<Well you see jimpit there is this huge conspiracy of liberal media.>
Kinda like Mz. Slick's vast right wing conspiracy, huh? Here's an editorial that's probably part of what Mz.Slick was speaking about:
The Washington Times
Published in Washington, D.C.
5am -- December 4, 1998
washtimes.com
Singing a new tune, but still off-key
Maybe the Democrats, not the Republicans, are the gang
that can't shoot straight. Or maybe they don't want to.
Only a fortnight ago, when the impeachment inquiry seemed
headed to Zilchville, Dick Gephardt, John Conyers and Barney
Frank mocked the Republicans with taunts that Newt Gingrich
and his lieutenants wouldn't let Henry Hyde run his committee's
impeachment inquiry.
Now that it's clear that Mr. Hyde is in charge, and the inquiry
may be going someplace after all, the Democrats are warbling a
different tune. "I think it's chaos," Mr. Gephardt says now. "The
present speaker is not exerting leadership, the speaker-to-be is
not exerting leadership."
Even the White House wants Newt to come down from the
stands and take over as quarterback. Says Joe Lockhart, the
president's own flack: "I think anyone who can step in and get
control of this process would be welcome."
What Mr. Gephardt and his colleagues mean, of course, is
not that nobody's in control, but that they are not in control. Dick
Gephardt hears a Republican voice in his worst nightmare,
saying: "I'm the speaker, and you're not."
Mr. Gephardt had persuaded himself in the waning days of
the congressional campaigns, as many of his colleagues had, that
the Democrats would regain control of the House and he would
be the new speaker. The Perjurer-in-Chief would be exonerated
and a new supply of interns and knee pads would be installed in
the White House and everybody would live happily ever after.
John Conyers, the chief bigot on the House Judiciary
Committee and the master of the squalid billabong that the
modern Democratic Party has become, gave the game away in
a little noted speech to a campaign rally in the Philadelphia
suburbs in late October. "We're going to make sure that
everybody who has persecuted the president pays the full price,"
he said. "[The Republicans] owe us and the American people big
time." When a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked him
afterward what he meant by "pay," Mr. Conyers replied:
"Plenty." Pressed to elaborate, he said: "It might be a little
prudent for me to wait until we actually win."
When, on November 3, prudence was not rewarded and the
Democrats didn't "actually win," they declared themselves the
virtual winners, and for days the dazed Republicans seemed to
agree with them, and acted as if they were the actual losers.
Says Tony Blankley, who was Newt Gingrich's press
secretary before he went straight and became a correspondent
for George magazine: "Immediately after the elections there was
just a cold panic on the part of the Republicans, they were just
looking for an exit anywhere as fast as they could get it. With
the passage of a few weeks ... the rush to the exit is now sort of
a stately march to the exit."
Not even that. Tom DeLay, who as the Republican whip is
paid to guess accurately how his members will vote on a given
issue, wants to talk to the new speaker about an impeachment
strategy, and Trent Lott, the leader of the majority in the Senate,
is being pressed to start planning for a trial in the Senate.
Despite the transparent cheerleading for diversionary censure in
certain quarters of the Democratic press, there's clearly a
growing momentum for impeachment.
Rep. Peter King, a lukewarm Long Island Republican, is
circulating a petition for censure, boasting that he has "15 to 20"
like-minded Republican colleagues with him. Nobody believes
that, probably not even Mrs. King. Republican nose-counters
can find only five -- Chris Shays of Connecticut, Mark Souder of
Indiana, Jack Quinn of New York, John Porter of Illinois and
Mike Castle of Delaware.
Democrats in the House concede that four to six Democrats
would vote now for impeachment, and others are likely to join
them when the evidence -- just the facts, ma'am -- are laid out in
an orderly way. The White House figures it needs a minimum of
a dozen Republicans -- and perhaps more -- to prevent
impeachment. There's been a steady promise of testosterone
transfusions from the grass roots, and Republicans who were all
but comatose with fear a fortnight ago seem to be trying to stir
themselves to join the quick over the dead.
Reality is beginning to dawn that if censure is needed an
impeachment resolution is the most eloquent expression of
censure the House could make. The timid Republicans could
console themselves that the wussies and wimps among the
Republicans and the hear-no-evil yellow dogs among the
Democrats would guarantee that a vote to convict would fail.
Bill Clinton would stay with us, to terrify Saddam Hussein
and intimidate North Korea and continue to humiliate America,
and his legacy, as the man who made white-trash behavior the
standard for presidents to come, would be secure for the ages.
washtimes.com
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
Copyright © 1998 News World Communications, Inc. |
