Eric Cantor bets on the US failing

He's got money on the table.

Cantor's "I know you are but what am I?" speech

Billmon at Daily Kos sees the pasty white fingerprints of Rove:

What makes this particular example so cunning are the specific words used. Liberals complain that conservative protestors have worn guns to teabagger rallies, or waved signs warning that if "Brown can’t stop this, a Browning can"? Well, now the Democrats also have been accused of using "weapons." Has the RNC stepped over the line by showing Nancy Pelosi burning in a sea of fire? Well, the Democrats are also "fanning the flames." Did the GOP House members encourage their followers to think of themselves as a revolutionary army by waving "Don’t Tread on Me" flags from the House balcony during the HCR vote? Well, the Democrats are also "ratcheting up the rhetoric."

This is pretty sophisticated stuff -- way beyond what I would expect from your typical hack GOP congressman. Which does make me wonder who’s writing Cantor’s stuff these days (Step on out from behind the curtain, Karl: We can see you.)

The basic objective of all this, as I wrote way back when, is very simple:

The goal is to confront the public with two sides hurling identical charges at each other -- the better to convince them that it's just another partisan mudfight and who the hell knows . . . anyway.

In that sense, the "mirror image" technique is a like a bomber scattering chaff behind it to try to fool enemy radar or deflect a heat-seeking missile from the real target. As I said, it’s one of the tricks Rove would use when Team Bush lost the news cycle, which suggests the past few days of coverage of the Great Teabagger Freakout have done some real damage –- or at least, that the Rovian high command thinks it has done some damage.

They did this throughout the Bush campaigns, the Bush terms of terror and we all sat around and pulled our hair out in frustration because the media ate it up.

Times are changing. Can we get the media to change too?

h/t to Dusty Crickets in comments who finds the best quotes!

Update: The Huffington Post says it all:

Republicans Condemn Violence, Threatened Democrat Not Satisfied

Don't you DARE use this against us in the elections, y'hear?! WE'RE the party of guns and thugs! Democrats and liberals are by their very nature weak and afraid!

Self-executing rule?

No, it's not shooting oneself in the foot, although the Democrats have been adroit at doing just that lately.

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly:

In a nutshell, the House would vote once -- approving the sidecar measure and "deeming" the Senate bill as having passed. The Senate bill would then head to the White House for a signature, while the budget fix would head to the Senate.

As expected, the responding tantrum is nearing full force. The WSJ editorial page is outraged; Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is suggesting laws approved through the self-executing rule aren't laws that Americans have to follow; and assorted GOP voices, on and off the Hill, are characterizing the deem-and-pass approach as unconstitutional.

[snip]

Indeed, while the deem-and-pass approach used to be rare, its use became far more common 15 years ago -- right after Republicans took over Congress. Don Wolfensberger, former chief of staff for the House Rules Committee under Republicans, explained in a column a few years ago, "When Republicans took power in 1995, they soon lost their aversion to self-executing rules and proceeded to set new records under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)."

It's a familiar pattern -- Republicans open doors, and then whine incessantly when Democrats walk through them.

I wonder if this would prevent the Republicans from performing all their histronic speeches which I'm sure they have lined up and ready to go.... no show, no tedious amendments, no fight to the death on the House floor.... Would the self-executing rule prevent them from their heroic defense of the status quo?

Update: And here we go... Josh Marshall of TPM:

Okay, this is rich. Rep. Eric Cantor is insisting that Speaker Pelosi hold an up or down vote on the original senate bill alone rather than a single vote on the original bill and the amending bill.

Really?

Have we forgotten why we're here? The entire reason we're in this situation is that Cantor's fellow party members in the Senate won't allow any votes on health care at all. They wouldn't allow it last year and they're still blocking a simple up or down vote on any health care bill in the senate. That's the whole ball of wax.

They laid down for Bush without complaint

But they suddenly find their spine to stand against Obama? No, not the Democrats... the Republicans?

House Republicans are determined to oppose the release of the second half of the financial-industry bailout funds, a GOP House leadership aide tells the Huffington Post.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will work to persuade members to vote to oppose releasing the funds -- an enviable task, considering the unpopularity of the bailout.

The Republican conference position makes approval of the release of the funds difficult for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other House Democrats, many of whom opposed the original dispersal.

