---

June 07, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - June 7

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID DREIER (R), CALFORNIA SENATE: Brian Bilbury is going to be joining us as a member of this Congress because he is passionly committed to securing our borders and making sure we win the global war on terror.

NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: I wish we had won, but I do think there was a message there for the republicans. They spent over $5 million to win by four points on a district that is about 20 percent republican advantaged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: All that fuss is, of course, about California's 50th Congressional district, that's a seat formally held by the disgraced and new jailed Duke Cunningham. It is a republican district by about 15 percentage points, and the republicans have managed to hold on to it. It was much watched yesterday. Some analytical observations from all this now, from Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent of the "Washington Examiner," Mort Kondracke the executive director of "Roll Call," and Mara Liasson a national political correspondent of "National Public Radio." FOX news contributors all of them.

Well, Mara this is your territory these days. What do you make of the outcome on California's 50th? It did look like the democrats might pick that seat up for awhile there.

MARA LIASSON, "NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO": Well, it looked like she was going to do better. I wouldn't go so far as to look like they were going to win.

HUME: This is the race run by Brian Bilbray.

LIASSON: Right, Brian Bilbray who was a member of Congress, lost the seat in the neighboring district.

HUME: And went to work as a lobbyist.

LIASSON: Yes, and that, of course was the democrats tried to tie him to this republican culture of corruption and in a district where corruption has been in the news for a very long time because the previous incumbent is now in jail for bribery. I would say that it showed a couple things. No. 1, I think that the Bilbray ran this race gives other republicans some tools to survive in a hostile environment.

What he did is what Ken Mehlman told what every republican's do, which was change the election from a referendum on the president and his party into a choice between two local specific candidates and that's what he did. He used immigration, which is a hot issue in his district to show he was tougher on immigration than Francine Busby, who's democratic opponent, she was the weak one and he pulled the election out, even losing four points to a Minuteman backed harder line candidate on immigration.

So even though he only won by four, he had some additional baggage.

LIASSON: He had some additional competition from the right. I think it tells democrats if they are going to ride the anti-incumbent wave to victory, which she failed to do, you have to somehow tie the ethics argument to something bigger, if you're going to convince enough voters to say it's a time for a change and ethics are a part of it.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLLCALL": I mean, if you add the Minuteman's candidate's vote, four percent to Bilbray's vote that equals 53 percent of the vote and Bush only won it by 55 percent. Cunningham, the previous congressman won by 58 percent.

HUME: So, is it fair to say then that what would knowing be the conservative republican share of the vote in that district appears to have gone down by two points?

KONDRACKE: Two points. It looks like it just went down two points. And in this.

HUME: Despite the really quite remarkable scandal.

KONDRACKE: Well, the scandal and the environment, the national environment has most to play a factor in this. And now, Busby was not a great candidate, the democrat, and she committed this big faux pas at the end by implying, although she may not have meant it, that illegal aliens, you're inviting illegal aliens to vote in the campaign. She quickly added you don't have be a citizen to work in the campaign.

HUME: Then she made it sound like she was inviting illegal aliens to work in her campaign.

KONDRACKE: Well, that she was definitely doing. So, you know, this is far less bad than the democrats -- than the republicans had feared it would be, you know. It's not great for them, but on the other hand, it could have been a lot worse.

BILL SAMMON, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Well, it was better for the guy who won, I suppose. You know, there was a lot of talk about this being a bellwether in advance. I predict tomorrow we'll be seeing stories in the mainstream media this is more of an anomaly than a bellwether. It's true you can't take local events, in a local district and extrapolate them nationally, but you can take the issue that decided this race. It wasn't a culture of corruption. This election showed the culture of corruption was not the issue. The issue was immigration and this kills what little hope there was for Bush to pass his guest worker program through the House because every House member.

HUME: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) path to citizenship or both?

SAMMON: Both. I mean, the House has been standing firm, trying to resist Bush's entreaties to say look, don't just secure the border, you know, give us comprehensive solution. Every House person looking for re- election is looking at the race and saying, that settles it I'm not going there. There's no way Bush gets his bill now.

HUME: Where did Busby stand on these issues?

KONDRACKE: She was for the Bush position.

LIASSON: The Senate -- more or less senate bill. Look, I think I agree with Bill on this one, I think this is bad news for the premier legislative issue right now before Congress. Now, having said that, immigration isn't going work for republicans in every issue, this just happened to be the hottest issue in this district, it's on the border. Now, there are a group of republicans who feel that it works well for them, too, but it doesn't work in every district or....

HUME: Well, does it suggest, though -- I mean this is a district where corruption, most certainly, should have been an issue and perhaps it was, does this suggest the immigration issue trumps, if you can make.

LIASSON: In districts where it's important and border districts.

KONDRACKE: And this is San Diego.

