The Ugly Side of the Democratic Party

Barack Obama promised to bring change to Washington, and that he has. But I don't think it's the change people (who fell under his spell) were expecting. Here's some insight into the latest happenings:

Now, let me say something about the census, because it is related to [Rebublican Senator Judd] Gregg’s decision not to join this administration. The media hasn’t focused on this yet, but it is a big issue you will hear a lot about in the days ahead.

One of the Commerce Department’s most important functions is to oversee the census that takes place every ten years. The census is used primarily to allocate the number of congressional representatives for each state in the House of Representatives (which determines votes in the Electoral College), and it is also used to determine the funding formulas for most federal programs that send tax dollars back to the states.

For obvious reasons, this is a highly sensitive political issue, and for that very reason this job has always been entrusted to the career civil servants in the Commerce Department. But after Gregg was announced as Commerce Secretary, the Obama team yanked the census out of the Commerce Department and decided that we should trust it to the tender mercies of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

For those of you who may not know, Rahm Emanuel is a brass-knuckles, hyper-partisan operative from, of course, Chicago. He was one of Bill Clinton’s key “fixers,” and served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, when many good conservatives were smeared with disgusting negative attack ads.

We were told that the census was moved from the Commerce Department because we just couldn’t trust the Republican Judd Gregg to handle it properly. Well, I don’t know anyone in Washington who questions Judd Gregg’s integrity. I think his statements above speak volumes about the man. The same cannot be said about Emanuel, and there are well-known stories about his vindictiveness that would send chills down your spine.

The decision by the Obama team to pull the census out of Commerce and give it to Rahm Emanuel is extraordinarily revealing of the hardball, partisan tactics these folks are willing to use in order to make sure our side never wins another election. If the administration does not reverse itself on the census, Republican leaders are threatening to go to court. But it’s no wonder that Judd Gregg felt like he couldn’t be a “team player” in this crowd [Gary Bauer, End of Day report, 2/13/09].