Accountability

Well, here we are once again with the good people at the conservative National Review Online. Here we find Jim Geraghty arguing with Hugh Hewitt about the fact that the GOP is, to coin a phrase, "turning on each other like runner-up beauty queens."

Hewitt feels that the GOP would do well to emulate the loyalty to their president that he thinks Democrats showed when Bill Clinton was in trouble. Geraghty asks,

Is the Democratic Party's steadfast refusal to hold Clinton accountable for anything really the role model that the GOP wants to emulate?

Later, Hewitt responds:

I did not call for the GOP to steadfastly defend the president and his nominee against obviously meritous charges of perjury, etc. I argued that the Democratic Party's example of absurd and wrong headed loyalty of a scandal-plagued Clinton contrasted sharply with many among the GOP's immediate turn on Bush/Miers even before the hearings, when Bush deserves political support from the very people he has aided, at a minimum until the hearings begin. The GOP and allied pundits cold move a long way towards party loyalty and the sort of political maturity that enduring majority coalitions need without ever coming close to the line the Democrats crossed with Clinton, and that move would serve the party and their goals in the long run.

The Bushies, as represented by Hewitt and Geraghty, still don't get it. They think we were absurd to oppose impeaching a President Of The United States over actions which had nothing to do with his job. They say we were wrong-headed to remain loyal to a "scandal plagued" Clinton. Conveniently forgetting that 99% of the scandals that plagued him were bought, paid for and otherwise created by the GOP.

As Molly Ivins once memorably pointed out,

"If left to my own devices I'd spend all my time pointing out that [Clinton's] weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied."

I've used that quote before but I think it bears repeating because it so perfectly sums up what I think most Democrats (certainly I) think about Clinton. It's hard to agree that your man should be horsewhipped when you're too busy trying to stop the other guys from hanging him.

The reason Bush is losing political support is because the events of the past year have finally made it clear that he deserves little or none. The reason Clinton lost little or none of his political support is not because Democrats "crossed a line," or don't care about perjury or obstruction. It was because we drew a line and said: No more. We really don't care that much who the president has sex with, and we certainly don't think it's impeachable or grounds for resignation.

It's because Democrats, and the nation, showed that "political maturity" of which Hewitt writes. Enough to know that Republicans had backed Clinton into a corner not out of the interests of the nation but out of resentment of him personally.

On a completely unrelated matter, also in firedoglake today, ReddHead picked a choice quote from a NY Daily News article:

A senior Senate Democratic aide said, "When it's about perjury and obstruction and it deals with sex, Republicans think it's worthy of impeachment. When it's about perjury and obstruction dealing with national security, they don't take it seriously."