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FROM HIRAM LEWIS CAMPAIGN WEBSITE

Inside the Beltway

March 10, 2005

By John McCaslin - Washington Times

Drifting backward

For decades he's brought home the bacon, but outspoken Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd isn't popular these days with everybody in his beloved West Virginia.

Politics aside, West Virginia Republican Party Treasurer Hiram Lewis IV says it is upsetting to watch Mr. Byrd "destroy his credibility and become the basis of jokes over the national airwaves which, in turn, make West Virginia look like a backwards state."

He was referring, in part, to recent remarks made by Mr. Byrd (the senator insists his words were taken out of context) that some perceived as comparing Senate Republicans to "Nazis."

"We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men," Mr. Byrd stated. "But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends."

He then quoted historian Alan Bullock as saying that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler "turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

"It is sad to see a senator that has contributed so much to this state over the years be reduced to a bumbling fool," says Mr. Lewis, who adds the 87-year-old Mr. Byrd either must come to grips with the fact that President Bush won re-election in West Virginia by more than 90,000 votes "or retire."