It’s More Like the Scottsboro Boys, Actually

Scott recently pointed out that “when Lanny Davis is defending you it’s pretty much a dead certainty that you’re wrong.” This can’t be good news for Ted Stevens, whom Davis — apparently straight-faced — compares to the Duke Lacrosse players, Richard Jewell, and Steven Hatfill. There’s a shower of chocolate Yoo-hoo spewing through my nose as I type this, so forgive the mess; I suppose this is precisely the sort of Concern Troll vs. Straw Man cage match that Davis typically convenes, and I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who actually urged Democrats not to “politicize” the Abramoff scandal would enter a plea on behalf of someone who’s become a pinata for members of his own party. But pointing out that Lanny Davis is a wanker never really gets old, and this provides as good an opportunity as any to quote Wolcott’s canonical assessment of Davis from early 2006:

This is the sort of idiot we’re inflicted with, the perfect representative of the Beltway Democrat who cautions against politicizing anything remotely political for fear it might give David Broder a spot of indigestion. Imagine what the Newt Gingrich of the early nineties would have done if he had had something like this handed to him on a platter–he wouldn’t have sent it back to the kitchen. He would have worked it for everything it was worth, and more. But Beltway weenies are too timid and prissy to exploit a golden opportunity. Everyone knows the Abramoff scandal has “Republican” stencilled on every side of it and if you won’t/can’t use it to jump all over the Republican Party and the DeLay machine, what the hell are you even doing in the Democratic Party? As more details surface, the Abramoff cesspool is going to make the K-Street crowd and their Republicans on retainer look even worse than they do now, and here’s Davis waving the white cocktail napkin of surrender and urging preemptive pullback. Beltway Dems like Davis and the DLC crowd don’t want to politicize the Iraq war, or the Alito hearings, or the Katrina clusterfuck, or the NSA spying scandal; they shy away from every prospective fight and prevent any ongoing debate or controversy from gaining traction.