Loyalty To The Base
I have, on this day at least, a different take on the following story than you might have expected:
I haven't written much about this phenomenon because, well, it's hardly news. This same hacks' gallery has been the elective puppets of the extreme Left for most of my adult life. When Senator Leahy was making reasonable sounds about Judge Roberts a week or two ago I said to myself, "Just wait, that'll change in the space of a single phone call." And, sure enough, it did.
But let's look at this in a wholly different context:
Hagel certainly has a great deal in common with his Dem colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee - obnoxiousness, ignorance, arrogance, and a hopeless addiction to media grandstanding, just to name a few. But there is one critical difference between the Nebraska senior senator and Chucky, Leaky, Uncle Teddy, et al: the latter are utterly loyal to their own core constituents.
We make caustic and derisive light of how all Ralph Neas or Nan Aron have to say is frog and Donk senators say, "How high?" but let's be honest: wouldn't it be nice if Republican legislators were equally as responsive and sensitive to the wishes and desires of their own base? If they were, would a debacle like this past May's "memo of understanding" have even been possible? Do the Dems even have an equivalent to Chuck Hagel, let alone John McCain? Come to think of it, they did - Zel Miller, and once he became a full-fledged Democrat "maverick" he was already on his way out the senate cloakroom door and into retirement. I don't know if you can count Joe Lieberman, since, though he supports the war, he doesn't make a big issue of it, nor does he make torpedoing his own party to be a regular hobby.
You could ask this same question almost indefinitely - do the Dems have a Trent Lott, whose proud claim to fame is his ability to "cut deals" with opposition presidents? An Orrin Hatch who pines for his bipartisan "best friend forever," the aforementioned Massachusetts Manatee? A "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter, whose fratricidal iconoclasty is notorious? A George Voinovich, who's as big a slacker as John Kerry, as crocodile-weepy as Dick Durbin, but without a shadow of the partisan viciousness of either? Or a Majority Leader who stabbed his own president in the back on a front-burner issue in as public a fashion as he could manage? I mean, George Mitchell may never have managed to bring a single version of ClintonCare to a final floor vote in 1994, but did he ever call a press conference to break with the Clinton White House and declare that its health care putsch was an overpromulgated mess of high-octane fascism?
Whatever else we may say about the extreme Left and elected Democrats, it cannot be denied that they are all on the same page, pulling the same oars, rowing in the same direction. That that direction is toward a mammoth waterfall doesn't change the fact of their commonality of purpose, or that the GOP continues rowing in circles, drifting toward a nest of whirlpools further downstream.
Hegemony is within our grasp. But we'll never reach it, as long as Pachyderms like Chuck Hagel get away with holding themselves out as our "leading members."
Perhaps it's time to "put the question" to Senator McCain's mini-me right alongside the Supreme Chancellor himself.
It's no news flash that organizations like the Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way and MoveOn.org are influencing Democrats' attack on Judge Roberts. But the rapidity with which Senators Pat Leahy and Ted Kennedy jumped this week to follow the groups' orders is nonetheless remarkable, and politically revealing.
Within hours of publication of the first Post story, Mr. Leahy hit the barricades with a statement calling Judge Roberts "an eager and aggressive advocate" of policies "deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party." During the Reagan years, the Senator added, the nominee held views "that were among the most radical being offered by a cadre intent on reversing decades of policies on civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, privacy, and access to justice." At least he didn't call Judge Roberts a member of the Taliban.
As for Senator Kennedy, he sent a letter to colleagues claiming the Reagan documents show that Judge Roberts "was on or beyond the outer fringe of that extreme group eager to take our law and society back in time on a wide range of issues of individual rights and liberties."
I haven't written much about this phenomenon because, well, it's hardly news. This same hacks' gallery has been the elective puppets of the extreme Left for most of my adult life. When Senator Leahy was making reasonable sounds about Judge Roberts a week or two ago I said to myself, "Just wait, that'll change in the space of a single phone call." And, sure enough, it did.
But let's look at this in a wholly different context:
Nebraska's Senator Chuck Hagel has become a vocal critic of the Iraq war. Today he said that the United States is losing in Iraq, and Iraq is like Vietnam. The Associated
Press reports:
"A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago."
But wait! What exactly makes Chuck Hagel a "leading Republican senator"? Not seniority; he is a second-termer. Not any official responsibilities; Hagel is not a member of the Senate leadership, nor does he chair a Senate committee. Not legislative accomplishment or influence; Hagel has little noteworthy legislation to his name, and is more often an eccentric voice - e.g., in his call for reinstatement of the draft - than an influence on his fellow Senators. It is hard to escape the conclusion that for the Associated Press, any Republican who attacks the Bush Administration and claims that we're losing in Iraq is automatically promoted to "leading Republican senator" status.
Hagel certainly has a great deal in common with his Dem colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee - obnoxiousness, ignorance, arrogance, and a hopeless addiction to media grandstanding, just to name a few. But there is one critical difference between the Nebraska senior senator and Chucky, Leaky, Uncle Teddy, et al: the latter are utterly loyal to their own core constituents.
We make caustic and derisive light of how all Ralph Neas or Nan Aron have to say is frog and Donk senators say, "How high?" but let's be honest: wouldn't it be nice if Republican legislators were equally as responsive and sensitive to the wishes and desires of their own base? If they were, would a debacle like this past May's "memo of understanding" have even been possible? Do the Dems even have an equivalent to Chuck Hagel, let alone John McCain? Come to think of it, they did - Zel Miller, and once he became a full-fledged Democrat "maverick" he was already on his way out the senate cloakroom door and into retirement. I don't know if you can count Joe Lieberman, since, though he supports the war, he doesn't make a big issue of it, nor does he make torpedoing his own party to be a regular hobby.
You could ask this same question almost indefinitely - do the Dems have a Trent Lott, whose proud claim to fame is his ability to "cut deals" with opposition presidents? An Orrin Hatch who pines for his bipartisan "best friend forever," the aforementioned Massachusetts Manatee? A "Snarlin' Arlen" Specter, whose fratricidal iconoclasty is notorious? A George Voinovich, who's as big a slacker as John Kerry, as crocodile-weepy as Dick Durbin, but without a shadow of the partisan viciousness of either? Or a Majority Leader who stabbed his own president in the back on a front-burner issue in as public a fashion as he could manage? I mean, George Mitchell may never have managed to bring a single version of ClintonCare to a final floor vote in 1994, but did he ever call a press conference to break with the Clinton White House and declare that its health care putsch was an overpromulgated mess of high-octane fascism?
Whatever else we may say about the extreme Left and elected Democrats, it cannot be denied that they are all on the same page, pulling the same oars, rowing in the same direction. That that direction is toward a mammoth waterfall doesn't change the fact of their commonality of purpose, or that the GOP continues rowing in circles, drifting toward a nest of whirlpools further downstream.
Hegemony is within our grasp. But we'll never reach it, as long as Pachyderms like Chuck Hagel get away with holding themselves out as our "leading members."
Perhaps it's time to "put the question" to Senator McCain's mini-me right alongside the Supreme Chancellor himself.
posted by JASmius at 4:05 PM
<<< Home