LIASSON: And this is san Diego, you can't get any more border than this.

HUME: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) why we're hearing from people who, like Chris Shays (ph) in Connecticut, that's not a -- That's not a border unless you're talking about Long Island.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Right, the other thing -- the other question this raises is, is immigration enough of an issue to energize the conservative base which has been disheartened and apathetic recently, to bring them back, which republicans need to win, and that will kind of withstand this hostile environment, and also trump something like ethics. I think it might be. In terms of ethics, I think, if you've got a member of Congress who's either indicted or under investigation, that's a problem for them. In this case, the guy was gone, he was in jail. He was gone.

HUME: So, the idea is, if you've got a crooked Congressman, lock him up and win the election. When we come back with our panel, we'll discuss what the U.N. deputy secretary general said about the U.S., the Bush administration, and for that matter, FOX News.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MALLOCH BROWN, U.N. DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL: The U.S. is very constructively engaged with the U.N., but that is not well-known or understood back home, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and FOX News.

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: Fundamentally and very sadly, this was a criticism of the American people, not the American government by an international civil servant. It's just illegitimate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, wasn't that sort of fun. Mark Malloch Brown, who is Kofi Annan's No. 2 says that the public doesn't understand what a good job the U.N. is doing and what good things it's doing with the U.S. because, well, you heard him. What about this -- Bill.

SAMMON: Well, I mean, you wonder why the public has a bad opinion of the U.N. This guy is not helping matters very much. I mean, you're talking about the oil for food scandal, multi-billion dollar scandal, arguably the largest scandal in history. You're talking about the blue helmeted U.N. peacekeeping troops in Africa raping children. You talk about one of the top U.N. people after the tsunami said the Americans were stingy in giving relief to the victims and here comes this guy, basically saying the unsophisticated rubz in middle America heartland are being led around the nose by FOX News and Rush Limbaugh because they can't think for themselves.

HUME: Or Limbow as he preferred.

SAMMON: Limbow, which is of course an additional insult to mispronounce Rush's name. And it's just amazing because if you think about the heart of his argument, the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly easy in its coverage of the U.N. Now, maybe FOX News and Rush Limbaugh have rightfully pointed out the oil for food scandal and some of these other things that others have been reluctant too, but can you imagine if Bush or a republican were involved in a multi-billion oil for food scandal? There would be -- you know, there would be a much bigger human cry than there is when the U.N. is involved in it.

KONDRACKE: Well, he said -- he cast this as a sincere and constructive critique of U.S. policy towards the United Nations by a friend and admirer. Then he proceeds to go on and blame absolutely everything on -- that's who wrong with the U.N. and P.R. on the United States. For example, the reforms that are being pushed at the U.N. are being resisted by the developing countries, the so-called G-77. So, does he says, well it's the G-77's fault? No he says the reason that that's true is that anything that the United States supports, namely reform, must have a secret agenda aimed at either subordinating multi-lateral processes to Washington's end and to blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's all America's fault, even if the G-7 is blocking reform. There's no way the United States can win here.

HUME: And did he not also suggest the U.S. administration and administrations before it are to blame for the bad image of the U.N. because it hants done a good job of educating people about it?

KONDRACKE: Well yeah, that was the main burden of his critique.

LIASSON: I mean, I thought this certainly was not very diplomatic. I do think, though, that the Untied Nations is kind of up there with Ted Kennedy and I guess now Nancy Pelosi in some conservative circles, but I don't think why he thinks the United States government would be the P.R. Representative of the U.N. in the United States. I think that John Bolten's reaction, at least on paper, maybe he didn't deliver it with that kind of force, was also pretty extreme to say that, you know, he insulted the American people and this was the worst mistake in his 16 years of knowing Kofi Annan. I don't know if it went that far, but this could be a little bit of kind of Vatican politics inside U.N. politics. He started out by saying this speech is going to correct any suggestion that I lean toward the U.S. and against the G- 77. And.

HUME: No, but he's trying to get in good with the third world.

LIASSON: With his own constituency.

SAMMON: The U.N. does good things, and you know, the humanitarian work and health work and so forth, but to talk as this guy did that the United States needs the U.N. needs it for the international legitimacy on Iraq is an amazing statement given the oil for food scandal and given the fact that many of the U.N. members that balked on pulling the trigger in Iraq later turned out to be involved in this scandal in getting oil contracts. This is the kettle calling the pot black and I think that's why people in America don't like the U.N.

LIASSON: Well, wait a second. The Bush administration has not had that attitude toward the U.N. it wanted to talk with the U.N. on many things. It wants to bring Iran to the Security Council, it got resolution on Iraq. I don't think that that's true.

---

Sponsored Links

About Us | Contact | Advertise | Privacy Policy         © RealClearPolitics 2006