RogerRabbit
Master Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 748
Location: Oregon
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 Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 2:20 pm Post subject: Is anybody in the House? |
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http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0405/jkelly042705.php3
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Jewish World Review April 27, 2005 / 18 Nisan, 5765
Memo to Republicans: Is anybody in the House?
By Jack Kelly
The only thing harder to find in the U.S. Senate these days than a Democrat with a conscience is a Republican with a spine.
Democrats may have been waxed at the polls last November, but they're running rings around Republicans in the public relations battles so far this year. Consider:
* Polls indicate a majority of Americans agree with Bush that reform of Social Security is needed, and about half of Americans favor his plan to permit workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts. But in the most recent poll (taken for CBS April 13-16), only 25 percent of respondents indicated they were "confident" Bush would make the right decisions about Social Security, while 70 percent were "uneasy."
* The president's nomination of Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is in trouble after waffling by GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio forced postponement until May 12th of a vote in the Foreign Relations Committee. Nominees rarely gain strength while they twist in the wind.
* In a poll taken by Ayres-McHenry (a Republican firm) on April 4th, 78 percent of respondents said senators have a constitutional duty to vote on judicial nominees. Yet in a recent poll taken for Senate Republicans, 51 percent of respondents opposed ending the Democratic filibuster that has been blocking votes on Bush's nominees for federal appeals courts.
Democrats benefit enormously from having most of the major media in the tank for them. But though media bias is more egregious than ever, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. You'd think Republicans would be prepared for it by now.
Only ordinary incompetence is required to lose the high ground on any one of these issues, but extraordinary incompetence is required to lag so far behind on all of them.
Take the Bolton nomination. The credibility of the United Nations has fallen below that of the current Canadian government. There is the Oil for Food scandal, which has just gotten bigger in the wake of the resignation of two investigators from the Volcker commission in protest of Volcker's See No Evil approach to Secretary General Kofi Annan's role in it. There are the sex scandals involving UN peacekeepers, and the unwillingness of senior UN officials to do anything about them. There was the lame UN response to the tsunami in Asia last December, and the UN's continuing failure to do anything about the genocide in Darfur.
President Bush, through the blunt spoken Bolton, wants to give the UN a dose of tough love. Democrats want a UN ambassador who will suck up to Kofi and the French, which is not what a large majority of Americans would prefer.
Yet Republicans have permitted the debate to focus on whether or not Bolton was mean to subordinates, charges which would be irrelevant if true, and which appear not to be true.
If Bolton is defeated, Bush will receive a black eye, and bureaucrats at State and elsewhere will be encouraged to resist administration policy. This will be almost entirely a self-inflicted wound. The principal blame would fall on the shoulders of "Clueless George" Voinovich, who hadn't bothered to show up at any of the hearings. But there is still blame aplenty for Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who did nothing to keep Clueless George up to speed, and next to nothing to defend Bolton from spurious charges.
Blame falls also on the White House. You'd think the president's men would be counting votes and keeping Clueless George and the others in the loop. Columnist Robert Novak says Bush's congressional liaison operation is the worst he's seen in his (long) lifetime. The evidence suggests Novak is right.
The filibuster is an extra-constitutional obstructionist tactic that has been used mostly to block civil rights legislation. Many of the Democrats defending it now tried to end it a decade ago. Yet dithering by Senate Majority Waffler Bill Frist (R-Tenn) has permitted Democrats to get the upper hand in the pr battle.
Credit for the Republican victory last fall goes to Republican voters, not Republican officeholders. If Republican "leaders" want to maintain their allegiance, they'd better start showing some leadership, pronto. |
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