It is rarely a productive exercise to accuse Democratic
politicians of hypocrisy. After all, they so rarely campaign on
principles that there is seldom an opportunity to notice when they
violate the few principles they claim to hold dear. The
hypocrisy-laden debates over the nomination of Chuck Hagel thus
offer a unusual opportunity.
What pass for Democratic principles, but which in fact are just
rationalizations of desired outcomes regarding the transfer of
power and wealth, include, in domestic policy, that the rich get
rich by making other people poor and, in foreign policy, that the
U.S. is just one nation among many and therefore not
exceptional.
A principle-free case in point: Democrat politicians, including
particularly President Obama, are attempting (again) to
destroy the educational opportunities of America’s poorest and
poorest-served children in order to please teachers unions –
perhaps the single most corrosive force attacking America’s youth
and our nation’s ability to compete in the future of a global
economy. I wonder what “principle” this travesty stems from. (John
Boehner forced the reinstatement of the DC Opportunity Scholarship
Program in 2011 after Obama and his fellow Illinoisan, Dick Durbin,
had torpedoed it two years earlier, but Obama has taken aim again.
And why not, since voters in Washington, D.C. cast 91 percent of
their ballots for him?)
What tax-raising, UN-loving, union boot-licking congressional
Democrat could easily be called a hypocrite when their few core
beliefs are little more than the statist, irrational detritus of
the educational system they themselves have devastated?
Republican hypocrisy – unfortunately too common among all
homo politicus, but not least because Republicans often
campaign explicitly on principle – is kept on the front page of
newspapers and websites until the hypocrite, even if having
violated little more than a marriage
vow, is forced from office.
Democrat hypocrisy, or even outright wrongdoing for which
ordinary citizens might face criminal charges, is ignored by the
media which in turn keeps the public from understanding how their
government has been infiltrated at the highest levels by people of
questionable moral character.
In the Obama administration, it began in the earliest days when
a tax cheat was elevated to be Secretary of the Treasury. Speaking
of Geithner’s not paying about $34,000 in taxes he owed and blaming
it on his tax software, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) quipped, “Tim
has made some mistakes, which he has freely admitted and
corrected.” Does anyone expect that he, or even most Republicans,
would have let a tax-dodging George W. Bush nominee for a cabinet
position off so easily?
Consider President Bush’s poorly considered nomination of
Harriet Miers to replace the Supreme Court vacancy left by the
retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor. From prominent conservative
columnists to Republican politicians, even NPR recognized
that “Republican opposition made [the] Miers bid untenable” because
of her obvious lack of sufficient qualifications for the post.
Fast-forward to today, when President Obama has nominated former
Senator Chuck Hagel (R?-NE) to be the next Secretary of Defense,
replacing Leon Panetta.
Others will make the case for or against Hagel in terms of his
qualifications for the office he seeks. But the hypocrisy of
Democrats in the U.S. Senate and their lackeys in the media has
reached extremes that should cause voters to take notice – even if
the NY Times won’t.
In a 2006 interview
with author Aaron David Miller, then Senator Hagel made his famous
comment that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people around
here.” It is no wonder that an Iranian news agency recently
described Hagel as “anti-Israel.” When questioned by
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Hagel could name neither any person
who has been intimidated nor any policy that the Senate “has been
goaded into doing” because of such lobbying.
Regardless of one’s view of where Israel should fit within
American foreign policy, imagine the likely outrage from at least
some of the 11 Jewish members of the Senate, including the
aforementioned Schumer and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Carl Levin (D-MI), if a Bush nominee had said such a
thing. Imagine the above-the-fold large typeface plastered across
newspapers across the country, and the feigned outrage of MSNBC
talking heads.
Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach put it well:
Senator Chuck Schumer was skeptical about Hagel but then changed
his mind after a 90 minute West Wing meeting….Impressive. An
hour-and-a-half conversation undid a twelve-year voting record,
which included, as recently as 2008, a vote against an
amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill to label the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization. Schumer is
often referred to as the most influential Jewish member of the
Senate. But then how could verbal assurances alone have turned him
around when he is surely aware of the Jewish teaching that it is
not what a man says but what he does that matters?
Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) is at least nominally Jewish, born
to a Jewish mother who survived the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II.
Bennet, though not a practicing Jew, describes himself as a strong
supporter of Israel and has cosponsored a Senate resolution
“expressing vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the
welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel…”
Yet Senator Bennet has been as shy as an Amish woman visiting
Sturgis about
whether he intends to support Hagel’s nomination.
Bennet’s hypocrisy, even if just through silence, regarding
Hagel’s paranoid view of those Americans who support Israel pales
in comparison to his hypocrisy on what should be, but unfortunately
isn’t, a massive political problem for Hagel:
In 1998, during a debate over the nomination of James Hormel to
be the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, Hagel suggested that Hormel
could not be effective because Hormel was “openly, aggressively
gay.”
