Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (10 page)

The
New York Times
fumed and huffed about Packwood, snippily demanding that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole throw Packwood out of the Senate: “If Mr. Dole has already forgotten why Mr. Packwood was forced to resign, the rest of America has not.... Mr. Packwood repeatedly tried to take sexual advantage of women dependent on him for jobs, altered evidence he thought might be Very incriminating.’ “ A few years later, that same editorial page would be viciously denouncing the House of Representatives for impeaching President Clinton. Compare that to Pat Buchanan, who was one of the first to call on Packwood to resign, saying he had engaged in “egregious behavior ... and an abuse of power by a United States senator.”
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By calling on Packwood to resign, Buchanan was parting company from politicians such as Republican Senator Bob Dole.

Being a “moderate” Republican satisfies the beast only as long as they still need you for pro-abortion votes and demeaning quotes about your “fellow” Republicans. But no matter how much the press seems to idolize this or that “moderate Republican,” the moment the feisty independent maverick is unnecessary, he will transform, overnight, into Joey Buttafuoco.

The media may have a crush on liberal Republicans, but don’t expect them to respect you in the morning.

As the Packwood case illustrates, politicians with something to hide— say, wild promiscuity, stupidity, Chappaquiddick, or a former membership in the Ku Klux Klan—had best be liberals. There may be other reasons to be a liberal—generalized hatred of America, for example—but one very good reason is that you need the media’s protection. Only politicians with nothing to hide dare risk displeasing the
New York Times
editorial page.

There is no possibility, for example, that Jesse Helms could have remained in the United States Senate if he had killed a girl at Chappaquiddick like Democratic Senator Teddy Kennedy; if he had been a former Ku Klux Klanner like Democratic Senator Robert Byrd; if he had molested staffers like pro-choice liberal Republican Bob Packwood; or if he were a half-wit like pro-choice liberal Republican Jim Jeffords. Any conservative Republican who did any of these things would soon cease being a politician—or would cease being a conservative. Republicans cannot survive disgrace. Not even a “moderate Republican.” But Republicans liked by liberals have something to hide—most often, craven stupidity.

All Republicans sense deep in their beings that they can stave off the bitter enmity of the media by being liberals. Especially by being stalwart defenders of abortion. The media’s reward system is extremely effective with half-brights. Most politicians would rather face down the Viet Cong than be ridiculed by Katie Couric. It’s one thing to be hung upside down and have bamboo shoots stuck under your fingernails. But for the media to accuse you of being against “progress and enlightenment”
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(New York Times
on Jesse Helms) or to call you an “airhead” (Katie Couric on Ronald Reagan)— well, that makes strong men tremble and weak men liberals.

It is baffling, therefore, that Republican activists often praise Republican politicians for being “respected” by the press. That’s supposed to be the selling point:
The media seems to like him!
There is no surer proof of a Republican mediocrity than the media’s respect. Remember: The media liked Jack Kemp once, too. As a rule of thumb, liberals are not the best source of information on the Republicans’ strongest candidate.

Still, the media insists on straight-facedly reporting that Democrats are “scared of” running against birdbrains like Christie Todd Whitman, while claiming to “hope” Republicans would be foolish enough to nominate a sure loser like Ronald Reagan.

Consequently, it is highly instructive to note which Republicans the media dub “courageous,” a “maverick,” or “flinty.” (The establishment press’s admiring use of the adjective “flinty” in reference to sell-out Northeastern Republicans is as inevitable as the tabloids’ use of “luscious” to describe Hollywood starlets.) Flinty Senator Jim Jeffords was showered with fulsome praise when he (officially) left the Republican Party. Having never in his life voted with the Republicans on any half-important issue, Jeffords’s defection was about as newsworthy as Elton John coming out of the closet.

