Surprisingly, Jonathan Chait…
…is condemning the persecu—I mean the prosecution—of Governor Rick Perry.
As a commenter at Althouse wrote: If you’ve lost Jonathan Chait…
In case you’ve forgotten who Jonathan Chait is, he’s a self-confessed Bush-hater par excellence:
I hate President George W. Bush. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history…I hate him for less substantive reasons, too…I hate the way he walks”“shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks”“blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudopopulist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing”“ a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.
And so Chait’s saying the Rick Perry indictment is a legally unjustified and nakedly political move is just another example of how egregiously bad it must be. And Chait doesn’t pull his punches any more than he did with Bush. The headline of the Chait piece calls it “unbelievably ridiculous,” and here are some quotes:
They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting ”” which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question ”” make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.
Lest you mistake Chait for a Perry admirer, these are his closing sentences:
To describe the indictment as “frivolous” gives it far more credence than it deserves. Perry may not be much smarter than a ham sandwich, but he is exactly as guilty as one.
It sounds as though Chait detests Perry almost as much as he hates Bush, and that’s saying a lot. Therefore it’s astounding and impressive that Chait has turned on the indictment. My guess is that Chait feels free to do so because, although it’s a case of Democrats acting stupidly, they’re Texas Democrats. Maybe Chait’s distaste for Texans overrides his distaste for Republicans?
[NOTE: I agree with many commenters on the comment thread here who point out that Chait, like Axelrod before him, is afraid of backlash to the Perry indictment, especially considering Lehmberg’s bad behavior on the police video. However, note that Axelrod’s criticism of the Perry indictment was pretty thin gruel: it “seems pretty sketchy.” Compare that to Chait’s full-throated, over-the-top criticism, which in terms of enthusiastic creativity is up there with his previous “I hate Bush” column.
In short, Chait didn’t have to hurl himself into it with such vigor. That’s what made me write this post, and it indicates to me that, in addition to his strategic reasons, Chait actually doesn’t like this indictment on the face of it.]
Chait makes a compelling case but the comments there are instructive: Most of the comment posts argue that this prosecution is okay.
What this tells me (and I have seen this every time a liberal pundit takes a contrary position) is that there are a sizable population of people who will defend literally anything done by their side.
The Dems repeatedly use the legal system to achieve their political goals. It has worked repeatedly. Exhibit 1 is gay marriage.
Prediction: The trial judge will throw out the indictment within two months.
Welcome to our great state of Texas where politics is both entertainment and a blood sport. Home of LBJ, Bushes, Cheney (he really did live in Texas at the time he was elected VP), Perot, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and unfortunately Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey along with a handful of other events that have had an effect on the Nation since 1950. To my way of thinking Larry McMurtry is probably the nicest gift Texas has given the world in addition to some decent entertainers, not to be confused with politicians in Texas since the early 1900’s. Going after Perry might help the Dems get a little more traction in the fall when the political season gets going full steam and ‘Abortion Barbie’, Wendy Davis might get her a few more votes but other than that, indicting Rick Perry will just firm the lines up a bit and I suspect it will be business as usual.
I also don’t see Perry as having the staying power for a presidential bid and here in Texas voting for Perry for President would be kind of voting for the candidate to smells the least bad. In his overstay as governor he has annoyed most all of us from time to time and the New Perry packaging is rather slick but I am not sure if it will really sell over the counter. Having said all the stuff above crap about Texas there is no other place than Texas where I want to live. Now I think I will take some folks visiting us from out-of-state up the road 30 miles to Luckenbach where “everybody is somebody”.
I doubt very much that Chait’s dismissal of the indictment is motivated by the merits of the case. That is just a convenient truth that allows him to send the unspoken message that it would be counter-productive to pursue it. If Chait believed that it was productive to pursue this case, he would defend it to the last, regardless of its lack of merit.
Better to let the smear sit out there without formal resolution.
Geoffrey Britain nails it. Chait, unlike his commenters, has an IQ over 95 and is smart enough to realize that defense of that indictment has to be done in the face of the Lehmberg video. Had the only public information about Lehmberg been notice of her arrest and plead-out, Chait would be singing a different story today.
I agree with GB and YW: this is the same critique we made yesterday about Axelrod.
No principles, just the realization that they picked a really bad poster child (Lehmberg) for this crusade.
Also, as OldTexan suggests: if this ends up not moving the ball in either direction, just “firm[ing] up the lines a bit,” then Republicans still win.
A failed attempt to hit Perry will act as an inoculation against further attempts.
But what this fraudulent and political indictment does is take Perry out of the picture for 2016. He can’t win in a crowded field because of the doubt it sows in even informed voters’ minds. The informed primary voter knows Rick would lose the general based on this alone.
I considered him a weak candidate all along and with him out, then money can go to better candidates like Cruz.
