Travellinguist's Musings

Well here is the relevance today. Barack Obama is the president now, Sarah Palin lost the election (but in spectacular, decisive fashion, not some protracted legal battle about counting ballots, hanging chads, and brand new Supreme Court precedents), and Dick Cheney is now the FORMER VP, and yet the two of them don't shut up. Gore was both of them in 2001, the losing candidate and the former VP, but conservatives told him to shut up, that his opinion did not matter or was evidence that he was a sore loser, or a loser simply. This was a convenient way to sidestep the very controversial nature of the election.

Here is what it means. Liberals have to accept the Cheney and Palin jawing because frankly they wanted Gore to do the same after the disputed 2000 election. Democrats might be hypocrites at times, but liberals are not. However, conservatives, if they are to be consistent and not hypocritical (though we know that most conservatives are NEITHER- at least the outspoken kind), they need to tell Dick Cheney that he had his 8 years and it cost us two cities, 5000 American soldiers, 4000 innocent American civilians, about a million innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, millions of American jobs, about a $1 trillion in wasteful war spending, and a $770 billion bailout and that now that he is done with his VP duty (like conservatives said Gore was done in 2001) it is time for him to retire gracefully, and shut the hell up. As for Palin, conservatives, to be consistent must, rise up and say "Palin, you lost, don't be a sore loser, the American people rejected you so it is time for you to go back to Alaska and shut up." (They might have argued that she needed to go back to running Alaska, the job for which she actually was elected and actually did win, but she removed that criticism by resigning from that job, clearly a sign of responsibility to her electorate and her state.)

However, conservatives will not do so, because the one constant with the conservative movement in America is that there is no statement, broad generalization, or political attack, they won't contradict, forget, or disavow, if the context suddenly applies to one of their own. Clinton cheated on his wife and lied about it, so he should resign, said the chattering conservative classes. Sen. John Ensign, not only cheated on his wife, but attempted to pay her and her husband off, and nary a word emerged from the same chattering conservative classes.

Conservatives attempt to explain away their hypocrisy by saying that it is because Clinton lied to Congress under oath, and he did, but of course being dragged before Congress to talk about your philandering was a somewhat unprecedented event, since the personal life of an individual is not a public matter unless there is evidence of a crime, which there was none. Then again, not a single Bush Administration official EVER EVER, when testifying before Congress about faulty intelligence, missing emails, WMDs, etc, EVER went under oath. In fact when Congress issued subpoenas, the "compromise" that spineless Democrats accepted was that Bush people would appear only on the condition that they would not testify under oath. In other words, they would only appear before Congress so long as they could get away with lying and face no legal repercussions if their lies were exposed later. So Republicans learned that they should never be under oath when attempting to lie about matters of treason, state security and matters of justice, whereas Bill Clinton learned the hard way that one should not testify under oath when trying to cover up your wandering eye.

The stink of hypocrisy from Republicans is foul and repugnant, and each week there is a new and egregious example of how those "rules" and "principles" which they, without fail, apply to liberals and Democrats do not at all apply to them in any situation and our Republic is all the worse for it. As for the Democrats, they do not escape blame in all this. At times they, themselves, have tried to apply the same "rules" which they complained about in the past when Republicans were grandstanding, but since they don't have the ability to silence the internal voice that calls out their hypocrisy they always come across as wimpy and uncommitted. Republicans might be hypocrites, but they are fiercely committed hypocrites.

This of course is the second part of the problem and why it is not uncommon to smell the stink of cowardice urine wafting out of the halls of Congress, Democrats are wimpy! Congress has subpoena power. Once Congress issues a subpoena, they can drag that person before them, swear them in and grill them. Congress doesn't have to "Compromise" with the Executive. The Constitution gives them not Compromise authority, but Check and Balance POWER. They have special powers above the President, to check his authority, and it is not about compromise but about that power to check overweening Executive pride. If the presidency is too powerful it is because Republicans for the first 6 years and Democrats for the last 2, of the Bush presidency did not use their Congressional powers to CHECK his rampant abuse of power.