Blue Crab Boulevard

Here’s A Theory

I'm looking at some reactions to Hugo Chavez and his vitriolic personal attacks on President Bush. I'd noted Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel had both come out rather strongly against Chavez and his antics. Which is kind of refreshing. Bush stayed out of it, too.

"You don't come into my country; you don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, scolded Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

….

"I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president: Don't come to the United States and think, because we have problems with our president, that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state," Rangel said.

"Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had speaking at the United Nations," Pelosi said. "In doing so, in the manner which he characterized the president, he demeaned himself and demeaned Venezuela."

Bush administration officials dismissed the Chavez tirade.

"We're not going to address that sort of comic-strip approach to international affairs," John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said shortly after Chavez spoke Wednesday.

I have long been warning that our internal disarray is a huge problem. It emboldens our enemies. A cheap, tin pot dictator like Chavez thinks he can bribe poor Americans with cheap oil. He doesn't understand Americans at all. But I think Pelosi and Rangel also are starting to see that there is real damage being done with the level of rhetoric not just to Bush, but to the United States. At least I hope that is what motivated them today. I know both of them have made horribly slanted and nasty attacks of a highly personal nature on the President, so it sure isn't the moral high ground that they are talking from.

So, is this the change in momentum that the Anchoress hoped she was seeing? I don't really know. It is completely out of character for Pelosi and Rangel to have done this today. So it may well be they are seeing the unintended consequences of the spiteful attack politics and not liking them very much. On the other hand, Ezra Klein thinks Ahmadinejad is winning the media war. But that, I think, raises a different question. Since we know Chavez and Ahmadinejad were in Venezuela just before coming to the UN, did the two plan out a good cop/bad cop routine? (Or maybe madman/court jester routine fits better). One of the things I think that Klein misses here is that part of the "lack of credibility" he claims Bush has with the UN is the making of the harsh, vitriolic, non-stop political attacks here at home. Including the baseless lies and distortions that have pumped around for three years over the Plame matter. The scandal that has the Baron rolling around on the floor.

There may be a few things coming home to roost. I wonder if Pelosi and Rangel may have noticed that, too.

UPDATE: The Anchoress. Damn, she's good.

Iran, Politics | Gaius Thursday, 21 September , 2006

By Anchoress, Thursday, 21 September , 2006 @ 8:15 pm

I agree. I know everyone is seeing the Rangel/Pelosi statements as politically expedient “crowd control…”

But I have to hope that it is something more…that perhaps they have opened their eyes and seen two madmen come on the heels of the only person who seems to be serious about keeping us safe and making the world a better place.

If not, if this is more politicking and posturing…well, it might still help to strengthen, not weaken, America’s hands.

But it’s true that the poison-tongue/disrespect politics of the past 5 years (recall, Rangel called Bush “Bull Connor”) has made these despots think they can do this. Mushareff, too, seems to think that Bush is weak, and that is largely thanks to the press and the Democrats. They’ve played a game that is now going to cost America something, unless they can halt the play.
By David, Friday, 22 September , 2006 @ 11:06 am

Many Bush-hating Democrats may have winced at Chavez’s U.N. performance, and it certainly left many Americans puzzled and aghast. What’s gone unnoticed, however, is that Chavez has regularly treated Venezuelans to this same type of bizarre performance for the past eight years. He is fond of regularly breaking into evening television programs for rambling three-hour harangues just like at the U.N. They can be about anything and anyone.

Early in 1998, when I was living in Caracas, I sensed that Chavez was losing support when Venezuelans — including those who originally voted for him — started to complain that they were missing their favorite “telenovelas” because Chavez was monopolizing the TV channels. The turning point came one night when many Venezuelans, during one of those performances, leaned out their apartment windows and started banging their pots and pans with kitchen spoons — a common protest in Latin America.

Many in the MSM portray the political situation in Venezuela as being all about Chavez’s attempt to bring “social justice” to the country: it’s a struggle between rich and poor and even, of all things, a “racial” struggle between Venezuela’s upper-class “whites” and its “darker” lower classes. Yet the fact is that many in Venezuela’s middle and upper-middle classes voted for Chavez –and then quickly became disillusioned over his bizarre and autocratic behavior and actions. Now, Chavez’s U.N. performance has given Americans a chance to see what Chavez and Venezuela are really all about.
By Woodsprite, Friday, 22 September , 2006 @ 2:08 pm

Pelosi and Rangel may be power hungry leftists who are seriously out of touch with mainstream America, but they are not completely stupid. It is one thing for a congressman to take rhetorical cheap shots at the opposition party, done correctly that labels you as a wise alternative in the next election. It is another thing entirely to allow such statements from a visiting head of state in your own district. Voters see that as a lack of leadership. Not a good sign for a sitting politician. The home turf must be protected.
By _Jon, Friday, 22 September , 2006 @ 2:15 pm

I find it interesting that people who blindly insult the President now can be compared to this lunatic.

Perhaps Rangel & Pelosi heard their words come out of the mouth of a lunatic and other people laughed at him. Perhaps in their head they thought; “Do these people laugh at me when I say that about Bush?”