Rahm Emanuel Makes It About Ideology Again:
The Rude Pundit hadn't paid much attention to the Sunday blabfests yesterday because, even if it has its charms when you're participating, a circle jerk is just weird and depressing to watch, especially on a weekly basis. But then, in one of her standard blurps of incoherency, Sarah Palin tweeted from "her" Blackberry, "RahmEmanuel= as shallow/narrowminded/political/irresponsible as they come,to falsely claim Barton's BP comment is 'GOP philosophy'Rahm,u lie". The Rude Pundit's first reaction, after breaking out the decoder ring and setting it on "fucktard" (it's right after "Enigma"), was "Vicodin's a helluva drug." But then he wondered what President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the subject of such recent disdain out here in the hinterlands of Left Blogsylvania, had said.

Apparently, an unfed Rahm Emanuel is a worthless and/or destructive being (as in his unending willingness to compromise during the health care debate). However, you give him the raw meat of campaign mode, and that motherfucker becomes the nasty wolverine you want on your side. To those paying attention (like the aforementioned former demi-Governor of Alaska), on This Week with Placeholder Jake Tapper, Emanuel offered more for Democrats to battle for than any administration official has in months.

First, he got the administration's back on its role in the BP oil spill response: "BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren't going to do that." Did you know that? Because that should be towards the top of any response to criticism of the President on the underwater black gold geyser.

But when Tapper asked about Texas Rep. Joe Barton's offer to suck Tony Hayward's CEO dick while fingering his own own asshole, Emanuel showed just how to use a carving knife: "It's dangerous for the American people, because while the ranking Republican would have oversight into the energy industry, and if the Republicans were the majority, would have actually the gavel and the chairmanship. That's not a political gaffe, those were prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach to what they see."

So Sarah Palin's thong was already twisted when Emanuel started offering up pieces of the GOP for devouring, as when he said, "The approach here expressed and supported by other voices in the Republican Party, sees the aggrieved party as BP, not the American -- not the fishermen and the communities down there affected. And that would the governing philosophy. And I think what Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they've forgotten, this is how the Republicans would govern."

And, as if to prove Emanuel right (and contrary to the desperate backtracking that Palin and Mitch McConnell and other craven Republicans are doing on Barton), here's crying California Rep. Darrell "Are the cameras on?" Issa on what he'd do with subpoena power in a House of Representatives run by Republicans: "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing." You got that? Issa's saying that the White House is the enemy that needs to be attacked, not corporations that pollute and steal and kill.

Emanuel is testing a strategy here, laying out a case that ideology matters. If this is the battle line for the midterms, it's got possibilities. It ain't politicizing the oil spill - it's politicizing the Republicans' response to it. Not bad at all. When that snarling bastard Emanuel gets his teeth in something, he's gonna take chunks out of it.

(Tip o' the rude hat to Oliver Willis for the Issa link.)