It is a convoluted world we live in. People do things for reasons that are sometimes apparent and sometimes not so apparent.
I personally tend to go with straight forward motives when it comes to behavior both political and criminal. Bill Clinton was on the stump this fall on behalf of Barak Obama because in four years his wife will be running for president. Jimmy Holmes opened fire in that Colorado theater because he is crazier than bats on peyote. And finally, a gaggle of republican senators are after Ambassador Susan Rice's head simply because they want to prove that even after losing the national elections they still have penises.
Ms. Rice, who is the U.S.'s chief representative to the U.N. has been rumored to be in line for the Secretary of State job when Hillary Clinton goes off looking for a campaign staff. A gang of GOP senators led by John McCain have gone ballistic, even though the president hasn't nominated anyone for the post at this time. In fits of absolute apoplexy they have blamed Ms. Rice for the Benghazi disaster, then the supposed cover up, and even a couple of embassy bombings back before al Qaeda was a house hold name and she had a job at State that meant something. The way they've been acting you'd think the president had floated the name, Hugo Chavez out there for the job. Their opposition has rivaled that of the late, unlamented, Joseph McCarthy both in tone and scope.
So what is the deal here? Why do these people go absolutely off their nut when her name is mentioned, even after having met with her and the interim CIA chief privately? Is it really the aforementioned testosterone factor? Is it that the senators are a tad bitter that a few weeks ago black Americans and women told them and their candidates where to shove it? Can it be they truly don't like women of color, no matter what their qualifications?
Well last week along came Rachel Maddow. Maddow is the host of an MSNBC show and a known screaming liberal, not to mention an up front homosexual. She has a theory. It is a shade Byzantine and perhaps a bit too subtle for the likes of republicans, but it begins like this. On November 6th one of the senate seats the GOP lost was held by Scott Brown in Massachusetts. It was, in fact, the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy before he went off to that great touch football game in the sky. Brown was a moderate of sorts, but then when compared to some of the other loons the republicans ran practically everyone, including Josef Goebbels looked moderate.
Be that as it may, democrat Elizabeth Warren won 54% to 46% and Mr. Brown was prematurely retired. However, one of the other names being bandied about for Secretary of State is John Kerry. Kerry, of course, holds the other Massachusetts senate seat. In the Maddow plot line things go this way: the GOP puts the kibosh on the Rice nomination and they let Kerry slide in. That opens up a senate seat that will be decided by a special election. Scott Brown is still very much available to run and one would suppose eager to do so. If he were to win the republicans would pick up another seat in the senate and make life even that much tougher for one, Barak H. Obama.
Maddow had NBC NEWS chief foreign correspondent, Andrea Mitchell on and asked her about it. The wizened Mitchell has been around for years and seen quite nearly everything when it comes to Washington shenanigans. She actually seemed as befuddled as just about everyone else when it came to the reaction of the McCain posse to Rice's possible nomination. She even thought there was a chance that one or more of the senators believed Rice had committed a personal offense against them at some point. It was, she postulated, the only reasonable answer for all the vitriol. After listening to Maddow she shrugged and admitted her idea might have some merit. Her exact words were, "It is as good a reason as any." That is hardly a ringing endorsement, but it emphasizes that even veteran observers of hard ball politics are scratching their heads over all this.
I've always known the republicans are a vicious lot, never to be trusted. However, if the Maddow theory is right it proves there are some higher thought processes going on in the reptilian cores of their brains that I would have never given them credit for.
Unfortunately for all of us, conspiracy theories are by nature never proven, or disproven. Even if I had Brother Oswald on video admitting he assassinated Jack Kennedy there would be those who claim I had doctored it. That I was part of the vast plot. If Susan Rice's nomination is killed, or if she is never nominated in the first place and Kerry is, we'll never know for sure if it was all by design, or just happenstance.
In the end what really matters is that the republicans need to finally come to grips with the fact their power base is dwindling. They need to realize that savaging an accomplished ambassador who happens to be an African American woman isn't exactly the way to reach out to the people who shunned them last month. Yes, gentlemen, those demographics that kicked your ass aren't going to magically turn around. You might want to think about that as you ferociously libel Susan Rice, no matter what your true motives are.
After all, sometimes it isn't the end game itself. Sometimes it is how you got there that will come back and bite you in the ass.
sic vita est
12-3-12
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