We may soon find out just how scared the Democrats are of looking insufficiently tough. Paradoxically, of course, they show their toughness by weakly caving to every Republican attack, See, e.g., the anti-Moveon Resolution.
Now we will find out if there are any limits to just how crazy the Republicans, and how craven the Democrats, can be.
Not content with having condemned Moveon for exercising its first amendment rights, Virginian Tom Davis now wants a full scale Congressional investigation of the New York Times because it mistakenly gave Moveon a discount on the ad (Moveon has agreed to pay the difference). This is the Tom Davis who chaired the House Oversight Committee for the first six years of the Bush Administration and never heard about anything worth overseeing. Davis has no interest, apparently, in looking into the fact that the Times made the same mistake in the rate it charged Giuliani for an anti-Moveon ad. (Unlike Moveon, Giuliani has not agreed to pay the difference).
Not to be outdone in the nutjob department, Californian Duncan Hunter wants to strip Columbia University of all federal funds because it invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give a speech.
This is standard Republican stuff, of course. The question is, will the Democrats be pusillanimous enough to do the Republicans bidding, or will they ignore this posturing (Principled counter attacks are too much to ask). Last week I would have said that the Democrats could not possibly sink so low, or be so weak, as to cave in to such demands, but after the events of the past seven days, I am no longer sure. Presumably Henry Waxman will tell Davis to shove it, but who knows how far the Columbia de-funding push will go.
These guys are both whackos, but their tactics are well thought out. Nothing the Democrats do to prove their “patriotism”, as defined by Republicans, is ever enough. The goal posts are always moving, the football is always snatched away. Having gotten the Democrats to turn on their own constituents, they now demand that the Dems shred the Constitutition for good measure. They change the subject and make the Democrats look weak all at the same time. In any rational world we could safely say that Davis and Hunter have engaged in a too transparent self parody, but in the asylum that is Washington, who can say?
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