Maltese Falcon

I’m sticking with the Maltese Falcon theme here. Via Daily Kos, Roll Call is reporting that Reynolds is trying to pin it back on the big man, Speaker Denny Hastert:

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) issued a statement Saturday in which he said that he had informed Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) of allegations of improper contacts between then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and at least one former male page, contradicting earlier statements from Hastert.

GOP sources said Reynolds told Hastert earlier in 2006, shortly after the February GOP leadership elections. Hastert’s response to Reynolds’ warning remains unclear.

Update: the Washington Post has more:

With his statement, Reynolds, who is locked in a difficult reelection campaign, signaled he was unwilling to take the fall alone amid partisan attacks that were becoming increasingly vituperative. The Democratic National Committee yesterday issued a statement asking “Why Did Tom Reynolds Cover Up Congressman’s Sex Crimes?” It continued: “While the shocking [online] exchanges produced an immediate uproar that cost Congressman Foley his job, at least one member of the House Republican leadership had known about the situation for months and did nothing about it: . . . Reynolds.”

Republican insiders said Reynolds spoke out because he was angry that Hastert appeared willing to let him take the blame for the party leadership’s silence.

A House GOP leadership aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that Reynolds realizes he has taken a shot at his leader but that it is understandable.

“This is what happens when one member tries to throw another member under a bus,” the aide said.

Optimusprime has discovered what may be group that is doing the push polling for Kuhl: Public Opinion Strategies. You can see the independent expenditure form the Kuhl campaign filed on it here. Public Opinion Strategy links to a piece about how push polling is bad and how they don’t do it. Perhaps they doth protest too much?

Strip down and get relaxed — to borrow disgraced Congressman Mark Foley’s now immortal words — while we discuss Tom Reynolds’ political future, or lack thereof. We know that Representative Alexander (whose page was the recipient of some of Foley’s mash notes) told Tom Reynolds about the messages Foley was sending to the young page and that:

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter, AP reported.

Okay, but did his parents explicitly tell Reynolds they wanted Foley to remain the head of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children? Somehow, I think not.

But we’re not here to focus on blame. The Republicans will divvy that up among themselves as they see fit. I think that, quite possibly, Reynolds is being served up as a sacrifice to placate the political Gods. Here’s why I think they’re doing it and why I think they’re smart to do it:

• 1. Reynolds is the only person Alexander claims to have told about this in many of the accounts of the story (Wash Post; ABC News). I’m sure he told other people — why only tell your campaign guy (Reynolds is head of the National Republican Campaign Committee)? Meanwhile, there’s been a blizzard of claims and subsequent retractions about how much Speaker Denny Hastert knew about it (here; here; and here). Clearly, Hastert will not go gentle into that good night. And he’s too big to be forced to against his will.
• 2. Someone has to take the fall here. It’s election season and if the whole Republican party gets blamed for it, they’ll lose big in November. There has to be a scapegoat.
• 3. Of all the higher ups in the Republican Congress, Reynolds is by far the most politically vulnerable. A recent poll showed him tied with challenger Jack Davis (he was actually two points behind but was with the Green party candidate — who was getting 8% and has now been kicked out of the face — inlcluded in th e poll). Even a whiff of involvement with a cover-up here will likely doom his reelection chances anyway.
• 4. And here’s the kicker, I think: Reynolds has an enormous war chest for his campaign his fall — nearly three million dollars on hand. He can give it all back to the NRCC if he drops out of the race for NY-26. There are needy Republican Congressmen out there who could use this money.

In the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade said this about his reasons for turning in Brigid O’Shaughnessy: “Maybe some of them are unimportant - I won’t argue about that - but look at the number of them. And what have we got on the other side?” In this case it’s the fact that Reynolds is probably a pretty good head of the NRCC. Like Sam Spade, Denny Hastert and John Boehner may have some rotten nights after they’ve sent Reynolds over, but that’ll pass.

(Update: other people are thinking the same thing — just got word of a protest at 1 pm today outside Reynolds’ office in Greece. Update 2: Not that many people, I’m hearing that it was very sparsely attended.)

Mark Foley (ex R-FL) resigned from Congress today as news of inappropriate sexual exchanges with an underage congressional page surfaced. Americablog has the actual text. Not for the faint of heart to be sure.

Well - Besides the fact that Mark Foley is a pig. Oh, Did I mention he was the chairman of the house caucus on missing and exploited children and pursued tough laws against those who use the Internet for sexual exploitation of children?

It appears that the House leadership was notified of these activities. Almost a year ago!

Then there was this little gem

Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who sponsored the page from his district, told reporters that he learned of the e-mails from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Republican campaign organization.

Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because “his parents said they didn’t want me to do anything.”

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the GOP campaign organization, said Reynolds learned from Alexander that the parents did not want to pursue the matter. Forti said, however, that the matter did go before the House Page Board — the three lawmakers and two House officials who oversee the pages.

It was unclear what the officials did.

Well Tom what did you do? I’m guessing nothing.

