There’s a fascinating article up today on The Daily Beast by John Batchelor on “How Rahm Is Reviving the GOP”—one which is particularly fascinating because Batchelor is no GOP apologist. (Indeed, he makes such statements as “Suddenly the disgraced and demoralized Republican Congress has an unearned future,” and “The still lifeless Republicans . . . have avoided any credible renovation or even contrition for their decades of swinishness,” as well as quoting a “Republican partisan” as calling congressional Republicans “cowardly” and “brain-dead.” I should note, I don’t particularly disagree with any of this.) He describes “the superhuman clumsiness of a man who has made himself indispensable to the Obama administration and insufferable to the Democratic Congress,” and goes on to write:
The GOP always knew that Emanuel was a problem that could not be solved and could only be endured while he served three tempestuous terms in the House. But now the beleaguered Democratic majority is learning painfully that Emanuel’s talents for bullying, whimsical favoritism, cheerful power-grabbing, and self-congratulatory earthiness have transformed the first hundred days of the Obama administration’s seamless accomplishment into a second hundred days of blame and gloom. . . .
A twist of fate is that as Emanuel’s authority and ambition grow, reaching for swift closure to foreign commitments, staging bipartisan fantasy cruises, then reaching to construct Democratic-only laws that turn the theory of checks and balances into an unlimited credit card on the Treasury, the polling points not only to a rising tide of facedown Republicans but also to a sinking approval rating for a president who entirely controls Emanuel’s fate. Is there a lesson in the detail that the French Revolution waited too long to turn on Robespierre’s ruthless genius, and by the time the guillotine fell, the ludicrously reactionary aristocracy had rallied throughout Europe and led a counterrevolution that swept liberty into the ditch for another lifetime?
In between those two paragraphs are the details, which really are fascinating—and more than a little disturbing. Read the whole thing, and you’ll understand why Batchelor compares Emanuel to Robespierre.