Yet the media described Jeffords’s break with the Republican Party as if it were the greatest patriotic act since the Army Rangers scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. The
Los Angeles Times
wrote of the momentous event: “Sen. Jim Jeffords now walks in the footsteps of Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.” ABC’s Peter Jennings said: “It’s political earthquake time in Washington.” The
Times
cheered Jeffords’s defection as an act of heroism. He was called a “maverick” who “has always played against type.” The
New York Times
unleashed all the celebratory adjectives, calling Jeffords a “maverick,” with degrees from Yale and Harvard. Yet still somehow he was “more down-home casual than East Coast polished.” The
Times
also quoted a political science professor confirming that Jeffords was “a man of tremendous sincerity, and that came across today.”
²⁹

Compare that to the
Times’s
editorial on Senator Richard Shelby’s switch from the Democratic to Republican Party a few years earlier, subtly titled “Profiles in Opportunism.”
³⁰
The
Times
sniffed that Shelby’s “desertion to the victorious Republicans this week was hardly a huge surprise.” This was in contradistinction to Jeffords’s defection, which was earth shattering.

While the media treats George W. Bush’s Yale education like some sort of scam, Jim Jeffords’s degree from Yale cannot be cited often enough. (And consider that Jeffords got into Yale long before the terrorizing reign of the SATs, back when admission to the Ivy Leagues turned on social class rather than standardized tests.) But the vigilant reader will find only the most sublimated references in the establishment press to the blinding fact that Jeffords is a little D-U-M-M. It is often noted, for example, that Jeffords “dislikes cameras and speeches.” But this aversion is reported as if it were part of Jeffords’s sturdy Yankee rectitude (flinty, you might say) rather than a genetic necessity.

Jeffords avoids live television interviews for reasons that will become obvious. In one of his rare (pretaped) interviews he explained why he was voting to acquit in President Clinton’s impeachment trial. Forget that his point was moronic; just note the sentence structure:

This has been a difficult process to make up ones minds in these issues. But, in my mind, the most critical issue with the numbers going to be that they he will not be convicted no matter what I will do has been to make sure that we handle this appropriately so that we do not establish bad precedents for future presidents. To me, that is the most important aspect of the process right now is to ensure that we do not set a bar so low that any future president will be liable for impeachment for just about anything.
³¹

That is a direct, verbatim transcription of a United States senator’s remarks on national TV about the most important Senate vote of his life. If Jeffords were not accorded the respect due all politicians who adopt ADA-approved positions, late-night comics might have finally discovered a dumb liberal.

There is no Republican alive who does not instinctively understand the protective coloration that being “pro-choice” affords. Support for abortion is the last refuge of Republicans who cannot rely on native intelligence or

good living to avoid being destroyed by the media. The issue doesn’t have to be abortion, of course, though it’s hard to think of a position that provides such a bullet-proof shield for idiots and lechers. Try to think of a pro-abortion politician—Republican or Democrat—who is dumb. Simply as a matter of statistics, there must be boatloads of them. The fact that none leap to mind shows how well the media’s protection racket works.

Indeed, there is only one prominent pro-choice Republican who has ever demonstrated that he does have the guts and IQ to stand up to media attacks: Rudolph Giuliani. As mayor of New York, Giuliani refused to yield to the left on a slew of other hot-button issues, aggressively opposing affirmative action administrators, pornographic artists, Legal Aid lawyers, useless government employees, and other key Democratic constituencies.

Another profile in liberal courage is former New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, appointed by President Bush to run the Environmental Protection Agency. The first giveaway that Whitman is “pro-choice” is how media gush over her. Referring to her amazing “popularity” as potentially a “national phenomenon,” the
New York Times
quoted experts saying they could “understand why other politicians want to be like Whitman, because it means they want to be liked by the public.”
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The equation is rarely stated with such clarity.