And just why on earth are they doing this? (my bold)

On Monday, Boehner announced that he would be personally opposing the release of the rest of the funds, though he stopped short of calling on his colleagues to do the same. "I remain disappointed about the way TARP has been managed and how its resources have been spent over the last several months. From the outset, the program has been implemented with too little transparency and in a manner inconsistent with the way it was presented to Congress last fall. Until officials can present a clear plan to Congress -- and, most importantly, to taxpayers -- demonstrating how the expenditure of additional TARP funds will benefit our economy and making clear an exit strategy for getting the government back out of the private sector, it would be irresponsible for Congress to release the remainder of these resources. I will oppose the release of these taxpayer funds when the matter is considered on the House floor," Boehner said.

The unpopular bailout has only become less popular over the last few months, as banks and the Treasury Department have refused to reveal details as to how the taxpayer money -- or, more accurately, future taxpayers' money -- has been spent.

Republican opposition, however, is a political freebie: the president will still get the money. He can veto congressional disapproval of the funds; House Democrats then need only 144 votes to sustain such a veto and authorize the money's release without any Republican consent. If they do, however, they may earn the sole political ownership of the bailout they fought so hard to avoid.

Oh, nice try guys! But you supported Bush and his neocon buddies for eight solid years, you own this economic disaster.

Taking statements out of context is a constant wound

And makes for sore tempers...

Matthew Yglesias:

Barack Obama, speaking to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, offered a sensible reply to a sensible-but-sensitive question:

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

GOP Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor decided to prove they studied hard in the school of misreading and misrepresenting:

It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a ‘constant wound,’ ‘constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect[s] all of our foreign policy.’ These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel.

Eliding here is the difference between calling Israel, the country, a sore and calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a sore.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) can't handle the truth

So he actually tweaks comments on his site to change the meaning completely. Sinfonian of Blast Off! has screenshots of some of the changed statements:

The truly heinous thing, though, is that whoever was monitoring Cantor's blog not only was moderating comments and deleting some (including mine, shown above; click image for a larger version), but they were editing some comments to read the opposite of what the commenter actually meant:

Following a link from Eschaton, I visited a Think Progress post about Eric Cantor's Partisan and ridiculous attack on Nancy Pelosi, where he asks his supporters to call House Democrats and let them know how angry they are about Pelosi.

I couldn't help posting a comment on Cantor's site:

Mr. Cantor, how's the "Stop Pelosi" thing going for you so far?

Don't listen to all these Liberals who are angry at you for not mentioning the Republican traitors. Stick to truthiness.

And one more thing, I tried calling the numbers above to let them know what I think but everyone on the other line speaks Arabic now. NANCY!!! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!!!

Problems [sic] is, comments are moderated on Cantor's site, which means that now the comment above has been changed to this:

Don’t listen to all these Liberals. Stick it to them.

Nice work, Mr. Cantor! Way to illustrate family values, ethics, truthfulness!

Update (edited header to include his title and state)

and Think Progress has this:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the chief deputy minority whip in the House, has launched a partisan smear campaign against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for visiting Syria. He writes in the National Review:

The Speaker and many of her Democratic allies have become so drunk with grandiose visions of deposing Bush that they break bread with terrorists and enemies of the United States. The Speaker’s words and actions carry consequences for U.S. policy, and they certainly did our allies no favors last week. Instead of standing united with the president and Congress against the Syrian menace, Mrs. Pelosi chose to needlessly divide us.

Nowhere in his 700-word diatribe does Cantor mention the fact that five Republicans “broke bread” with Assad last week: Reps. Frank Wolf, Joseph Pitts, Robert Aderholt, David Hobson, and Darrell Issa.

Meanwhile, on his blog, Cantor is conducting a campaign to “Stop Pelosi.” He writes that Congress has “remained silent on Pelosi’s misrepresentation of Israel’s position. They have remained silent on her assistance to Syrian propaganda efforts.”

Unsurprisingly, Cantor is falsifying the record. Here are the facts:

Pelosi Was Asked To Communicate A Message And She Did. Before she left for Syria, Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.” And that’s what Pelosi did: “We conveyed to him Prime Minister Olmert’s overture for peace talks when Syria openly takes steps to stop supporting terrorism.”

Pelosi Communicated A Consistent Message. Republican Congressman David Hobson said Pelosi “did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria.” Republican Congressman Joseph Pitts noted, “Ms. Pelosi contacted us while we were in Israel, and we told her the message we gave. The message she gave Syria was similar to the message we gave.”

Cantor encourages his readers to contact Congress: “It is time for House Democrats to hear from you about how unhappy you are with Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Damascus.” Actually, it’s time for Rep. Cantor to hear from you — go leave a message in his comments section or give his office a call and tell him to stop his partisan-motivated attacks against Pelosi.