Comey the Commie
I couldn’t resist that headline, even though it’s not true that Comey is a Communist.
But apparently he once was a Communist, according to his own report, and it wasn’t just a supposed one-off like Brennan (whom I wrote about here).
During a 2003 interview in New York magazine, back when he was still US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, here’s what Comey said:
Comey has been savaged by William Safire and lauded by Chuck Schumer; just what kind of Republican is he, anyway? This sets Comey howling again. “I must be doing something right!” he says. “In college, I was left of center, and through a gradual process I found myself more comfortable with a lot of the ideas and approaches the Republicans were using.” He voted for Carter in 1980, but in ’84, “I voted for Reagan—I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I’m not even sure how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point, I’ll have to figure it out.”
I think by now he’s figured it out, all right. Is “Trump-hater” a political party, or does it transcend parties?
And please see this piece I wrote a while back about this whole “Comey is a Republican” characterization.
It’s one thing to have been sort of leftist in college (during the 1970s, Comey was a teenager). But to have been a Communist was still quite unusual and quite radical. People change (this blog is dedicated to exploring political change), but that doesn’t mean that former Communists should be heading the FBI, unless they have fully explained their previous affiliation with Communism and what motivated their change, and exactly and precisely where they are politically today (something Comey never does). Even then I wouldn’t advocate naming that person director of the FBI, much less of the CIA like Brennan. But Obama appointed both of them to their respective positions of governmental power.
[ADDENDUM: No need to point out to me that it’s possible that Comey really is still some sort of Communist in deep cover. Yes, it’s possible (although if he were, I doubt he’d be admitting his past Communist sympathies in a 2003 interview). But I just don’t happen to think that’s what’s going on with him.]
The equally worthless and mendacious James Clapper can be added to the unethical triumvirate appointed by Obama. Such malfeasance at the highest levels of power in our government is troubling indeed.
Once a Commie Always a Commie. What better way for Putin to hobble America than to have a deep cover Commie FBI head insert the Pee Tape Dossier into the public eye. I wonder what his real name is? Igor Komisky?
Also, John Brennan admitted to a CIA polygraph tester that he once voted for the Communist Party. Hmmmmmmm
Obama almost certainly viewed Comey and Brennan’s communist past as a positive. In fact, it may have been the determinitive factor in his choosing them.
Ken:
The link in there to “whom I wrote about here” is to my post about that.
Perhaps like Herr Müller he only claimed to be e Republican when it was politically advantageous to be one.
Comey deep down may still be a communist, while Herr Müller is straight out of central casting as a high ranking member of The NSDAP’s SS
People do change, and many people who were attracted to leftist ideology when they were young grow up and realize it’s wrong and dangerous. A clear statement that the person now realizes his early opinions were foolish and wrong takes care of the problem. An actual history of Communist membership spanning some years and/or demonstrated participation in Communist activities would be more of a problem.
I don’t see, from the Comey quotes above, how deep his Communism was and whether he has clearly repudiated it.
Comey’s kind of a weird guy isn’t he?
I consider Brennan and Comey very different cases. Comey didn’t vote for the CPUSA, as far as I can tell. Brennan voted Communist in 1976. I wonder if Brennan realized that the bagman carrying Moscow’s gold to Gus Hall and the CPUSA was an FBI agent. Read Operation Solo: The FBI’s Man in the Kremlin. Brennan thought the CPUSA was a great tool for social change, when in fact the FBI used its bagman for the CPUSA to get an inside track on what was happening inside the Kremlin. (Morris Childs, the FBI’s bagman, had made friends w Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin’s gray eminence, when he was in a party school circa 1930, so yes, Morris Childs had an inside track.)
What a fool, that Mr. Brennan. In addition, the USSR had booted on Solzhenytsin in 1974. Only a damned fool would have voted for the CPUSA in 1976.
I take Comey’s comment as a flippant take on what some say on the right: “those liberals are all Commies.” He was poking fun at that. I will on occasion label myself a deplorable, or a fascist, or a racist. I do so to poke fun at those on the left who make the assumption that, that those who vote Republican are fascists, deplorables, and racists. As I see it, Comey was doing the same thing. He voted for Jimmah, for goodness sake! As I did- at least the first time.
Gringo said: “I take Comey’s comment as a flippant take on what some say on the right: “those liberals are all Commies.” He was poking fun at that.”
i agree. It was my first thought.
Call me a cynic but I think these men identify as whatever they think will benefit them at the time. Over the years I have heard a lot of Washington elite spouting the ideology they think the plebs want to hear and then do the exact opposite. It doesn’t matter what party they may be a member of – they lie. I think the best group moniker for all of them is grifter. They are for anything that generates money for them and the ideological discrepancies explained away as pragmatism. It’s all bull and they are no better than snake oil salesmen.
Taqqiya.
Comey was born in 1960 so he would have hit college around 1978. That was several years late for radical New Left-style communism.
The Weather Underground had gone underground and were forgotten. Jerry Rubin was rebooting himself as a businessman. Patty Hearst was a tragic joke. And disco was the hot, happenin’ music. Beep, beep! Toot toot!
However, I’ll bet Comey did his share of inhaling….
I agree, Comey is shape shifter, no firm principals beyond what benefits Comey. Just like Slick Willy and a host of others. Polite society should shun him after he is let out on parole after serving 12 years of a 20 year sentence.
Also… Comey, Comey, chameleon.
Karma works, too. Comey, Karma, chameleon.
I also thought Comey might just be joking about being a communist. But considering Brennan and Obama you can’t be sure. It still blows my mind that someone who admitted voting communist was made head of the CIA.
Lightning on May 16, 2019 at 9:41 pm at 9:41 pm said:
Call me a cynic but I think these men identify as whatever they think will benefit them at the time.
