Republican Black Sheep

It's only a beginning, but I think we've got a trend here. Republican party discipline is wearing down. The flunkies are no longer rolling over and letting themselves be the fall guys. I guess they've forgotten the Mission: Impossible spiel: "Should you or any member of your team be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions."

Scooter Libbey has testified that he leaked classified information on the authorization of "superiors." (Of course, he assures us that he's not planning to actually use this as a defense when his case comes to trial. Maybe he'll be willing to take the bullet after all.)

Michael "Brownie" Brown has returned to Capitol Hill this week to complain that he'd been hung out to dry by the Bush Administration.

Brown told the committee he felt he had been made a scapegoat. "I certainly feel somewhat abandoned," he added.

He said he believed he had had a good relationship with Bush, but added: "Unfortunately he called me "Brownie" at the wrong time. Thanks a lot sir," he said, to laughter.

And Jack Abramoff isn't exactly going quietly, either. Bush has denied knowing the man, a Bush "Pioneer" who raised at least $100,000 for his campaign, but leaked e-mails written by Abramoff relate a different story. The lobbyist claims to have met with Bush a number of times and that Bush knows him well enough to talk with him about Abramoff's children. (The leak itself seems to have a bit of a convoluted history, too. Tbogg came across some interesting posts at The National Review's blog, The Corner. Think Progress said they received the e-mails from Kim Eisler, the national editor of Washingtonian magazine. But at The Corner, it was suggested that Eisler hadn't intended the e-mails to be published. Apparently, they claimed, he had passed them to Think Progress under the mistaken impression that they were Washington journalists who would continue to sit on the breaking news and keep it to themselves. And all along I thought it was the journalist's responsibility to actually report the news. That's so last century.)

In going into all this, though, it strikes me that maybe this lack of discipline isn't so new. In Bush's first administration, we had Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury secretary, who cooperated with Ron Suskind to tell his story in The Price of Loyalty. We had anti-terrorism guru Richard Clarke, who exposed the holes in the Bush Administration counter-terrorism program. And we had John DiIulio, former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and one of the first Bush officials to break with the administration, who gave us the phrase "Mayberry Machiavellis" (and also talked with Ron Suskind in Esquire). We've had plenty of insider insights into White House incompetence, but we've (and by we, I mean the media) managed to completely ignore it up to now. Why is it all of a sudden getting traction? Have we reached a critical mass of administration failure? Do presidential approval ratings below 40 percent give the press newfound courage? I don't know, but I guess we'll take what we can get. At least all this bucking of the administration will make it easier for the next scapegoatted supporter to join the chorus.