I also would like to think he could strike a private deal with Cruz. Rick’s support for Ted and when Ted wins, appointment as SecState or Homeland Security (Border and ICE).
This may inoculate Gov. Perry from any future scandals.
What Chait is likely worried about is the effect of this indictment on the 2016 elections. Perry’s biggest problem has been gaining acceptance among conservatives who remember his gaffe about immigration that destroyed his 2012 candidacy. This act of persecution will make him a hero to the Right, and Perry has really enhanced his stature by his conduct during the border crisis. With Obama clearly seeking to use immigration to turn America (And Texas) permanently Blue, the immigration issue has now become existential for Perry. You won’t hear him talking about “heartless racism” in 2016, and you won’t see the Right holding that blunder against him any longer.
As a Governor, Perry has actual executive experience, and has had a chance to demonstrate that he knows how to run something. In addition, Texas has the best economic story to tell of just about any state. That’s going to look good in 2016. After eight years of Obama, executive competence and economic success will be at a premium.
So if this indictment blows up in the Democrats face, the resulting backlash could have the effect of propelling the strongest available GOP candidate to the nomination. This was not what was intended. And, as Avi and others rightly point out, the effect of this could well be to insulate him from further outrageous charges, which the Democrats can be counted upon to throw. The grownups in the Democratic party, and there are st least a few left, are getting a bit nervous. They should be.
Geoffrey Britain, Yancey Ward, Matt_SE, Bellarion, et. al.:
I added a “NOTE” to my post. This is what I wrote:
I agree with many commenters on the comment thread here who point out that Chait, like Axelrod before him, is afraid of backlash to the Perry indictment, especially considering Lehmberg’s bad behavior on the police video. However, note that Axelrod’s criticism of the Perry indictment was pretty thin gruel: it “seems pretty sketchy.” Compare that to Chait’s full-throated, over-the-top criticism, which in terms of enthusiastic creativity is up there with his previous “I hate Bush” column.
In short, Chait didn’t have to hurl himself into it with such vigor. That’s what made me write this post, and it indicates to me that, in addition to his strategic reasons, Chait actually doesn’t like this indictment on the face of it.
Bellarion The Fortunate, 3:31 pm — “The grownups in the Democratic party, and there are st least a few left, are getting a bit nervous. They should be.”
Could I trouble you to name a couple?
At this late date, and from what I’ve seen of that crew for the past decade and a half, I don’t know of any, any more. There used to be grownups over there, people with whom I might honestly and honorably disagree — there are indeed still such dinosaurs among my friends/acquaintances — but Bellarion, could you name any, of any note, who are readily identifiable as members of the national Democrat Party?
MJR,
Ron Wyden dem senator from Oregon seems to have many of the qualities of the type of democrats of the past who were easy to admire even when one disagreed with their position on a given issue, people like Pat Moynihan and Scoop Jackson. Those two in particulr were intelligent, well meaning, and loved America and its founding values. Granted this type of democrat is like a hen’s tooth these days, but I think there are still a few of them on the state and national scenes.
parker, 8:14 pm —
I’ll have to consider Wyden; I don’t know anything about him (except his name sounds suspiciously like “Biden” — I’ll just have to get myself past that [smile]).
But Pat Moynihan and Scoop Jackson are gone, as was Paul Tsongas, another Democrat with whom I could deal intellectually and emotionally.
The intent of my challenge to Bellarion was to name someone (or someoneS) in the *present*, not in the past, when there were identifiable members of the Democrat Party who did in general evidence integrity and could be conversed with / dealt with honestly.
Okay, as I said, I’ll have to have a look at Ron Wyden. Thanks for the tip.
Dear Jonathan: Dial 1-800-Bite-Me
You’re one of those Stopped Clocks, Lefty Loon.
This is just the latest step in the Left’s march of destruction through American institutions. They think/thought that indicting Perry for a crime (whether real or imagined) would destroy him as a political threat. In the old days it might have, because a prosecutor wouldn’t act so frivolously and people would take something like that seriously. But those crowds cheering Perry at his kangaroo court mugshot session (which cheered me) tells me expectations are changing. Chalk up one more institution corrupted by the Left to the point that large numbers of people no longer respect it or take it seriously. The bad news about that, of course, is that it’s one more step down a path that could eventually lead to another civil war. And that I don’t cheer.
It reminds me of the Lancet medical journal report (which isn’t American, but the principle is the same) about deaths in Iraq. The leftist activists who thought they could use the prestige of the Lancet to put across their politicized opinion about the number of deaths in Iraq and the war in general didn’t seem to realize that instead of coasting on the reputation of the Lancet, they were destroying it instead. That’s what they do. They don’t build on the inheritance given to them, they just suck the marrow to use for their own ends and then discard the dessicated bones.