Consider it a warning: Hypocrisy will turn on the Republican Party like a rabid dog. Can the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee — and now in the Senate — really claim their vote to impeach the president was an honest one? Do you — the GOP — really think the citizenry of this country does not wonder how every Republican — with the exception of a few strays on both sides — voted the same way, with the Democrats doing the same? You have got to be kidding.
Meanwhile, you — the GOP — also claim that the impeachment is not about sex but about perjury? Perjury is lying under oath. Am I, a dumb citizen of the United States, to believe total partisan voting is not political, but a statement of truth? And if this whole debacle is not about sex, then why the hell did former Sen. Bob Livingston run away like a kid caught with his pants down?
I sincerely believe that if it wasn’t for the Clinton affair, no one would ever have known about Livingston’s equally lecherous and hedonistic lifestyle. If the Washington D.C. spotlight had not suddenly turned on him and cast him in the top slot of speaker of the House, then sex never would have been an issue, an issue the Republicans unanimously agree has nothing to do with their equally unanimous need to rid the White House of Bill Clinton. Thank God Americans can keep this country running without Washington D.C. All things considered, it’s beginning to look as though America doesn’t need politics at all; we already have the entertainment industry.
Let’s assume that in total righteous glory, the Republicans prove unequivocally that Clinton committed the horrible crime of lying about sex and the added crime of instructing certain staff members to watch what they say in the media and any deposition they might be subpoenaed to deliver. Every GOP lawyer out there better brush up on their ethics code. Let’s go so far as to imagine the GOP winning the next presidency. Glory to the righteous right — your light will surely shine. But in that light is a shadow, and that shadow is the investigative reporting staffs of every underground, high school, college, local, national and international newspaper with one unified mission: to find the dirt.
Wait … we, the public, don’t need a crackpot investigative team to find the dirt. All it took to bring Livingston down was a pornographer, of all people. How embarrassing.
So if you, the GOP, wish to stand side by side breathing the exact same dogma, then you had better be sure every single Republican across the country is completely, totally, morally pure. Good luck, and God be with you.
I forgot to mention campaign finance. Did you think that one would just slip on by? “Hmmm,” says the collective inner voice of investigative reporters from every publication in existence, “in all that commotion, what was that I heard about ‘campaign finance’?”
In the interests of moral purity, on the side of the page are some numbers, and I didn’t make them up.
Recent Washington Post articles paint a dim view of the future for Republicans. Why not? If a conservative and well-respected source like the Washington Post/ABC News poll claims two-thirds of the population do not want Clinton removed from office, then what does majority rule mean to you anyway?
It almost sounds like the GOP is screaming, “We got to find a leader, we got to find a leader fast!” What a train wreck. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La. and now Rep. J. Dennis Hastert,R-Ill., … are we done now? If this current mess is not about sex but about lying, then what’s the GOP truth on Social Security, health care and what the hell do you think about the fact we all just bombed another country?
No big deal, I guess. You must be too busy managing your current agenda, what the Democrats have coined as the first catch phrase of 1999: the politics of personal destruction. That’s some cross to bear. Do you really believe the current president of the United States actually bombed a foreign country for political reasons? Then prove it.
The press irreverently refers to Livingston’s sexcapades as “marital infidelities.” Clinton is a lech and reprehensible and immoral. Gingrich and Livingston are sitting in a bar somewhere, and I’d really like to eavesdrop on a conversation about morality, honesty, integrity or leadership.
If Clinton is not removed, any bills the GOP might have waiting in the wings will get no support from the Democrats or Clinton. Speaker-to-be Hastert added health care, anti-drug policies and reducing the tax burden on senior citizens to the current GOP Social Security/Medicare reform/tax cut agenda. But where are they going to find the time to put forth this incredibly original agenda?
I think people want to look forward to the new millennium. We’ve got enough problems dealing with falling comets and computer bugs, let alone baby-sitting an inept government. But with the DFL and GOP parties carrying on the way they are, it looks like the wheels of Congress will come to a complete stall lasting all of 1999. America is not going to sit around for an entire year hoping somebody comes to the rescue in 2000. I’m sorry, but this is a busy country, and we’ve got things to do — with or without you, GOP. Next week: the DFL.
Shape up, Republicans. Your “Contract with America” is about to expire.
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