Below The Beltway

Tennessee’s senior Senator took to the Senate floor this morning to deliver a warning to the White House:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) accused the White House on Wednesday of “street-brawling” with opponents, and said the West Wing’s strategy of freezing out opponents amounts to a latter-day “enemies list,” a reference to an infamous practice of President Richard Nixon.

“An ‘enemies list’ only denigrates the Presidency and the Republic itself,” Alexander said on the Senate floor. “These are unusually difficult times, with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list. Let’s push the street-brawling out of the White House and work together on the truly presidential issues: creating jobs, reducing health care costs, reducing the debt, creating clean energy.”

Alexander quoted from a POLITICO article headlined “White House plan: Neuter the Chamber.”

“According to Politico,” Alexander said, “the White House plans to ‘neuter the United States Chamber of Commerce,” an organization with members in almost every major community in America. The Chamber had supported the president’s stimulus package and some of his early appointments, but has problems with his health care and climate change proposals.”

Video:

After Alexander spoke, New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg had this reaction:

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who came pretty darn close to becoming a member of the Obama Administration, coined a new word on the Senate floor to criticize the President and his staff.

The man President Obama once nominated to be his Commerce Secretary wondered aloud on the Senate floor if the White House under President Obama is starting to be run like it was under Richard Nixon. “Nixon-fying” is how Gregg put it.

(…)

Gregg, who was on the Senate floor to make a speech on the size of the national debt – an issue he admitted deserves bipartisan blame – listened to Alexander’s case.

“I was fascinated by the senator from Tennessee’s presentation,” said Gregg. “And I think we’re all concerned about the direction of this ‘calling out.’ I take it the senator from Tennessee is suggesting that this administration is Nixon-fying the White House? Is that correct?”

Not yet, but it’s getting pretty darn close and it’s worth noting that Watergate was not anomaly. Worse things had happened before — under Wilson, FDR, JFK, and LBJ. — and they happened afterwords as well. If you don’t think they could happen again, you’re either lying or naive.