House of Arrogance nytimes.com
The other op-ed columnist of the day weighs in, and Bob Herbert is equally impressed.
The Republicans will pay a huge price for their brazen, utterly partisan attempt to drag a President from the White House in defiance of the will of the people. The party's contempt for the voters was arrogantly summed up by Alan Simpson, the former Senator from Wyoming, who said: "The attention span of Americans is which movie is coming out next month and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change."
Uh huh. This historic Constitutional morality play will all be forgotten in a few months. Simpson doesn't have to worry, anyway, he gets to continue on the talking heads curcuit where people don't often get called on past predictions. If they do, nobody much notices because nobody pays any attention to those guys anyway.
If the voters are the dopes that Mr. Simpson thinks they are, then come 2000 everyone will have forgotten there was an impeachment crisis.
And we all know what high esteem the local conservatives have for the voting population at large. "America is filled with whores", to quote the esteemed Rev. Pilch, it's too bad so many of them are allowed to vote.
But Representative Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, was probably closer to the truth when he said, "I warn my colleagues that you will reap the bitter harvest of the unfair partisan seeds you sow today."
One of the many strange events of the past couple of weeks was the way in which virtually all of the previously undecided Republicans, the so-called moderates, surrendered their independence and lined up like lackeys to follow the right wing's lead. All proclaimed loudly that they were voting on principle, but in fact it was an exercise in mass cowardice, exemplified by Representative John McHugh of upstate New York.
Mr. McHugh announced on Tuesday that he would vote for impeachment. But if his decision was based on principle, he had an odd way of expressing it. The Washington Post said Mr. McHugh appeared to have no stomach for a Senate conviction or removal of the President from office. Of his colleagues in the Senate, Mr. McHugh said, "I, for one, would accept, even welcome, their mercy."
In other words, let the Senate do the heavy constitutional lifting.
Congressman McHugh may have wished out loud for mercy, but he clearly was too frightened of the right-wingers in the House to cast a compassionate vote himself.
The G.O.P. can no longer conceal that it is a party of extremists, of right-wing absolutists, a party out of step with the political and cultural orientation of most Americans.
Bob Livingston may be leaving, but his arrogant comment can still serve as his party's slogan. "Let us disregard the outside influences."
Let us disregard the people.
Or let's just hold them in contempt, if they don't hold with the morally correct vision of "truth and justice" ordained by the moral reformationists. Anyway, this will all be forgotten about in a month. |
