Is there glee in the White House over the latest revelations of National Security Agency mega-snooping? I wouldn’t be surprised. Sen. Rand Paul has another arrow in his quiver, and daddy Ron Paul even praised leaker Ron Snowden, saying that Snowden has “done a great service for telling the truth.”
That kind of crazy talk doesn’t sit well with George Bush Republicans like William Kristol and Mary Matalin, of course, who have already initiated some pre-emptive snarling on the matter, but it’s pretty clear that Rand has 2016 on his mind, and the Bill and Mary show, well, those folks are getting old.
My guess/hope—and, with Obama, “no hope” is more likely than “know hope”—that the president won’t mind—too much—being driven a half a degree to the left on this one, as long as he can tell his buddies/masters at the CIA that this whole thing was entirely against his will. “Sorry, guys, you know I hate this as much as you do!”
I can also hope that, very much against the president’s will, the administration will be forced to weaken its obsessive assaults on leaks. The more martyrs there are, the more difficult persecutions become. Both Bradley Manning and Ron Snowden are articulate men of conscience, something that Obama clearly detests. Going after Snowden and Manning at the same time, well, it may make that administration a half a degree less anxious to persecute/prosecute journalists. No hope or know hope? Dunno.
One indubitable bit of good news is the increased visibility the Snowden episode gives to both Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian. By and large, the American journalistic establishment has done a miserable job defending American freedoms, and even its own freedoms, in the “War on Terror.” The New York Times, which devotes so much energy to reporting the “good leaks” from “senior government officials”—allowing the administration to spread its disinformation in a risk-free manner—momentarily acquired some balls by loudly announcing that the administration had “lost all credibility” before awkwardly undergoing semi-testicular retraction by revising its blast to “lost all credibility on this issue.” Well, two steps forward, one step back is still progress.
It’s probably a plus for the president that this freshest scandal has largely covered the IRS scandal, which is acquiring some legs as the Cincinnati Two, or Three, or Four, are now saying that they were only following orders from Washington. The Republicans certainly aren’t finished yelling about this one, even though the public might have stopped listening.
But the big winner for the president is still likely to be immigration. The right simply can’t figure out how to handle this one. The National Review, which has been struggling, just landed on New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte with both feet. Clearly more comfortable talking about what they’re against rather than what they support, the NR editors write witheringly of poor Kel, “In an op-ed published on her website, Ayotte shows no sign of knowing what the main objections of the bill’s critics are, much less of having grappled with them.”
Rand Paul certainly thinks he’s presidential material, but he’s a very long shot—i.e., loser—at best. But Sen. Marco Rubio has already appointed himself the GOP’s fair-haired boy. He won’t go down easily, and he’ll take a lot of bodies with him. President Obama must be chuckling.
Afterwords
Will the New Jersey fat boy slip in the middle and reinvent the GOP in his own image? I’d say, no.
