Posted on 01/12/2006 7:21:34 AM PST by .cnI redruM
When Lewis Carrol wrote Through The Looking Glass he displayed remarkable imagination and verve. He even lacked the role model of Edward Kennedy upon which to draw his caricatures of shoddy and irrational politicians. If the Senate Confirmation Hearings for Samuel Alito have offered America any new insights, the paramount one would have to be that Senator Kennedy has lost any remaining graveman or gravitas that he may have once possessed.
The Good Senator’s inquisition against Judge Alito has failed to produce any perfidy that would rate higher than a venal sin, if we were take a step back from the fray and judge the Candidate Judge from a perch of sobriety. Apparently, Senator Kennedy sat elsewhere as he poured over Judge Alito’s resume with the gimlet eye for any excuse to burn President Bush’s latest SCOTUS nominee at the stake.
Kennedy rambled aimlessly through a prolonged set of questioning before finally fixing heat-seeking polemic radar on the fact that Judge Alito belonged to an exclusive Conservative alumni club after graduating from Princeton University. Having belonged to a similar organization himself back at Harvard, Senator Kennedy remembered how exclusive these clubs could be and felt this line of attack could successfully impugn the nominee if the Senator were to use it as he inveighed.
It seems Judge Alito’s membership in now-defunct Concerned Alumni of Princeton has made the ghost of the now-ridiculed John Birch Society haunt several of Senator Kennedy’s recent delirium tremens. Unlike Senator Kennedy’s exclusive all-male club, Alito’s was conservative, which makes it DIFFERENT. This led Senator Kennedy to demand of Senator Arlen Specter that The Senate Judiciary Committee hold a closed meeting and subpoena all written correspondence from The Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
Fortunately for the nation as a whole, Chairman Arlen Specter decided he enjoyed being Chairman and that Senator Kennedy would make a poor substitute if Specter allowed a coup. He informed Senator Kennedy that there would be no pointless fishing expeditions into decades old documents from defunct college alumni societies. Unlike Senator Kennedy’s late brother Robert, Edward Kennedy would have no grandstand from which to sortie against the character of his political opponents.
Which brings me to a conclusion regarding Senator Kennedy’s meandering attempt to reprise the McCarthy Hearings as a tactic to forestall President Bush’s latest nominee to sit on The United States Supreme Court; like McCarthy, Kennedy was viscous and unfair. Also like McCarthy, Kennedy played fast and loose with facts, and relied upon appearances and grossly circumstantial evidence to portray his political enemies in the worst light possible. However, the similarities end here.
McCarthy did what he did in pursuit of the defense of his country. His error was to use nefarious means in pursuit of a laudable end. Kennedy makes no mistakes and has no delusions except of his own adequacy as an elected representative of the people. Kennedy uses the most distorted lens of unfocused bias to caricature those he seeks to derail. He knows that he spews untruth every time he twitches a lip.
A final and very key difference came to light when The Berlin Wall fell and the world perused the written archives of the fallen Soviet Government. McCarthy may have been picked off first base when he through the entire anti-communist phone book at Lucille Ball, but he, unlike Senator Kennedy was fighting an enemy that really existed, and actively sought the demise of The United States.
Senator McCarthy had something that utterly eludes The Bay State Breeze Bag and Chappaquiddick Nautical Chauffer. Senator McCarthy had a point.
They're a bunch of dancing bears, performing for treats.
No doubt it's the Scotch.
Er .. ahh .. er .. ahh .. hic
Exactly. McCarthyism was defined as smearing a person's character. The left often confuses anti-communism with McCarthyism. Ol' Teddy is the penultimate McCarthyist. He blew his wad on Bork and that dog don't hunt no mo'.
From the federal congress on down to all state congresses.. but the cleanup must start federally.. The love of money is root of all evil and the federal Congress has a lot of money.. and its tainting EVERYTHING.. EVERYTHING...
Gerrymandering is not New..
Demos and Rinos will not allow it to stop.. both federally and statewide..
Only one option.. And even LESS are up to that..
Until THEN.. the thing that will not leave... WON'T LEAVE.. unless persuaded at/by gunpoint..
I hate to break up the McCarthy lovefest but he essentiualy was a paranoid bully who died a drunken failure, a foolish choice for hero worship if there ever was one. Trying to reframe him, as Coulter did only plays to the caricature of a raving wingnut. American history offers many more examples of people who spoke out against communism effectively, Reagan would be one, McCarthy is not one.
You dodged my bullet.. don't blame you.. Revolutions can easily become mere riots.. more often than not..
Hate to rain on your liberal take on McCarthy, but what exactly defines him as paranoid?
The Venona Project vindicated MacCarthy, that's for sure.
Here's a google link to the Venona project. Note that NSA and the CIA both have public summaries about it, at the top of the google hits. To understand McCarthy, one must understand Venona. We're in a brave new world now. McCarthy bashing is on borrowed time. FRegards....
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=venona&num=10&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images
What defined his as paranoid? Simply put he provided a public display of the mental illness. Let us not be so supportive of the noble cause that we champion a sick man. Its not a "liberal" view, he was a drunk. As someone who has dealt with alcoholic family members I know what their suspicious minds are capable of, its sad and dangerous. Moreover as a cheap political stunt it showed a disturbing lack of faith in the correctness of the American system. Our founding fathers built a mighty body politic, one that was more than capable of shaking off anyone selling communism. Just as we overcome an illness when we are strong so to did American overcome any red fifth columists. That my friends is what it comes down to, how much faith do you have in America, I for one believe our system is true and its goodness so clear that it will prevail against any rival, Mr.McCarthy lacked such a faith.
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