Snakes in the grass

Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, had a rare opportunity to serve up a nice cold dish of revenge on Tuesday. Sam Fox, Bush’s nominee to be US Ambassador to Belgium, appeared at a hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Like most people appointed ambassador, Fox is a major political donor. Unfortunately for him, one of those donations was $50,000 he gave to “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” a right wing smear campaign directed at then-candidate John Kerry. You can see what was coming.

According to Bob Geiger on the Huffington Post (via This Boy Elroy), Kerry calmly and thoroughly called Fox’s judgement into question. In doing so, he firmly established that Fox is unfit to be an ambassador.

Senator Barack Obama, who was chairing the meeting, all but called Fox a liar. At the very least, Fox was clearly disingenuous in his testimony.

Some may think Fox’s treatment was unfair, since he only donated money; he didn’t direct or run the smear campaign. But neither did he repudiate it when the truth came out. There’s an old saying, “if you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas”. That Fox is left scratching may make him think more carefully where he donates his money in the future.

Meanwhile, it appears another Republican smear campaign may be beginning against former Vice President Al Gore, who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000 (and the man actually elected president that year, but that’s another matter altogether).

ABC News reported (via ArcherRadio) that an obscure right wing group in Tennessee obtained the Gore’s power records for the past two years and found that the Gore’s use around 20 times the power as the national average. Right wingers were quick to brand Gore a hypocrite.

A closer examination shows something different.

Both Gores work from home, so use more power than a house that’s unoccupied all day. The house is older, lacking in energy-efficient measures that are common in modern homes. The Gores are installing solar panels, buy their power through renewable and lower-pollution generation and they purchase carbon credits to offset what’s left. Al Gore also purchases carbon credits to offset his flights.

In reading the news report, I also notice that on average the Gores used 12% less power in 2006 than 2005. If every home in America achieved a 12% reduction in power use, it would make a dramatic difference.

The report was picked up by the fairly right wing Drudge Report and the very right wing Fox News carried an “expose” of Gore’s plane use. Last year, an amateurish YouTube video that mocked Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth turned out to have been made by a Republican ad agency that has ExxonMobil—the world’s largest oil company—as a client.

So, what does all this mean? First, it shows that Republicans are desperate creatures, willing to do or say anything to cling to power. Truth, justice and the American Way aren’t slogans to them—they’re obstacles.

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, the Republican Right spent the next eight years trying to get him out of office, failing at every turn. They truly hated the man.

In 2000 they did whatever was needed to ensure George Bush became president instead of the man who actually won the election, Al Gore. In 2004, they again did whatever was needed to get Bush back in. Their first failure came in 2006—only just.

The 2006 election offers hope for 2008. Despite the lies, dirty tricks, probable illegalities and every other activity of the Republicans, they still lost. This means that if the American people want democracy badly enough, not even the Republicans can stand in their way.