The
Times
declared Whitman “the G.O.P.’s ... New Idol.” (It’s always so touching when a newspaper that hasn’t endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since Eisenhower informs Republicans who their “New Idol” is.) Whitman’s groundbreaking “philosophy” was “sophisticated,” “prosperous,” “moderate,” and “tolerant.” But the thing is, the woman is a dimwit. (Are you beginning to see the pattern?) While accompanying state troopers on patrol in Camden in 1996, Whitman frisked a young black man—for a photo-op. Her human prop was a citizen who happened to be a genuine suspect. He had already been subjected to a real frisk, but was forced to endure a second phony “pat-down” by Whitman, while she grinned madly for the cameras, as if she were squeezing pumpkins at a state fair. In the ensuing hoopla about Whitman’s rank insensitivity, a Republican campaign consultant remarked that Whitman was “caught in a political no-man’s-land, without support from the left or the right.”
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When Whitman was asked whether Bush should have an abortion litmus test for the Supreme Court, she boasted that as governor of New Jersey she had abjured litmus tests for her judicial nominees. “I’ll tell you something,” she began auspiciously. “I have now appointed five of our seven Supreme Court justices in New Jersey, and I never asked a one of them what they thought about a woman’s right to choose.”

As she explained: “It would have been inappropriate.” It also would have been moronic inasmuch as state judges have absolutely nothing to say about the country’s abortion policy. Presumably she didn’t ask judicial nominees about their positions on getting more visitors to the Grand Canyon, either. You really wonder if she knows that
Roe v. Wade
is a decision by the Supreme Court of the
United States,
which can be neither repealed nor upheld by state supreme courts.

In any event, asking Whitman about judicial nominees would be like asking Bill Clinton for marital advice. Governor Whitman singlehandedly turned the New Jersey Supreme Court into the most ridiculous court in the nation, easily overtaking the once-infamous California Supreme Court and even beating back stiff competition from the Florida Supreme Court.
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If Whitman had chosen judicial nominees by randomly pointing to names in a telephone book, New Jersey would have been better served. Obviously, the nation cried out for Whitman’s expertise in choosing judicial nominees.

Like other “moderate Republicans,” Whitman is at least smart enough to realize that she cannot rely on her genetic capacities to avoid being called stupid. Luckily for her, actual intelligence has nothing to do with being called smart by the media. Whitman’s avid and outspoken support for abortion assured her status as a Republican “idol”—idolized exclusively by the media that decide who will and will not be called a Republican “idol.”

This is precisely why abortion makes such an excellent litmus test for Republicans. Not because abortion is the most crucial moral issue facing the country today or because it is a winning issue electorally—both of which it is, incidentally. The reason it makes such a handy litmus test is that the media detests abortion opponents. Any politician who is pro-life has proved that he needs no camouflage, and can get by just fine without the media’s phony “respect,” thank you.

The media prattle on about money in politics, corruption, and influence-peddling on the basis of flimsy little “voter guides” distributed by the Christian Coalition. But whatever vast and insidious influence the Christian Coalition voter guides have, they sure couldn’t have kept Bob Packwood in office throughout two decades of egregious sexual harassment. Only the media can own a politician.

If God himself emerged and told Teddy Kennedy to oppose abortion, he couldn’t do it—at least not if he wanted to keep his job, which is dependent on the media forgetting about Chappaquiddick. Anyone with a skeleton in his closet has got to jump when the media says jump, or get out of politics.

Pimping for his masters, former Klanner and current Democratic Senator Bob Byrd voted against removing Clinton from office despite his conclusion that the president had committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (“No doubt about it in my mind,” Byrd told Cokie Roberts on ABC’s
This Week.?
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If the media’s puppets ever diverge from the party line or otherwise become dispensable, people will start to notice little things like Byrd’s former membership in the Klan, Jim Jeffords failing, on several tries, to put one single coherent sentence together, and Christie Todd Whitman not knowing what her own state supreme court does. They might even remember Chappaquiddick.

The media will tolerate any disreputable behavior in order to win. Principle is nothing to liberals. Winning is everything.

FOUR

creating the psychological climate