limit and won. . . .

So here we have a liberal (and really, Dave, any illusion that you’re not a liberal has long since ended) declaring forthrightly that the GOP won, whereas not a single conservative friend of mine agrees.

It has been said that victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan, but this bill looks like an unwanted legislative bastard.

Ace of Spades has relevant thoughts, including a dig at Weigel.


Dave Weigel Interviews the Guy Who’s Going to Win the Big Debate Tonight

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In New Hampshire:

At the end of a short press scrum here, Herman Cain got a question he’s always asked semi-nervously: So, uh, how’s it going out there for a black Republican candidate?

Go back and read my 2007 interview with Herman Cain: He’s been dealing with questions like this for years, and isn’t going to be thrown off his game by it. Also today, the pundits are having a conniption over a Daily Caller interview in which Cain applies his experience as Godfather’s Pizza CEO to foreign policy. (Jim Antle calls this the “Pizza Doctrine.”)

Get over it. Once Cain stomps Romney in tonight’s debate like Godzilla stomped Tokyo, the pundits will be even more desperate to find some way to prove Cain can’t win.

And then he’ll just keep winning, to the eternal mystification of all the experts who said it couldn’t be done.

Da Tech Guy is at the scene of tonight’s debate and reports that security is trying to deny him access to the media room. Time to raise hell, I say!

Dave Weigel: ‘Hey, You Know Who’s Doing Pretty Good? Herman Cain.’

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Our boy Dave takes a look at the Gallup numbers and notices that the Hermanator has zoomed up in the GOP 2012 pack without benefit of much previous national media exposure, and despite the generally dismissive attitudes of such pundits as Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer and Michael Barone. Here are the numbers:

Mitt Romney . . . . . . . . 17%
Sarah Palin . . . . . . . . . 15%
Ron Paul . . . . . . . . . . . 10%
Newt Gingrich . . . . . . . 9%
Herman Cain . . . . . . . . 8%
Tim Pawlenty . . . . . . . . 6%
Michele Bachmann . . . . 5%
Jon Huntsman . . . . . . . . 2%
Gary Johnson . . . . . . . . 2%
Rick Santorum . . . . . . . 2%

A couple of caveats about this poll: First, it’s nationwide, and there is no such thing as a nationwide primary. Secondly, they polled Republicans and “Republican-leaning independents,” whatever that means.

All caveats considered, however, this poll is the latest indication that pundits who have been dismissive of Herman Cain are making a serious mistake. If Tim Pawlenty is a “first-tier” candidate, you cannot now deny Cain is “first-tier,” too.

Dick Morris says Herman Cain “blew me away” at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally and, even though Morris doesn’t think Cain can win, he admits that he’s got “magic” and says he can’t be counted out.

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

ADDENDUM: Permit me to remind you exactly how early I foresaw the potential of Cain’s campaign. It was less than two weeks after the election last year and, at the end of a very long post on November 13, I included the clip of Herman Cain’s June speech at the SRLC in New Orleans. He ended that speech by making a plug for a possible “dark horse” campaign in 2012, and I wrote:

Say what you will about Mitt Romney, at least he’s got some meaningful private-sector experience. But if you want a successful businessman for the 2012 GOP nomination, how about a dark horse? . . .
Yeah: Herman Cain. Having backed a few can’t-possibly-win underdogs in the past couple of years — I went all-in for Rubio when he was 35 points down — I’m taking a long, hard look at that dark horse. It might not be the “pragmatic” thing to do, but I’m thinking a few “blogospheric demagogues” might be in a mood to really bust some balls for 2012.

Perhaps some analysts have overlooked the extent to which the Cain campaign is an anti-establishment ball-busting operation. There are a lot of grassroots conservatives who are sick and tired of having the GOP establishment and the elite pundits pick their candidates. If Cain could somehow win the nomination, he would owe the Republican establishment exactly nothing.

Heh. Heh. Heh.