Batfink's Beep -- 02-21-06

Schumer backs Halliburton

February 21, 2006

These are indeed strange times. No less an America-bashing liberal than Senator Chuck Schumer (Crackpot-NY), in the course of a discussion with Fox's John Gibson about the UAE port management matter, claimed that, were, say, Halliburton to step into the breech to manage the 6 ports covered by the deal, he would be OK with that.

From the above referenced Newsmax report:

Schumer explained, however, that Democats had previously hated Halliburton because "they made large amounts of profit" from what he said were no-bid contracts.

But if Hallibuton "can do the best job and they get the contract on the merits," Schumer said, "I'd pat them on the back."

How that must have hurt. Imagine a guy like him having to admit that there was a chance that Halliburton might actually be able to do a good job at anything. The fact is, of course, that there are certain things that Halliburton does, for which it has no American competition. For example, when we needed all those oil wells in Kuwait capped in a big hurry, it wasn't so much a plum for big H as much as the matter that no other American company DOES that sort of thing. You can hate the power company all you want, but when the power goes off, calling your corner bakery shop won't do you any good.

But I've strayed from my point.

I bring this up to point out the strange bedfellows this matter has made, which is another way of saying how certain politicians are being forced to choose between their hatred of Bush, and their hatred of things American generally, and certain American companies in particular. When a true-believing America hater like Schumer, in the course of venting his desire to hit Bush over the Treasury approval of a government-owned UAE firm to manage 6 of our largest ports, is forced to admit that he would countenence turning the job over to the evil Halliburton, it's clear that he has painted himself into a corner.

It is an entirely political calculation on his part, of course -- if Schumer's desire for American management of our ports were a good-faith one based on ligitimate security concerns, he would probably not have held up the nascent Department of Homeland Security a couple years ago because it couldn't be made into a union boondoggle. It was just politics that forced him to choose, but choose he did.

The beauty of all this, of course, aside from that Democrats are seen bowing to the manifest political will of the public to not allow management of our ports in wartime fall to an Arab government controlled agency, which is a hopeful sign that America hasn't fully lost its will to win and Democrats know it, is twofold as I see it -- first of all, it suggests that the hatred shown by the Democrat party has a limit as to how far it can plausibly go, and that the end of the road may be near. Sooner or later, that is to say, you find yourself having to pick a side based on which hated thing you hate less, and the squirming that accompanies a choice like that is always illuminating. Moreover, it will make it harder to slap companies like Halliburton the next time we need such as them to do some big and difficult job in a war zone that nobody else besides the military would touch.

Second, it will almost certainly cause heartburn and schism among other rabid liberal partisans, who might have been inclined to decide the matter of who they'd rather have controlling our ports, a foreign Arab government or Halliburton, the other way. Schumer may be, whatever else he is, a canny political operator who knows when the vast majority of the public is on the other side of a matter, and he may have the brains to do what he can to make lemonade out of those lemons when he has to. But I'd wager that a significant, and in the current state of political division, crucial, portion of his constituency will not be quite so rational about it.

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