Scott McClellan and Bush's Soprano Family Values
On Friday, Scott McClellan learned the hard way that the Bush White House is a lot like the Soprano family. As HBO's legendary Jersey mobster Tony Soprano once put it, "Once you're into this family, there's no getting out." Judging by McClellan's treatment at the hands of George W. Bush's foot soldiers on the House Judiciary Committee, today's Republican Party shares the Soprano family values.
Testifying about the Plamegate affair, the former White House press secretary turned tell-all author found that the same Bush politics of payback that savaged Valerie and Joe Wilson applied to him as well. Talking to McClellan as if he was Soprano turncoat Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced, "Scott McClellan will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the president and his friends for a few pieces of silver." Iowa's Steve King theatrically chastised McClellan for betraying what can only be described as a blood oath to George W. Bush:
"Couldn't you have taken this to the grave with you and done this country a favor?"
That McClellan would pay a price for going against the family became clear as soon as details of his book What Happened appeared in the press. On May 29th, President Bush's friends on Fox and Friends swore a vendetta against McClellan. As host Gretchen Carlson put it:
"Scott McClellan better not have any skeletons in his closet. I hope he didn't do anything that he doesn't want the world to know about because we all have, and all of his secrets are going to be coming out."
On Friday, Congressman Ric Keller (R-FL) went digging for those skeletons. Furious that McClellan, who during the 2000 campaign helped candidate Bush evade allegations of past cocaine use only to now air his doubts about the President's previous penchant for blow, Keller asked:
"Do you recall if you've ever used illegal drugs?"
As for former While House capos and consiglieres including Ari Fleischer, Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, McClellan the faithful Bush soldier turned traitor isn't the Scottie they knew. "Something changed, something happened to Scott the last six months," Fleischer said, "to put him on a different path." One-time Cheney aide and omnipresent right-wing talking head Mary Matalin put McClellan's treachery this way:
"The irony is that he got that job out of loyalty. This will stand as the epitome, the ultimate breach of that code of honor."
After learning that his Uncle Junior and his own mother Livia conspired to have him whacked, Tony Soprano declared them each "dead to me."* Apparently, when it comes to Scott McClellan, President Bush and his army of conservative thugs couldn't agree more.
* In Godfather II, Michael Corleone, too, declared his brother Fredo "dead to me." Ironically, "Fredo" happens to be George W. Bush's nickname for disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the one man who through a unique combination of deceit, stupidity and selective amnesia still keeps his boss' secrets secret.
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