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On the Campaign Trail with Mac MacArthur
Washington's Newest Rip-Off
...it's called "The Caucus Room" -- grab your Pepto-Bismol!

by Mac MacArthur

Friday, September 15, 2000 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (AmpolNS) -- If you think the shakers and movers, the criminals and lobbyists, the soft- and hard- money people really give a damn about their clients or you, think again.

The most obvious example of their couldn't-care-less attitudes is a new Washington restaurant, doing business under the name The Caucus Room (oh, puh-leeease!). It's not pricey by Manhattan standards, but gets a "$$$$$" rating by the Beltway's cheaper-than-WalMart-shoes spending habits.

And the owners of this new eatery are a tipoff to the yellow journalists out there, including myself. Read the list:

My top candidate for “Arch- felon-waiting-to-be- indicted,” none other than Haley Barbour, the former shameless Chairman of the Republican National Committee and bosom buddy of Newt the Has Been Gingrich.
Genetically shady Democrat lobbyist Tommy Boggs. Yep, that’s right. Not only is he the very close relative of Hale Boggs of the most politically honest state in the union, Louisiana -- which produced other standouts such as GOP “Speaker-for-a-Minute” Bob Livingston (who had to resign even before he was seated because of his bamboozling trots with the whore-of-the-minute, not only here but on raod trips South of the Border with none other than Newt and that fruitcake Texan House Republican Whip Tom DeLay, all rumored to be paid for on your taxpayer-owned American Express Card). That's Tommy Boggs as in Cokie (Boggs) Roberts, the schoolmarm of ABC's This Weak, a sorry excuse for Sunday Morning pundit television, and a woman who poses as a "liberal" on Public Radio and as a "moderate neo-fascist" on ABC network television when it suits her fancy (which is just one reason that This Week continues to fall behind the ever more corpulent "St. Timothy" Russert, pseudojournalist and pseudo-Catholic who thinks Jesus himself would crucify Bill Clinton if he were walking the earth today). And let's not forget Queen Mother of the Boggs Clan, Lindy Boggs, often referred to as "Lucky Lindy," loved by (almost) everyone in Washington and a woman who somehow gathered millions living on the public dole -- first as the wife of U.S. Senator Hale Boggs and then as his replacement in Congress, each never earning more than $60,000.00 a year. Where did she get all that money? Was Hale that rich before he entered the Rotunda? In fact, Lindy and Cokie are also answerable for putting Rev. Jesse Jackson “in his place” during the 1992 Democratic Convention by scheduling his speech at 2 AM so none of the white bigots in this country would link Jackson to Bill Clinton. One of my closest friends was in Lindy’s multi-million- dollar D.C. apartment the night that she and her crowd of butt-smoochers plotted the demise of Rev. Jackson. My friend and others walked out in disgust. As her reward, darling Lindy -- an outrageously un-catholic Catholic -- was made no less than the United States Ambassador to the Vatican, the Holy See, where she plays an ever-complex role in making certain that American women can continue to be ashamed of taking birth control pills to plan their families and to soon begin to die from back-alley abortions lest they “murder” their unborn children.
Then there's Beth Dozoretz. Beth is the latest and the shrewdest in a line of great-looking women owned by Ron Dozoretz -- psychiatrist, hospital owner, and a man who owns more men and women in Congress than even Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland, supermarket to the Congress! Beth may be the most innocent of the three big players in this restaurant circus. Her husband, who supplies all the cash she needs and has also supplied some of his own bucks for The Caucus Room, is a very cool, patient exploiter, but we don’t know about Beth. By the way -- Ron even ran for Senate and other public offices himself, but, like others, found out that money isn’t all you need to win. Like the gals before her, both in Ron’s bed and out, Beth is attempting fruitlessly to own the Democratic National Committee by spreading her husband’s money around Southeast Washington like so much litter. It’s said that the Dozoretzes spread so much currency around Washington that Ron’s picture will replace that of George Washington on the dollar bill.

There is other money involved in The Caucus Room -- including that of C. Boyden Gray -- but what the heck? They serve Coq Au Vin (lousy chicken cooked in cheap wine which no one but Republicans who don’t even know what it is ever orders) and a decent steak. There are salads named after Boggs and Barbour, who both weigh in at just under 300 pounds and have probably never eaten a salad in their lives. We haven’t heard what entrée (or more appropriately, appetizer) Beth has named in her honor -- maybe it’s the Clams Casino or the Fettucine Putanesca?

The Caucus Room is sort-of-pricey to keep those hoi-polloi congressional staffers out of their cheaply paneled walls -- and the place looks suspiciously like the Capitol Grille, one of my favorite restaurants, which serves a steak that appears to be the size of a side of beef for around thirty bucks.

To be fair to the Republicans, Capitol Grille is one of the places where it’s happening. On any given night, you can see guys like John Breaux, a wonderful Senator and a great Democrat, forcing Barbie-doll gorgeous television newswomen against the wall while their boyfriends are in the john, and asking them to “do him” even though he has a lovely wife (see The Washington Post).

But heck -- you can’t blame Breaux. He has those same fun-lovin' Lou'siana chromosomes shared by Bob Livingston, Tommy Boggs and David Duke (Nazi candidate for Congress). Not that Breaux is as low on the evolutionary scale as Livingston or as crafty as the Boggs family -- or anything close to a Nazi -- but nonetheless he used to provide a relatively entertaining sideshow to the goings-on in the White House at the Capitol Grille.

So there it is. The Caucus Room. The latest lackluster additional to the most important city in the world -- with the worst restaurants on earth. You'll find better food in London -- and I'm not talking about their "new wave" of outstanding gourmet eateries. Believe me, there is not one outstanding restaurant in the greater D.C. metropolitan area -- not one -- and yes, that includes all the chi'-chi' dinner rooms in suburban Virginia that pose as quaint farms and pony express taverns.

Message to Le Cirque: please, please come on down!

My prediction: The Caucus Room will fail miserably. Who on earth -- especially insider Washingtonians -- would want to eat at a place owned by these thugs and one cunning babe?

I can tell you this: not many.

This eatery will be populated by tourists, hoping to see the infamous and the criminal gorging themselves on mediocre food at a la carte prices and paid for by taxpayers through the deals these crooks arrange for their corporate clients.

Isn’t America wonderfully amusing?