A Rational Animal

"If I was Heather Wilson, I’d be thinking about taking a long trip to Baghdad, where the conditions are a little more subdued," said former Gov. Dave Cargo.

Dave Cargo is New Mexico’s Republican éminence grise.  Translated, he’s an old-school Republican, one respected by pols and ops on both sides of the aisle - you know, the kind of guy that doesn’t exist in local GOP politics anymore.  And if Dave is suggesting that Baghdad’s safer for Heather right now than New Mexico . . . well, if I’m Heather, I’m boarding the next flight out.

At issue is the response of David Iglesias, New Mexico’s now-former U.S. Attorney, to being purged.  Deputy Attorney General Paul A. McNulty testified before Congress that (with the exception of the replacement of Arkansas U.S. Attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins, III with a Karl Rove acolyte), all purged attorneys were being replaced because of poor performance.

Of course, that explanation didn’t last long; it was almost immediately followed by an off-the-record clarification to the effect that it wasn’t "performance" qua performance as U.S. Attorneys; it was actually their alleged refusal to follow administration priorities.  Regardless, the DOJ’s decision to slander their performance in a congressional hearing had an unexpected side effect:  It turned several of the prosecutors, good GOP soldiers all, into outspoken critics of the administration’s handling of the whole mess.

And none of them was more of a good soldier than our own David Iglesias.  He’s carried water for the Republican Party - and especially for this criminal administration - for years.  And as a Hispanic (albeit from Panama), he was especially useful to them locally, in a state with an enormous Hispanic population that overwhelmingly votes Democratic.  As Cargo put it:

"Still, here’s this Hispanic prosecutor that you hauled all over the country and built up into a kind of poster child, and now here’s your poster child and you’re using him for target practice."

Of course, Cargo also goes on to say that Iglesias’s political future is "through" with the NM GOP. 

I’m always especially appalled when women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and members of the LGBT community support the Republican Party.  I fall into three of those four categories, and I can’t imagine wasting an ounce of support on an entity that, at best, seeks to marginalize me (and, frankly, might prefer me to fall off the face of the earth, or at least into a cell in Gitmo).  So people like David Iglesias simply astound me.  I mean, what?  Did he really think they actually gave a damn about him?  Did he actually think they considered him a full-fledged member of the "real" party, of the inner circle?

David, I got news for ya:  With that bunch, you’re only welcome as long as you’re useful.  And once you made the decision that keeping your law license was more important than illegally helping Heather keep her seat - well, your stock plummeted straight through the floor, buddy.

All that said, even I have to admit that David sounds a little whiny.  As TPM’s David Kurtz notes:

The thing about Iglesias is that his own account of the calls from Wilson and Domenici doesn’t cast him in a particularly flattering light. He admits that according to Department of Justice policy he should have notified his superiors of the calls but failed to do so. It also looks like Iglesias was prepared to take the fall and go quietly until Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified to Congress that the U.S. attorney dismissals were for performance reasons. Only after he was smeared did Iglesias speak out.

And that, really, is the point.  Iglesias would have continued to be the good GOP soldier, collaborating in his own "political fragging," if they hadn’t shown their gratitude for his willingness to do so for the bullshit that it was.  Maybe now he’s finally realizing that all along, he’s been nothing but their rent boy for the partisan ambitions of their white in-crowd.

Oh, well.  Personally, I couldn’t care less whether he’s singing because he’s truly appalled (yeah, right; we’ve already debunked that one) or because his precious pride is finally sufficiently wounded - just as long as he sings.  He and several of the other prosecutors have been summoned to testify before Congress on Tuesday - this while their former boss, Alberto Gonzales, flips off an entire branch of government: