Stinky Memories Blunt & Turd Blossom May Not Share (In Public) Today
Karl Rove is in Missouri today to raise money for Roy Blunt. Presumably, Rove will dance carefully around the unpleasant aspects of his time in the White House, and not make a huge deal out of the fact that Blunt played a key role in navigating the George W. Bush agenda through the House as Majority Whip, and then as acting Majority Leader after Tom DeLay was indicted. Or maybe Rove will unapologetically talk about the days when Republicans said one thing to voters and then served their true constituencies in Washington.
March 1999 - Blunt Was A Key Member of George W. Bush's Presidential Exploratory Committee
Blunt was one of 10 members of Dubya's presidential exploratory team. From a May 6, 1999, Roll Call article headlined, "House Leaders Coordinating Work With Bush Key Advisers Consult Regularly On Agenda Items":
Blunt is often the only GOP leader directly involved in the day-to- day discussions, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) are on board, three sources confirmed. A high-ranking Bush official said 92 House Members and 15 Senators have offered their endorsements...
The agenda discussions have included Bush; Blunt; Bush's political director, Maria Cino; Bush's top consultant, Karl Rove; and GOP strategists Bill Paxon and Haley Barbour, among others. Informed sources say the plan for a Bush-GOP Congress collaboration is one reason the Texas governor has stacked his political team with so many Washington insiders with close connections to Republican leaders...
Blunt talks with Bush, Rove or Cino at least three times each week and has been instrumental in helping to lock up endorsements inside the House GOP Conference....
July 2002 - "Calls and meetings between Blunt and the White House on strategy now occur several times a week"
This is one of those things that Roy Blunt was very proud of in the early 2000s, but neglects to mention with regularity in 2010. From a July 19, 2002 article in Congressional Quarterly article headlined, "House GOP Keeps the Faith":
"Never before has a Republican president been able to see the advantage of having a Republican House when it's only the House that is controlled by Republicans," noted Chief Deputy Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri...
Blunt was the Bush campaign's chief contact in the House. Calls and meetings between Blunt and the White House on strategy now occur several times a week...
November 2002 - Blunt "is close to the White House, meeting regularly with top presidential political adviser Karl Rove."
After being selected by Tom DeLay to be his Majority Whip, The Star reports: "DeLay chose Roy Blunt as chief deputy whip in 1999. Blunt also is close to the White House, meeting regularly with top presidential political adviser Karl Rove."
August 2003 - Karl Rove helps raise money for Matt Blunt's gubernatorial bid.
The News-Leader: Matt Blunt "hasn't hidden from the limelight. He is raising money at Republican fund-raisers and speaking at party picnics. This month, President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, headlined a Blunt campaign event in St. Louis."
November 2003 - 'The Night The Clocks & Scoreboard Stood Still'
Conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett recalled the infamous November 22, 2003 vote in the House of Representatives to pass an unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit:
Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history--$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review. But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America's seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.
Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them--and the federal deficit--by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013... Even with a deceptively low estimate of the drug benefit's cost, there were still a few Republicans in the House of Representatives who wouldn't roll over and play dead just to buy re-election. Consequently, when the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.
What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.
September 2005 - DeLay Is Indicted
February 2006 - Blunt Loses Bid to Replace DeLay as Majority Leader
Blunt lost the confidence of the GOP Caucus in 2006, and who chose John Boehner to be their leader instead. Blunt campaigned for the job by emphasizing his many years in the GOP leadership and "links to the [existing] leadership's system of power and favors." From the Post-Dispatch, February 3, 2006:
FRESH FACE ISN'T BLUNT'S
In a surprise turnabout, House Republicans rejected Roy Blunt's bid for House ajority leader Thursday, opting to put a new face at the leadership table amid a sea of discontent, desire for reform, and election-year jitters.
GOP members picked Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as their No. 2 leader in a topsy-turvy election that Blunt, R-Mo., had been expected to win. Buffeted by a widening corruption scandal and sagging public approval ratings, GOP lawmakers itching for change rejected Blunt's pitch that he was a proven leader who would provide vital continuity and legislative results at an already tumultuous turning point for the party...
Blunt's downfall was not solely due to his status as an incumbent.
Lawmakers said that his deep ties to the lobbying effort, his status-quo agenda, and his close relationship with ex-House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, helped doom his bid. DeLay was forced to step aside after a Texas grand jury indicted him last year; he also is under scrutiny in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
November 2006 - Failure and corruption beget Democratic majority in the House
Blunt retains his post as GOP Whip, though he'll lose it soon when Republicans get trounced at the polls again.
July 2007 - Blunt commends Bush for commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
The Associated Press:
President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 21/2-year prison term in the CIA leak investigation Monday, delivering a political thunderbolt in the highly charged criminal case. Bush said the sentence was just too harsh...
Libby's supporters celebrated the president's decision.
"President Bush did the right thing today in commuting the prison term for Scooter Libby," said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri...
The leak case has hung over the White House for years. After CIA operative Valerie Plame's name appeared in a 2003 syndicated newspaper column, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald questioned top administration officials, including Bush and Cheney, about their possible roles.
Nobody was ever charged with the leak, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage or White House political adviser Karl Rove, who provided the information for the original article. Prosecutors said Libby obstructed the investigation by lying about how he learned about Plame and whom he told.
November 2008: "At 'rock bottom,' GOP aims to present new face"
Obviously, those fresh faces weren't Blunt and Rove. The Washington Times:
After a second election with big losses and no heir apparent, the Republican Party is looking for a messenger, House Republicans are girding for a leadership battle and relieved senators are standing pat after losing at least five seats...
Four years removed from Karl Rove's dream of a lasting majority, two years after Republicans' last pummeling at the polls, and with the Bush era coming to a close, Republicans see the leadership fights as a chance to regroup and redefine themselves as a lean, mean minority that shed at least 19 seats Tuesday...
Republican members said Mr. Blunt is also calling colleagues to sound them out on his chances, and several told The Washington Times that they think the lawmaker from Missouri is looking for a graceful way to exit.