Reread the passage again. “…but [the parents] didn’t want me to do anything.” So a long term Congressman who is using his power to prey on a kid gets a pass from the parents? How is this a discussion about the parents anyway? Aren’t there laws against this stuff? Moral and legal? How about the House leadership not using the parents as an excuse to keep Foley in place.

I’m just speculating here but with the parents not suing, the Republicans get to circle the wagons and hope this goes away.

Tom - consider this an open invite to tell your side of the story on rochesterturning.com. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation why the House leadership of which apparently you are a part of did nothing.

dailykos and Americablog are all over the Foley story.

Progressives need to support each other.  We’re all in the same canoe, and we all want the same thing– a better, sustainable world for us and those who come after us.  We may disagree on the finer points of how to get there, but if we can work together, we can achieve so much more than working in our own little silos.

The Amish know this when they build a barn.  The conservative movement has been doing this for the past 40 years.  That’s largely why it’s been so successful, even if the underlying ideology is wrong.  That’s why progressives are under assault from seemingly every corner of the establishment.  And why we must not let the conservative movement continue to destroy this country and its future.

It’s way past time for us, as progressives, to look beyond our disagreements, and band together.   Time to take the driver seat from our ego and pride and singe issues for a minute and look at the big picture.  As far as I’ve seen, no single group in the progressive movement has exclusive rights to the truth, and to say that it’s your way or the highway, your issue or no issue, puts you in the same bucket as fundamentalists and the Bush administration. 

We all have something to learn from each other, and something to offer each other.  How can we keep our minds open, and our values firm? How can we work together for a better world?

I’d like to announce RT’s first answer to that question. 

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(ed. note: corrected to accurately describe the nature of the commercial — it is nearly identical to the one we discussed earlier, but it is not exactly the same.)
Kuhl has an ad (almost identical to the one we wrote about recently) running in the southern part of the district (presumably on an Elmira station) in which he claims credit for some bacon that a local union says he didn’t bring home:

A local union says a recent campaign ad approved by New York State Congressman Randy Kuhl is misleading. United Auto Workers claim that Congressman Kuhl shouldn’t be taking credit for bringing the Black Hawk Helicopter project to Schweizer Aircraft.

Here’s my thoughts on this:

• I don’t really blame Kuhl for doing this. He’s a freshman House member and I dare say not a particularly well-respected one (though he has a pretty decent record on transparency issues). He doesn’t have the juice to bring many projects into the district. So he takes credit for projects that other people brought in. I doubt that this is that unusual, especially among politically weak Congressmen in tight races.

• Given how much the Kuhl campaign whined about the supposed inaccuracies in the MoveOn commercials (some of which were real, but no more real, it seems, than this inaccuracy), I have no sympathy for him here. You live by the technicality, you die by the technicality. That’s life in the big city.

There was an interesting letter in the D&C yesterday about Cheney’s visit to Rochester to raise funds for Randy Kuhl last Friday:

Vice President Dick Cheney created a traffic nightmare in Rochester late Friday afternoon. Lines of truckers were stranded at the sides of interstates 390 and 490, as well as Route 531. Some parents were unable to pick up their kids at day care. Buses went miles off their regular routes. Homeward-bound downtown workers could not even get out of parking garages and lots. And there were no good alternate routes since Cheney’s path was a big secret.

It would be interesting to know how much Cheney’s visit cost Monroe County taxpayers. Rerouting buses, sending out extra policemen to deal with traffic problems and the like — these things cost money. And the time thousands of local residents had to wait in traffic ought to be worth something too. I’ll bet that when you add it all up and factor in the cost that the federal government paid for Cheney’s air travel, that it comes to a lot more than the $175,000 Kuhl claims to have raised at the fundraiser.

Wouldn’t it have been easier for everyone if Monroe County and the federal government had just ponied up the cash for Kuhl themselves? The only downside would be that we wouldn’t have these cool (no pun intended) protest pictures.

Jeannine Pirro. As you know she is under federal investigation for planning to secretly record her husband’s conversations.

I was struck by this little quote in an article in the morning D&C (an AP article written by Mark Johnson).

“I don’t think it will be damaging at all. In a perverse way it’s going to help her. The question is will people throughout the state feel as I do, that they are after her. It could boomerang and give her a lot of exposure to voters who may not have heard of her” A quote from Guy Molinari (former Staten Island congressman.)

Geez, you would think that she leaked the conversations herself to get the sympathy vote.

I’m sure there are other ways to get attention. Let’s see, you could start by running for the US Senate to improve name recognition then dropout. You could demonstrate the ability to think on your feet when you announce your Senate run (all you need is 32 seconds). You could ask a very sleazy character for help Bernie Kerik comes to mind.

With help like this, who needs hurt.

Oh, as an aside, Giuliani canceled a planned fund raiser for her next week.

I guess she is becoming radioactive.

Work this into conversation at your next opportunity

Are you tired of the “We need Torture to save us arguments”? I am. How does one respond? I came up with this response after listening to a radio interview. The interviewer discussed the moral ground argument then asked …but if we knew that the person definitely had the information we needed why wouldn’t torture (or aggressive methods) be OK to use? The responder paused but didn’t address the question. Here is a response next time you engage in the torture conversation.

