Less than 24 hours after his upset defeat of a longtime Democratic congressman from New Orleans, Anh “Joseph” Cao found the weight of the entire Republican Party resting on his diminutive shoulders.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee said Cao’s election Saturday night showed that, even battered and bruised from political drubbings in the past two years, Republicans “still know how to win elections.” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was more blunt, issuing a memo Sunday declaring: “The future is Cao.”

Well it might have helped that Anh “Joseph” Cao ran against a political corpse, indicted Congressman William J. Jefferson down in the Louisiana 04. It’s not much different than up in Alaska where Mark Begich bested convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens. Still for the GOP, Anh Joseph Cao, the first Vietnamese-American elected to the US Congress, is a bright hope even if the GOP establishment didn’t offer him much support for his historic run.

Yet just three weeks ago, no one in the GOP establishment had even heard of Cao. They didn’t know his improbable story of triumph — how he fled war-torn Vietnam after the fall of Saigon as an 8-year-old refugee jammed into a helicopter. Now they’ve seized on his rags-to-political riches story, along with the victory last week of Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a special election in Georgia, as rare pieces of good news after the dismal November elections.

Vietnamese-Americans have long supported the GOP for reasons not unlike those of the Cuban-American community, a hatred of a communist system that they feel stole their country from them. Every April, here in San Francisco, Vietnamese-Americans will gather to commemorate the fall of Saigon. But Representative John A. Boehner might be premature in thinking the GOP’s future is more Anh Joseph Caos. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the voting patterns of the Vietnamese-Americans is shifting, especially among the young and born in the United States.

“Many in the Vietnamese community felt Democrats were just too soft on communism and too weak on defense,” recalls Minh Steven Dovan, a San Jose attorney who says he rarely told fellow members of the emigre community that he was a registered Democrat. Other emigres say that some Republican Vietnamese went as far as dubbing the Democrats in their midst “communist sympathizers.”

But more than three decades after communist tanks rolled into Saigon, young Vietnamese-Americans are abandoning the Republican Party in droves, according to a San Jose Mercury News computer analysis of nearly 30,000 new Santa Clara County voters. By plugging Vietnamese surnames into a data base, the analysis shows that Vietnamese-Americans age 30 and under are registering Democratic over Republican by nearly 4 to 1.

“That is really amazing,” said Dovan, 57, “particularly when you think of the generational turnaround.”

Other Vietnamese emigres say the trend has crystallized in recent years – especially since Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is exceedingly popular with youth, began running for president nearly two years ago.

“It’s easy to understand,” said Loc Vu, a former colonel in the South Vietnamese army who now heads San Jose’s IRCC Immigrant Resettlement and Cultural Center. “The young Vietnamese who were born in this country are the same as the other American kids. They all go to school together. They’re open-minded and they’re part of the new generation of young voters. They have different ideas than the older Vietnamese.”

I’d say one of the lessons of the 2008 election is not unlike that of the 1980 election. Reagan carried the youth vote in 1980 and the GOP would carry the youth vote in the next two elections by 20 points. Obama now has that opportunity — to lock in a generation as Democratic. That’s the future.

More on Anh Joseph Cao in the Washington Post.

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Here’s the transcript of Patrick Fitzgerald’s prepared remarks:

This is a sad day for government. It’s a very sad day for Illinois government. Governor Blagojevich has taken us to a truly new low.

Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree. We acted to stop that crime spree.

The most appalling conduct Governor Blagojevich engaged in, according to the complaint filed today or unsealed today, is that he attempted to sell a Senate seat, the Senate seat he had the sole right to under Illinois to appoint to replace President-elect Obama.

Let me take you back eight weeks ago to set the allegations in context.

(more…)

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherf*cker [the President-elect] his senator. F*ck him. For nothing? F*ck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give f*cking [Senate Candidate 1] a f*cking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.” (Senate Candidate 4 is a Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois).

There are many reasons I frown on the use of expletives in politics. For starters, Richard Nixon had a foul mouth, so does Dick Cheney. I hear Rahm Emmanuel is another with the foulest of mouths. But in truth the use of expletives debases political dialogue. The above is just another case in point.

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From Bloomberg News:

Bank of America Corp. will provide a “limited amount of additional loans” to shuttered Republic Windows & Doors LLC in Chicago to pay employees occupying a building after the bank ended the company’s line of credit.

Bank of America isn’t obligated to pay Republic’s employees or make additional loans to the company, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said today in a statement. Republic closed last week, sparking the sit-in by employees who blame the bank for cutting off the Chicago company’s credit.

The bank also said it must rely on Republic and its management to negotiate the employee claims because it doesn’t have a direct relationship with the factory’s workers.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represents the Republic employees, plans a rally at noon tomorrow at the Bank of America building in Chicago. The bank has received $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury as part of its effort to boost capital, while Merrill Lynch & Co., the securities brokerage it is buying, received $10 billion.

I certainly hope that this isn’t the end of the issue but it might be. The workers will be paid pack pay and severance but at the end of the day they will have still lost their jobs. The question is how to save those jobs?

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“”Is this a joke?”

Those were the words of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich upon learning that FBI agents were at his door and there to arrest him on charges of corruption, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama’s seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, isn’t joking. The 76-page affidavit is rather damning accusing the Governor of among other things of attempting to procure a substantial salary for himself at a either a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions, placing his wife on paid corporate boards where he speculated she might garner as much as $150,000 a year, promises of campaign funds — including cash up front or a cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself. The full story from the New York Times.

“There’s politics and there’s crime and sometimes people blur the lines.” — Patrick J. Fitzgerald

This is the state of politics in the United States in 2008. Everything can be sold or traded. It’s natural conclusion of the right’s to privatize everything. Even liberals have bought into the meme that the free market reigns supreme. Blagojevich owned a commodity, the right to appoint a US Senator, and sought to monetize said commodity. Politics is but an avenue for self-enrichment to too many on both sides of the aisle. There’s the public interest and the self-interested and too many in politics seem largely divorced from the former and entirely married to latter.

Meanwhile, Illinois’ senior Senator Dick Durbin is calling for a special election to fill the vacancy. More on this from MSNBC:

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois called today for a special election to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, saying that “no appointment could produce a credible replacement” in light of this morning’s arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Durbin says he spoke with a member of the state’s general assembly this morning, urging the legislature to enact a law calling for a special election and saying that a “tainted” appointment by the governor — arrested this morning on corruption charges swirling around the politics of the appointment itself — would be unacceptable.

“I think it’s the only way out at this point,” Durbin said today at a press conference on unrelated legislation.

A law passed by the Illinois general assembly would be subject to a gubernatorial veto. Durbin said that he hoped the Illinois legislature would put together a bill with a bipartisan supermajority, implying that resistance from the governor could be possible. “Most executives don’t like to give up any power,” he said.

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