Limp-fisted Democratic Party opponents have not done it.
Term limits he himself championed when first elected to Congress in 1988 have not done it. (He has been reelected every two years since.)
And too-close associations with slimeballs like Mike Carona, Dave Garofalo, Jack Abramoff, Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, Joseph Medawar and even his felony fraudster wife Rhonda have not done it.
No, the only way the Orange County congressional delegation is finally going to rid itself of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Havana) is if Donald Trump nominates him for Secretary of State.
Years ago, working at a daily newspaper, it was revealed to us young cub reporters that a dunderhead, who started by sweeping press room floors, rose to publisher because, “Our company promotes incompetence.”
Orange County, we can promote incompetence, too.
Kicking The Mouth That Rohrabachered upstairs—and out the Capitol dome to the Department of State's Harry S Truman building—is something being championed by the Costa Mesa-based Republican, in golly-gee-aw-shucks fashion.
“I have been told that I am under consideration to join President Trump’s team as Secretary of State.” Rohrabacher writes on his Facebook page. “While my present intention, of course, is to continue to fight for liberty and freedom as a member of the House of Representatives, as a strong supporter of President-Elect Trump’s vision for America, it would be a privilege and an honor to serve as his Secretary of State.”
He then points his supporters to a Breitbart News poll of potential candidates for Secretary of State.
“As a supporter of mine who shares values and patriotism,” Rohrabacher grovels, “I thought you might want to participate in this poll.”
Normally, removing ear wax with an ice pick would be more appealing than helping him. But we must participate in this poll, FODRRIC (Foes of Dana Rohrabacher Remaining in Congress). If not for you, do it for your grandchildren … so they will not have him as their congressman during his 32nd term.
Sadly, as of 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, Rohrabacher was at the bottom of the poll results.
His 6.72 percent of the Breitbart vote fell between Trump pariah Mitt Romney (9.34 percent) and “Other” (3.41 percent). All other SoS candidates were in double figures: Rudy Giuliani (36.27 percent), John Bolton (24.96 percent) and David Petraeus (19.3 percent).
Perhaps voters across the country need a fire lit under their bums, in the form of exposure to positions we can expect from a Surfin' Congressman-turned-Surfin' Secretary of State.
For instance, he claims to be one of the country's foremost experts on Afghanistan, and right after the 9/11 attacks he said in told-you-so fashion that he had been nearly alone in raising alarm over the murderous Taliban regime.
Being a certified terrorism fighter will look great atop the Secretary of State resume, so let's all just collectively ignore how my colleague R. Scott Moxley's “Rogue Statesman” cover story began 14 years ago.
“[Rohrabacher] says the Taliban are devout traditionalists—not terrorists or revolutionaries. He believes a Taliban takeover [of Afghanistan] would be a positive development.”
—Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 1996 issue
Before Thanksgiving, Politico's Isaac Arnsdorf and Benjamin Oreskes had a great piece on chickenhawk and former cold warrior Rohrabacher repeatedly carrying water in Congress for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is apparently in tight with Trump as well.
Sure, Vlady could have been the one in the Soviet tank shelling Rohrabacher and his Afghan mujahedeen (-turned Taliban?) buddies in the late 1980s, but by the following decade Dana and then lowly Deputy Mayor Putin were famously arm wrestling in a Washington, D.C., dive bar. Perhaps they sealed the friendship at a different D.C. bar, the one he does not tell Rhonda about.
The transformation of Rohrabacher, a former Reagan speechwriter who claims to have played a role in the “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech, to a FOK (Friend of Kremlin) “has puzzled colleagues,” report the Politicos.
In Rohrabacher’s telling, Americans have gratuitously antagonized Russia instead of seeking common ground against greater threats from China and Islamic terrorism. That worldview has made him a fixture in Russian state media.
” 'Stupidity hurts us all': US decision makers ignorant about Russia — Congressman Rohrabacher,” blared a headline in RT, the state-controlled news outlet.
“Rohrabacher, who comes from this Reganite background, has totally been turned around,” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank, said. “Rohrabacher has been on this soapbox for many years and it's considered outside the norm.”
Fear not, Joseph McCarthy-ites, because besides being a longtime critic of China (just like Trump), Rohrabacher also is no fan of normalizing relations with Cuba (just like Trump). But Dana's gone further than his would-be, orange-colored boss, telling Breitbart's Neil W. McCabe that Americans should support Cubans taking up arms against their regime.
Before asking yourself, “Didn't we try and fail at that in the '50s and '60s?” know that that's not what matters right now. What matters is …
“We have to be encouraging our Cuban-Americans friends to involve themselves in changing that regime–God has gotten rid of Castro, now it is up to us to get rid of the regime he left behind,” said Rohrabacher, who supports an armed uprising.
“We should not be sending in any American troops, but we should be doing everything we can to support those people in Cuba, who are trying to create a real democracy that would be friendly to the United States and the rest of the democratic world.”
When they re-storm the Bay of Pigs, Dana will be the round one on a foam longboard.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.