* * *
Indeed.
2003 interview
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/n_9353/
“There’s little risk Comey will lose his sense of humor in his new job. It’s only his soul that’s up for grabs.”
A witticism that probably seemed like satire at the time.
I wonder.
If all of the Communist and, for that matter, Muslim influences in Obama’s life had been fully exposed and examined by the MSM, would Obama have ever been elected President?
Without the protective cover offered by the MSM–then, and to this day, I don’t think that Obama would have had a chance.
Parker:
I see what you did there. Here’s a tip of the hat for that! Had I thought to write that (I’m not that quick) I might have said “. . . society should shun THEM . . .”
Taking Obama as an example, there was also his admittedly heavy teen age marijuana use, which the MSM treated as almost an endearing quality, via the MSM’s “Oh, those crazy kids” coverage of his high school CHOOM gang.
How many other important, critical pieces of information–that we should have been told about–about the background of Comey, Clapper, Brennan, and others, his the MSM very consciously failed to inform us about, or has twisted into something benign, when it wasn’t.
From the classic film Double Indemnity. Barton Keys (Edward G. Robinson) speaking to Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray).
Walter Neff’s overall trait is that of an opportunist. While not entirely amoral, he demonstrates his lack of smarts in the choice of his partner in crime.
New stories at RedState this morning about revelations from the Kavalec Memoes, indicating that the FBI (Comey) should have known from the beginning that Steele’s intel was almost certainly false.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2019/05/17/key-russian-sources-steele-dossier-identified-will-blow-mind/
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/05/17/fbi-knew-chief-source-trump-russia-conspiracy-previously-lied-used-anyway/
Snow on Pine 8AM:
*Exactly* right about Obama. With honest coverage from the press he never would have been nominated let alone elected.
Also missing from Obama’s CV in 2008: his Chicago machine-politics history.
Since he was reported as laughing at the time he spoke, the probability that it was hyperbole stands to reason; only the formality of the term “communist” undermines the effect; though as you point out, it does potentially indicate what he contemptuously considered the ideological mindset of conservatives to have been.
Had he said “Marxist”, it would have been even more difficult to take the remark as bald-faced exaggeration.
Comey is more like McCain, tho even more dirty. Claims to believe in conservative ideals, now, after being a commie when young. Thus, not a heartless non-socialist then, not a brainless non-conservative now. As a RINO, he gets to say bad things about other Reps (often true bad things), but with more authority.
He’s the kind of guy who finds the right boots to lick to get ahead fastest. Also tall, which gives him some extra “presence”. He likes authority.
Didn’t Trump call him a sleazebag in some tweet – as is actually usual, Trump was right. Maybe it was slimeball.
n.n. was first, but here is better rhythm:
Comey, Comey,
Comey, Comey,
Comey, Chomee-leeon … he comes and goes.
And I hope he soon goes away to jail, where he belongs.
By the way, it seems an appropriate time for me to take a sip of my own advice.
James Comey, is not a fellow American in any morally obliging sense whatsoever.
In fact his saboteur-like, main chance grabbing, self-aggrandizing and opportunistic termite style assaults on the institutional rule of law, render him an outright enemy of those critical values and principles which make this a polity worth preserving in the first place.
Parading around with a copy of Reinhold Niebuhr under his arm and citing it for effect does precisely nothing to counterbalance the undermining work he has done on the institutional and procedural ethics of American executive agencies.
He has, to speak plainly, placed himself beyond the moral pale; even if he is formally entitled, and no more, to due process of law and a scrupulously fair trial and sentencing
As far as I am concerned personally, moral alien Comey can drown in 6 inches of dirty ditch water while I lounge nearby with a beer and a lawn chair.
But in reality as he is 6’8″ tall, a mere six inches of ditch water is probably too shallow for him to expire in, even if he were lying prone.
Make that, a foot deep then.
Also missing from Obama’s CV in 2008: his Chicago machine-politics history.
Again, Obama lacks the people skills to prosper in ward politics. He also lacks the interest in the granular problems people have.
Obama’s early career is more a testament to how culture and institutional factors have removed competitive pressure from politics. He had multiple terms in the state legislature and faced hardly any opposition. Also, state legislatures are given scant coverage by metropolitan media, so even the most informed of his constituents hardly knew what he was up to.
Art Deco on May 17, 2019 at 2:58 pm at 2:58 pm said:
Also missing from Obama’s CV in 2008: his Chicago machine-politics history.
Again, Obama lacks the people skills to prosper in ward politics. He also lacks the interest in the granular problems people have.
Obama’s early career is more a testament to how culture and institutional factors have removed competitive pressure from politics. He had multiple terms in the state legislature and faced hardly any opposition. Also, state legislatures are given scant coverage by metropolitan media, so even the most informed of his constituents hardly knew what he was up to.
* * *
All very true, but Trump put a lot of those culture and institutional factors into play, and the ball is still on the field.
With the Democrat’s Three Amigas for examples, from the Left side of the continuum, it may be that the lack of competitive pressure is ending.
Whether Obama was “good” or “bad” at Chi-town machine politics was probably less relevant in 2008 than the fact that it was *all* his electoral history comprised.
I did caution and warn people here that were doing the Trum election victory rally parade thing in 2016, that there’s a whole new world of Byzantine backstabbing in DC. Trum is gonna clean up the swamp by being compassionate and merciful to Hillary Clinton? Haha. Yeah, like that’s gonna work.
No, Trum is lucky he hasn’t gotten JFKed in DC. That’s what they do.
Comey sure knows his Lenin:
“The president claiming the FBI’s investigation was “TREASON“ reminds me that a Russian once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” That shouldn’t happen in America. Who will stand up?”
Just sayin’
Ken – in Bizarro world, everything is backward.