RED MEAT ON A HOLIDAY
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
January 18, 2006
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was, arguably, the premier political orator of his time. No wonder, then, that so many aspire to his towering rhetorical standards each year on the day set aside to honor him — and that so few reach it.
Sen. Hillary Clinton is no exception.
Throwing aside her carefully crafted "moderate" image, the New York senator told her mostly black audience at Canaan Baptist Church Monday that the Republicans have run the U.S. House "like a plantation — and you know what I'm talking about."
For those who — understandably — had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, Clinton explained: The House, she said, "has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument."
Most historians would point out that the biggest problem on the plantations didn't exactly involve freedom of speech, but that's beside the point.
Quite apart from the naked race-baiting, Clinton's allegation is wrong on the merits. The House is no less — and no more — a deliberative body today than it was during all those decades when the Democrats ran it.
Still, there was no surprise when Al Sharpton declared that Hillary sounded pretty much like "what a lot of us have been saying for a long time."
Sure does — light on facts, heavy on race: Al Sharpton at his most base.
Then there was Al Gore.
The former vice president wasn't concerned so much with racial matters as he marked Dr. King's birthday with a broadside against President Bush's conduct of the War on Terror.
The fellow who was all but a hanging chad or two removed from being in charge of that war himself — now there's a scary thought — even hinted at possible impeachment.
"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," intoned Gore to a wildly anti-Bush crowd in Washington. (Hmmm, as The Rev might — but won't — put it, sounds like what a lot of us were saying back when Hillary's husband was prez.)
Of course, Gore did make the point that
the terrorist threat "is all too real," that the president
has "an inherent power conferred by the Constitution . . .
to take unilateral action to protect the nation" — and
that this power can't be "precisely define[d] in legalistic
terms."
So why, then, is he saying that Bush has been "breaking the law repeatedly and persistently" by conducting warrantless electronic surveillance — especially when the Clinton-Gore administration did the same thing with even more intrusive physical searches?
We're not sure when or why celebrating Dr. King's birthday became an occasion for frenzied GOP-bashing.
But such rhetorical overkill cheapens the holiday for which so many fought and demeans a great man's memory.
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