Hypocritical oath: Educ. Sec. Paige draws howls for his crack, but why has Daschle never apologized?

Albuquerque Tribune ^ | 03/03.04 | Jeffry Gardner

[nickcarraway]

What do Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle have in common? Well, nothing and everything.

You see, Paige recently told the National Association of Governors that America's teachers' unions were akin to "terrorist organizations."

Oops. Democrats inside the room and out - Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the never mean nor bashing Democratic National Committee, for one - fought over who could get to a microphone first and utter words of contempt for the secretary.

Apologies were demanded all around - by union leaders, presidential contenders, people wandering aimlessly around the scene of the crime (busboys and wait staff, presumably).

So, like far too many Republicans, Paige apologized. He said his words were "in poor taste" or some such nonsense.

Now, please, for a moment would the progressives in the studio audience regress to Senator Daschle's remarks, circa midterm elections 2002? Picture the highest-ranking Democrat in the nation labeling conservative Christians "America's Taliban." Only clean-shaven, I guess.

Click on Google and search for "righteous indignation shown by mainstream media-types for Daschle's inflammatory remarks." Go ahead. I'll wait.

What? Nada? How about "Daschle's apology to America's Christians for calling them Taliban"? Don't bother. You won't find that, either.

You see, in America you can bash - isn't that the progressive word of choice? - Christians to Kingdom Come (pardon the pun) and get away with it.

It is hypocrisy of an order the media is not just inured to but also complicit in. Read the Washington Post? They haven't drifted far from the time when one reporter termed evangelical Christians "poor, undereducated and easily led."

But call one of the biggest bullies in Washington a "terrorist organization," and, well, you're looking straight into the Wrath of Kerry, the New York Times, USA Today, ad nauseam.

Paige is just the most recent victim. Remember when Trent Lott was browbeaten by the media for foolishly trying to make Strom Thurmond feel good on his 100th birthday? The attack on Lott cost him his Senate leadership post. Fair enough.

Yet, on the other side of the aisle, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan Purple Wizard of Beelzebub - or something - is virtually worshipped as an elder statesman.

Listen, Republicans will never shake the left's belief that it has a God Given Right to Hypocrisy, so I see no reason for appeasement. In fact, when asked "Shouldn't we compromise on this or that?" I generally say "no" and offer these two words in explanation: Bob Packwood.

No one fought harder for "progressive" women's issues than the former Republican Senator from Oregon. Yet he was skewered by women's rights groups for far less than Bill Clinton's behavior in the Oval Office with an intern. Today, Packwood's living in obscurity. Bubba, on the other hand, is not.

So until a legitimate truce is signed, no apologies, please.

Gardner is an Albuquerque writer and political consultant. His column runs on Wednesdays.

[goldstategop]

Republicans are eevil. Democrats are saints. No big mystery here.