Yesterday E.J. Dionne adopted the frank language that is usually reserved for the blogosphere, calling the regressive leadership on their modern day McCarthyism. I’m amused that Karl Rove’s saying that many citizens are un-American because they are liberals has been justified by the administration because after all, he wasn’t accusing Democrats of being un-American , just liberals. For years, calling someone a liberal was a sure way to win elections, but this new step is accusing them of sedition is outrageous.
But you expect that from a Karl Rove. Unfortunately, Republicans who have had moderate reputations are jumping on the bandwagon. And they’re ready to blatantly threaten industries that dare to consider Democrats as owners. Sally Jenkins has a good column this morning on Congressman Tom Davis’ attempt to blackball George Soros, the billionaire supporter of liberal causes.
I must have been napping, and that’s why I missed the part where we became a country in which Democrats are no longer allowed to buy things.
If lawmakers start banning people from owning ballclubs just because of their politics or because they have a few woo-woo ideas, there are going to be a lot of shuttered ballparks. Anybody who tries to say that MLB owners should meet a certain standard of political correctness will get knocked back on their butts every time by two simple words: Marge Schott.
It was all right for Schott, the racist collector of Nazi memorabilia, to own a baseball team for years, but it’s not for Soros, the billion-dollar philanthropist and Nobel Prize nominee?
That’s exactly what some Republicans on Capitol Hill are suggesting, led by Tom Davis, the Republican from Virginia who is trying to steer the sale of the Nationals and who says Soros is just not the kind of person “we need or want in the nation’s capital.”
I don’t much care about George Soros, and I don’t care at all which rich guy gets the privilege of spending $400 million in heavy sugar on the Nats. But I do care when members of a ruling party start pushing people around, because next, it could be me. This is supposed to be the party that doesn’t believe in government telling business or private citizens what to do.
Davis defends himself by saying his is “just one fan’s opinion.” That’s the same tact he took in opposing a proposed home and office development he didn’t like near his neighborhood. He said he was just attending a community hearing as “a homeowner.” But then he threatened to pull federal funding for the project.
… the crowd of about 500 broke into applause when Davis announced that he would amend a Metro funding bill to block the sale or lease of land the agency owns next to the Orange Line station in Fairfax County.
In this case, he seemed more interested in keeping Democrats out of his district than he was about the impact on the neighborhood.
With the Nats sale, he seems again intent on keeping out Democrats and proving himself a hypocrite.
You can’t help wondering what’s behind the outrageous attack on Soros, who isn’t even a major partner in the bid for the Nats. (Local entrepreneur Jon Ledecky is the real bidder.) Isn’t it strange that rival bidder Fred Malek, the head of the Washington Baseball club, just happens to be a very big GOP fundraiser? And isn’t it strange that, in a telephone interview, Davis went out of his way to praise Malek’s bid? And isn’t it strange that these attacks on Soros from Republicans came on the very day that Ledecky and his partners were being interviewed by MLB?
Davis doesn’t bother to hide his agenda. He says straight out that baseball needs to cultivate some good will on Capitol Hill at the moment, given the steroid investigations, and that selling the team to billionaire Soros, a critic of President Bush and a massive financial supporter of liberal causes, would anger him.
Yet, Fred Malek is praised.
Malek is a former Richard Nixon aide. When he was White House personnel chief, he was summoned by Nixon to discuss a “Jewish cabal” in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nixon believed Jews in the bureau were tilting stats to make his policies look bad. He wanted to know how many Jews there were in the bureau, and he wanted Malek to count them. Malek eventually complied and produced a list.
Where’s the ADL on this?