Ask - when did you stop beating your spouse?

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(Looks like it just got tighter)

From the comments (thank you theshelldog!), Channel 2 Buffalo has a Survey USA (probably the best polling outfit going, to judge by their record in 2004) poll out on NY-26:

45% Tom Reynolds (R)
43% Jack Davis (D)
8% Christine Murphy (Green)
4% Undecided

The dynamics of this race are pretty different than NY-25 or NY-28. I’ll bet Davis has well over 50% name recognition, since he’s run before and he’s spent millions on ads, so we can’t expect his numbers to improve the way we can expect Massa’s and Maffei’s to (as their name recognition numbers go up). But, still, this must be scaring the living PAC money out of Tom Reynolds.

[Update: Holy Crap! NY-26 competitive? That explains why I've seen so many pro-Reynolds and anti-Davis ads, and I barely watch TV. Another tidbit from the article:

On Tuesday, September 26th the New York State Board of Elections determined Green Party candidate Christine Murphy's candidacy to be invalid.

Whether that means Davis has 43+8=51% or not is to be seen. We'll get some hint soon from this, also from the article:

On Your Side has commissioned a new survey with the two remaining candidates. The results are expected next Thursday.

Dag nabit, deputy dawg! All of CNY & WNY appears to be in play, up and downticket, based on all the close Conrgressional races, and the internals from the state-level races I've heard of. -btp]

I was listening to Brother Wease and heard snippets of the following folk/bluegrass song:

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one’s paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget’s stretched so thin
And there’s more comin’ home from the Mideast war
We can’t make it here anymore
That big ol’ building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore
See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They’re just gonna set there till they rot
‘Cause there’s nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don’t come down here ‘less you’re looking to score
We can’t make it here anymore
The bar’s still open but man it’s slow
The tip jar’s light and the register’s low
The bartender don’t have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day
Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won’t pay for a roof, won’t pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will…

Then the song abruptly ended. Brother Wease had to move on to the next segment. I pulled over the side of the road and jotted down the title and singer:

James Mc Murtry, “We Can’t Make it Here Anymore.”

The song was poetic and yet hard hitting. Expressing how many of us feel about the direction of our country. I did a google search and came across this video compilation of the song meshed with images. Simply amazing.

I plan on buying the cd for myself and also my politically minded friends. Check out James’ artist page.

We as progressives must support artists who buck the mainstream and perform songs that are driven by a purpose beyond greed and fame.

James, you now have a fan for life.

The CNN website is frontpaging the story.

The New York Times’ Empire Zone blog (which I actually like, though it gives upstate less attention than it should) is all over this one (here’s Faso’s reaction; here’s a rundown from various angles.)

Yesterday, I mentioned that we’re getting reports that the Kuhl campaign is doing some push polling. Unfortunately, what we’ve heard so far isn’t detailed (the people hung up and didn’t have caller ID). It would be terrific if one of you out there were to get one of these push polls and were to: (1) write down exactly what was being said, (2) get the caller ID of the group making the calls (it’s likely that they aren’t coming directly from Kuhl campaign offices or phone banks), and (3) report all of this back to us via the comments or the “contact us” link.

If you don’t know what a push poll is, here’s what Wiki says about push polls:

A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll…..True push polls tend to be very short, with only a handful of questions, so as to make as many calls as possible. Any data obtained (if used at all) is secondary in importance to negatively impacting the targeted candidate. Legitimate polls are often used by candidates to test potential messages. They generally ask about both positive and negative statements about all major candidates in an election and ask demographic information at the end.

It’s very possible that the Kuhl push polls are being done by a third party. That way the Kuhl campaign can deny having anything to do with them. Because push polling can create a backlash — voters know that it’s a dirty trick. That’s why we want to know all the details about these.

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Republican Attorney General candidate Jeanine Pirro could write a book on the subject. Remember the 32 second pause in the speech she gave launching her failed bid to run for Senator? This seems to be even worse:

Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general, said this afternoon that last year she asked an old friend, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, to bug her family boat to determine if her husband was having an affair at a time when she was preparing to run for top political office.

At least some Republicans are consistent — all they want is for the NSA to subject all Americans to the same kind of scrutiny they subject their own spouses to. Looks like the weak Republican New York state top-of-the-ticket just got weaker. I almost feel sorry for Stephen Minarik right now. Almost.

Much more after the flip

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Just as I was saying the NY-29 race had stayed pretty clean so far, I’m getting unconfirmed reports that the Kuhl campaign is doing some “push polling”. Push polling is a technique whereby someone calls pretending to be a pollster or typical phone banker and then asks questions like “if you knew that so-and-so drank the blood of dead puppies, would you still support him.” What I’m hearing is that the Kuhl campaign is calling and saying something along the lines of “if you knew that Eric Massa was against secure borders would you still support him?”.

Push polling is a nasty — dare I say it, Rovian — tactic. The Bush campaign famously used it against John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 to insinuate that McCain had fathered a black child with a prostitute (a perversion of the real-life fact that McCain and his wife adopted a south Asian child).

If you get any calls that sound like push polls, let us know!