One year later, Hagel opposed the repeal of the “don’t ask,
don’t tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying “The U.S.
armed forces aren’t some social experiment.”
According to the
New Yorker magazine, his U.S. Senate voting regard on gay
rights issues “earned him a zero-per-cent rating (three times) from
the Human Rights Campaign, the leading gay-rights lobby.”
Hagel has recently retracted these statements and more, but does
anyone actually believe him?
Even the recently retired and openly (and perhaps sometimes
aggressively) gay Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) said that Hagel’s
“bigoted opposition” to Hormel was “not, as Senator Hagel now
claims, an aberration.” He added, “I cannot think of any other
minority group in the U.S. today where such a negative statement
and action made in 1998 would not be an obstacle to a major
Presidential appointment.” (More on the principled Mr. Frank in a
moment.)
And yet Michael Bennet remains silent.
Why do I particularly mention the backbone-challenged Bennet on
this issue? Because, living here in Colorado, I am painfully aware
that Michael Bennet is Colorado’s junior senator only because his
Republican challenger in 2010, Weld County District Attorney Ken
Buck, fell headfirst
into the mire of a David Gregory gotcha question on the subject of
homosexuality on Meet the Press just prior to the
election.
In a debate that should have been about out-of-control
government spending and high unemployment, Gregory (like George
Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, and other such Democratic Party
activists) was looking for any way to sidetrack the conversation.
He asked Mr. Buck if he believed that homosexuality was a choice.
Buck, who should have said “this election is about jobs and the
economy, not my views on gays” answered yes, and went on to
inartfully compare homosexuality to alcoholism (in terms of
possible genetic predisposition). It played right into the Bennet
campaign’s strategy of painting Mr. Buck as “extreme” and “outside
the mainstream of views” (a phrase which David Gregory helpfully
offered to Bennet during that interview).
Bennet had led in only three of the nearly thirty
polls tracked by RealClearPolitics.com from June 2010 leading
up to the election – and two of those were polls done by a
Democratic-leaning polling organization (PPP). Through most of the
campaign, few thought Bennet had a chance to win in a year
characterized as a Tea Party tsunami. (Buck was the Tea Party
choice over “establishment” candidate Jane Norton, whom I
endorsed based on my view that they were nearly identical on
the issues but that Democrats had a better chance of beating Buck
by making him look “extreme.” Even I didn’t expect Mr. Buck, whom I
like and respect, to do so much of their work for them.)
In the end, Bennet beat Buck by 1.7 percent of the vote,
trouncing Buck among women by 16 percent and, critically, among
unaffiliated voters by 11 percent despite the GOP winning nearly 60
percent of independent voters nationally that year.
Michael Bennet is a U.S. Senator because a Republican made
controversial statements about homosexuality.
And yet on the subject of the openly, aggressively anti-gay
Chuck Hagel, Bennet remains silent.
Of course, Bennet is not alone. Barney Frank seems to have
forgotten the truth of his statement that Hagel-like bigotry would
normally be a major obstacle to receiving or being confirmed in a
key presidential appointment. In what passes for principle in the
Democratic Party – again there are no principles, just desired
outcomes – just one week later, and in nearly the same
breath in which he said that he had hoped the president would
not nominate Hagel, Frank said he now supports his confirmation
because of Hagel’s likely impact on defense policy.
Democrats have no sense of fear of being called hypocrites, even
on a political issue as center-stage and divisive as gay rights.
When it’s about party loyalty rather than principle – which is what
it’s always about with Democrats – all is apparently forgiven.
Thus, the same gay rights organization that persistently gave Hagel
failing grades on their issues went – in just 24 hours – from
calling Hagel’s anti-gay comments “unacceptable”
to falling
into line.
Democrats are also unconcerned with Senate hypocrisy regarding
Hagel’s
financial disclosures, particularly as they relate to income he
may have earned, albeit indirectly, from foreign governments.
Would the “mainstream” media, such as the New York
Times or the ever-further-left-leaning Denver Post
(both of which have endorsed Hagel’s confirmation), tolerate (and
participate in) such barefaced hypocrisy if the person in question
were a nominee of President Bush or of some future Republican
president?
You know the answer, and Democrats know the answer when they
look in the mirror. But the beauty of never claiming to have
principles is never having to be called a hypocrite, at least not
by fellow liberals.
——-
My view of the Hagel nomination is that he is, at best,
barely qualified, but that elections have consequences and the
Founders did not
intend the “advice and consent” function of the
Senate to do much more than exclude those nominated out of nepotism
or corruption. Therefore, I believe Mr. Hagel should be confirmed
even while I also believe he is, as Dick Cheney put it, “second
rate.” My emphasis is not so much the (de)merits of Mr. Hagel as
the truly remarkable hypocrisy of Democrats throughout this
discussion.
(Photo: UPI)
