Will The Republican Momentum Flourish Or Will It Be Delayed?

4-12-2005

This is how a recent Associated Press news release started, “The No. 3 Republican in the Senate said Sunday that embattled House Majority Leader Tom Delay needs to answer questions about his ethics and ‘let the people then judge for themselves’.”

There’s just one problem with the assertion made by the Associated Press. Senator Rick Santorum didn't say anything about Congressman Delay answering questions about his ‘ethics’.

“I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it,” Santorum said. “And let the people then judge for themselves.” Where is all this talk about Delay ‘answering questions about his ethics’?

That’s just one example of media elitists interjecting their own bias and attacks on Congressman Delay or any other Conservative for that matter into what they disguise as news. Another problem with this attempted ‘bait and switch’ story is that wasn't all Senator Santorum said.

“But from everything I’ve heard, again, from the comments and responding to those,” Santorum elaborated, “is everything he’s done was according to the law.” If Senator Santorum believes everything Congressman Delay has done ‘was according to the law’, how could the media make the accusation that he was claiming Delay needed ‘to answer questions about his ethics’ and it not be a liberal attack by media elitists?

Even Congressman’s Delay’s spokesman, Dan Allen pointed out this media bias saying that Delay, “looks forward to the opportunity of sitting down with the ethics committee chairman and ranking member to get the facts out and to dispel the fiction and innuendo that’s being launched at him by House Democrats and their allies.”

One of those ‘allies’ is a ‘Republican’ from Connecticut, Christpher Shays who openly attacked Delay saying, “Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election.”

No, Representative Shays, what is hurting Republicans are other Republicans who aid in the media feeding frenzy of misinformation surrounding this issue and run scared from weak warnings handed out by Democrats such as Senator Christopher Dodd, also from Connecticut, who said, “Be careful about how closely you embrace Mr. Delay.”

You see, Democrats have an ulterior motive at play in their assault on the character of Senator Delay that the media has been successful keeping quiet for the most part. Democrats have set their sights on winning Delay’s district for the first time since 1984. Since he only won in Novenber by a margin of 55 to 41, Democrats see him as being vulnerable. Especially if they can manipulate a negative image of him with the help of media elitists.

Let’s look at the Terri Schiavo issue. Media elitists have been beside themselves over Delay’s statement that, ‘The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.’ The media itself had a vested interest in Terri’s eventual death, because of their own campaign of misinformation and that statement was taken by the press as a direct attack on them.

After days of endless media bombardment on his character, Senator Delay clarified his comment. “Mischaracterizing a call for the judiciary to publicly explain its reasons for taking an innocent woman’s life as threatening to ‘our fundamental democracy’ reveals either ignorance of or contempt for the framework of checks and balances that makes our constitutional republic possible.”

Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) and several editorialists claim that the actions of Congress and Delay’s comments concerning the attempt to save the life of Terri Schiavo are not constitutional. But that dastardly Delay called them on their mendacity. “The judiciary, like the executive, is independent of Congress, but at the same time subject to congressional oversight. If Congress believes a woman’s constitutional rights were denied, we have not only a right but an obligation to get some answers from the people responsible.”

Bingo! How many hundreds of times lately have we heard from Democrats that we need more ‘Congressional oversight’ of the executive branch? Yet questioning the reasoning of the judiciary is out of bounds?

The media has even tried to bring President Bush into the fray as if he were also attacking Delay by asserting his statement that he endorses ‘an independent judiciary’ and said, “I believe in proper checks and balances,” somehow constitutes a contradictory position to Delay’s.

Delay also believes in an independent judiciary with proper checks and balances, which in the Schiavo case, was exactly the reason Congress had the right to use ‘oversight’ to make sure Terri’s ‘due process’ hadn't been denied by the state judiciary. Whether you agree or disagree with the decision of the courts, Congress had the full right to take action in the case under Article III of the Constitution.

In the Charlotte Observer, the staff wrote an editorial in which they also tried to attack Delay by using an opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 1990, calling Scalia a ‘principled conservative’ (gasp) and Delay a ‘political opportunist’.

Scalia wrote in his opinion, ‘that American law has always accorded the State the power to prevent, by force if necessary, suicide - including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to prevent one’s life; that the point at which life becomes ‘worthless’, and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become ‘extraordinary’ or ‘inappropriate’, are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory; and hence, that even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve his or her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored.”

Terri Schiavo never ‘demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence’ that she wanted to be starved to death... that assertion came from her adulterous husband. So as ‘their elected representatives’ Congress passed a decree trying to verify that her ‘due process’ hadn't been violated. The Observer inadvertently substantiated Delay’s position as they were obviously blinded by their own motive of vilification.

As for the ‘ethics’ charges, just as Senator Santorum said, it’s up to the people to decide... those who elected him... once they get a fully reported accounting of his actions, not the media spin that has taken place to date. So far every accusation against him could be leveled at most of the Representatives on Capitol Hill.

Does Harry Reid really want the American electorate to know how many of his family members and how much money they were paid and where the money came from to do jobs that were garnered based on his position in the Senate? If you live in a glass house...

Right now, liberals will say and do anything to try and destroy the Speaker of the House because if they bring him down they think it will tarnish and slow the rapid growth of the conservative movement that has gotten stronger in America and the media are willing accomplices in that endeavor because they are being called out too.

They can only reach that objective if Republicans stand back and do nothing more than watch as it transpires. Republicans were in the minority and effectively silenced for too many decades for our positive message and aggressive momentum to be undermined at such a crucial moment in history.

Lee P Butler