SwiftVets.com

[Army_(Ret)]

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/5/105607.shtml

With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...


Wednesday, April 5, 2006 10:51 a.m. EDT
Tom DeLay: Victim of GOP Timidity


The most stunning aspect of Tom DeLay's resignation from Congress isn't that he was forced out by a wave of bad publicity that began with his indictment last September for breaking a law that wasn't even on the books when DeLay allegedly violated it.

The real surprise of the DeLay debacle is that his fellow Republicans allowed him to be ripped apart by Democrat-friendly media piranha - without firing a shot in return.

Democrats would have surely backed off on their "Culture of Corruption" mantra had the GOP made even a minimal effort to fight fire with fire.

Instead, Hill Republicans looked the other way on one Democrat scandal after another - and will likely end up paying the price by losing control of Congress in November.


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Here's a short list of investigations the GOP should have launched - not for reasons of partisan revenge - but because they warranted the full oversight of the party in control of Congress:

• Bergergate: The theft and destruction of top secret national security documents by former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger in a blatant attempt to obstruct the 9/11 Commission investigation.


Berger's crime was easily one of the most serious ever committed by a top government official. Yet the GOP Congress declined to probe further after the Bush Justice Department cut such an embarrassingly light plea bargain that even the Berger case judge was appalled.

• Rathergate: You'd never know it from the lethargic Republican reaction, but when a mysterious Texas source supplied forgeries of President Bush's military records to CBS News just weeks before the 2004 election, it was a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Compounding the political intrigue, CBS tipped a top staffer in the Kerry campaign on the coming Bush document assault.

But after Texas authorities declined to pursue a request for a criminal investigation from several GOP House members, the matter was promptly dropped. Republican congressional interest in getting to the bottom this scheme to steal the 2004 election after Texas authorities opted out: Zippo.

• Schumergate: The illegal purloining of Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's credit report by staffers on Sen. Chuck Schumer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee certainly seemed like a ripe topic for some congressional oversight. But like the Bergergate case, it appears that Bush Justice will let the guilty parties off with a slap on the wrist - without fingering any higher ups.

In fact, Schumer's committee is now insisting that it acted in an "exemplary manner" by not using the illegal info against Steele. GOP interest in further investigation? Bubkiss.
• Nukegate: We've already had several hearings into President Bush's so-called illegal NSA terrorist surveillance program, which was first revealed in James Risen's new book: "State of War."

But there's been little interest in the other bombshell development revealed by Risen: President Clinton's decision to give Iran doctored blueprints for key nuclear components that allowed the Iranians, in Risen's words, to "leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon."

With Sen. John McCain now predicting "Armageddon" as a result of the Iranian nuclear threat, one might think that a report like this might be ripe for congressional investigation.

But one would be wrong. Republican interest to date in a Clinton Nukegate probe: Zilch.

The list of Democrat scandals passed up by Republicans could probably fill a book. But others that deserve honorable mention are the surpression of the Barrett Report, media leaks by anti-Bush CIA insiders and a probe into Sen. Robert Byrd's activities while he was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.

Compare those unexploited nuggets to the psuedo-scandals that supposedly drove DeLay from office - and it becomes abundantly clear why Republicans now stand an excellent chance of being forced to turn over the keys to Capitol Hill this November.
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Peace is acheived through victory

[LimaCharlie]

Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with the writer’s conclusion.
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I was going to become an anarchist, but they had too many rules.

[Anker-Klanker]

While I agree that the Republicans seem pretty disorganized right now, and are often puzzlingly timid about taking the offensive, the author did not mention an additional huge factor in all this: our dearly beloved MSM!

When the media overwhelmingly, and without any self-restraint or even any pride in truth, takes sides in politics, that becomes a formidible foe. Somehow or the other the Right is going to have to figure out how to deal with this very hostile and unprincipled media. (And if the Swiftees ever have to take the good fight forward again, we're going to figure out how to deal with the same problem - which, I think, has become much worse since 2003.)