By The Prowler on 4.11.07 @ 12:08AM
Why no resistance to Henry Waxman's brazen demands?
Republican staff in both the House and the Senate are stunned by
the lack of push back from GOP members against House Oversight and
Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman
(D-Calif.), who last week launched an unprecedented fishing
expedition to get at the files of an opposition party.
Waxman sent a letter to the Republican National Committee
demanding copies of all the e-mails sent by Bush Administration
officials "for partisan political purposes."
"On a limited basis, we [the GOP] have tried to get Democrat
emails, and stuff from the DNC, we were doing it during some of the
Clinton scandal investigations," says a current House Republican
leadership staffer. "But what troubles me isn't so much that Waxman
is doing it, it's that so many of our members aren't trying to
fight it. They are just lying down and letting the Democrats roll
over them. It's depressing."
Waxman's letter last week -- actually sent while he was
traveling with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the
Middle East -- came on orders from Pelosi, House majority leader
Steny Hoyer, and their staff, who saw an
opportunity to get insights into the short and long-term political
thinking of the opposition party, say Democrat House staff. "They
see an opening to get at material that we normally don't see," says
a Democrat leadership staffer. "If the Republicans had the same
opportunity, they'd be jumping at it too."
Waxman's request comes on the heels of a hearing in his
committee at which General Services Administration Administrator
Lurita A. Doan testified that she and about 40
political appointees on her staff received a briefing from a White
House political aide on Republican election plans for 2008.
Doan was defended by Republican members of the Oversight
Committee, but GOP staffers on the House side say that they don't
believe their bosses are being aggressive enough in fighting what
they view as an overreach by Waxman.
topics:
Nancy Pelosi
