party chairman

From TPM comes this email Dave Bartholomew, the chair of the Virginia Beach GOP, thought was funny enough to forward to other people:

MY DOG

I went down this morning to sign up my Dog for welfare.

At first the lady said, "Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare".

So I explained to her that my Dog is black, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and has no frigging clue who his Daddy is.

So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify...

My Dog gets his first check Friday.

Is this a great country or what?

Bartholomew offered to resign Monday night over the email, but there are some interesting defenses coming out of other Virginia GOP higher-ups:

David Bartholomew is not a racist and agreed to resign because the e-mail had become a distraction to the Nov. 2 election, said Gary Byler, the 2nd Congressional District GOP chairman, after meeting with Bartholomew.

The e-mail was dated March 15 and sent from the address that Bartholomew uses as party chairman. Bartholomew forwarded it without reading the contents when "he was first getting familiar with the Internet," Byler said.

Good for him:

Mike Huckabee is challenging the results of the Washington state Republican caucuses, his campaign announced Sunday, after accusing the state party chairman of calling the election for John McCain before all the votes were counted.

The campaign will be pursuing a full investigation, including sending in lawyers to join those already on the scene in the state, officials told FOX News.

Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser announced late Saturday that McCain had won the 2008 Republican caucuses in the state with 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. McCain had 25.5 percent over Huckabee's 23.7 percent in that race.

I pointed this out earlier - the state leader of the GOP called the race for McCain. That was with only 87% of the votes in and McCain ahead by only 240 votes. Something sounds really fishy here and the voters of Washington deserve to find out if their vote counted or if some political hack is trying to screw over democracy.

Looks like the White House was pretty hands on with the firing of U.S. attorneys:

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction with his job performance including his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Chairman Allen Weh said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

Weh's account calls into question the Justice Department's stance that the recent decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys, including Iglesias, was made without the White House weighing in. Justice Department officials have said the White House's involvement was limited to approving a list of the U.S. attorneys after the Justice Department made the decision to fire them.

Yeah - why not call the guy who leaks the identity of CIA agents to do your dirty work. True we got more Republican Senators outraged with the situation and the strong hand of oversight might start to come down.

You know you are one screwed candidate when you can't even get your own state party to back you:

The state Republican Party bluntly told Rep. Katherine Harris that she couldn't win this fall's Senate election and that the party wouldn't support her campaign, a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press shows.

Party Chairman Carole Jean Jordan made a last-ditch attempt in the confidential May 7 letter to force Harris out of the race for the nomination to challenge Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson. But the next day, Harris turned in paperwork to get her name on the Sept. 5 Republican primary ballot.

The letter came as Gov. Jeb Bush was trying to get state House Speaker Allan Bense into the race. Bense announced later that week that he would not enter the race.

Harris rose to national prominence as Florida's secretary of state during the bitter presidential election recount in 2000 that gave the White House to George Bush. She was elected to the U.S. House in 2002.

You better watch it Florida Republicans - Katherine might get mad and spill the beans about 2000.