Larry Craig Misses The Point

The Idaho Republican senator cites as his primary reason for opposing the renewal of the Patriot Act "in its present form" (i.e. not watered down into impotence) the fear that while President Bush will use it for its intended purpose of protecting the nation against further terrorist attacks, his likely successor - a certain power-lusting, upside-down-legged, closet Trotskyite woman currently masquerading as a "moderate" Democrat senator from New York - will misuse it for precisely the purposes hysterically misattributed by her party to Mr. Bush: to impose a dictatorship and carry out a reign of terror against "red"-state America.

But as the good burghers at Newsmax cannily point out, the Clintons never needed a Patriot Act to trample all over civil liberties during their first reign, the publicizing of which Senator Craig himself has done surprisingly little to aid:

Senator Craig, for instance, has yet to demand the release of Independent Counsel David Barrett's report - which reportedly documents how the Clintons used the IRS to target their political opponents.

But even without Mr. Barrett's findings, we know that Clinton accusers Billy Dale, Gennifer Flowers, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and Juanita Broaddrick were all targeted by IRS audits.

After turning down an offer to settle her sexual harassment suit against Mr. Clinton, Paula Jones was not only audited - but had her confidential tax returns leaked to the media.

The avalanche of national security leaks from libs in the Pentagon and Intelligence bureaucracies is flagrantly illegal, but they're obviously not letting so minor a consideration as the law stop them. Since that same bureaucracy and its sister ones in the IRS, FBI, EPA, etc. would be further up Mrs. Clinton's ass than an enema - and ditto the media - why would she need a law to enable her to conduct all the abuses of power she wanted with absolute impunity - and as she and hubby engaged in throughout the '90s?:

Neither did the Clintons need the Patriot Act to have 1,100 FBI files shipped over to the White House Counsel's office, where - according to Linda Tripp [whose file was among those requisitioned] - the FBI dossiers where stacked floor-to-ceiling in the office of one-time Hillary crony, Associate White House Counsel Bill Kennedy.

When the Clintons explained that it was all just a "bureaucratic snafu," today's Patriot Act opponents bought their laughably transparent excuse hook, line and sinker.

The civil liberties brigade was also AWOL when Hillary's advance man admitted that he regularly recruited "goon squads" to stifle protesters at events where she spoke during her 2000 Senate campaign....

The lesson here is simple: If the American people insist on electing candidates with a clear inclination to abuse power, it's a fair bet power will be abused once they get in office - regardless of whatever safeguards built into the legal system.

The lesson for Republican pols like Larry Craig (and his three partners in collaboration, John Sununu, Lisa Murkowski, and Chuck Hagel) is equally clear: drop the minority party mentality and stop basing policy votes on political fatalism. To help the Democrats kill an utterly critical homeland security tool (in blatant contradiction of their incessant criticism that the President isn't doing enough to bolster homeland security) on the hypothetical speculation of what the other side might do with it once back in power is functionally indistinguishable from John McCain's "memo of understanding" fiasco that prevented the banning of confirmation filibusters last May on the identical grounds that Republicans needed to keep that "tool" available for when they were in the minority again - as though GOPers would ever stoop such gutter, extraconstitutional tactics, and Democrats, once back in the majority, wouldn't instantly eradicate such filibusters themselves.

I fully agree that a President Hillary would take the powers provided by the Patriot Act and turn them to despicable partisan ends. But she'd be a dictatrix anyway, as her first White House stint demonstrated. In the mean time, we also know what al Qaeda will do to us with no more Patriot Act standing in the way of their mass murderous plots, as the 9/11 attacks demonstrated.

Call me quirky, but I still fear the jihadis more than I do the devil lady. And it is by going along with her crazy, sociopathic, Ahabic party on dismantling our domestic defenses against the former that enhances the chances of the latter being realized.

Play to win, in other words, and you probably will. Play not to lose, and defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - in both wars.