WAKING UP FOR AMERICAN VALUES & IDEALS

I've had good conservative friends LOSE IT when I've sent them info concerning the obscene fascist behavior of the Bush administration and the GOP and then claim that I was seduced by liberal "propaganda" while never addressing the issues. And yet when I send them evidence that OTHER conservatives and Republicans are beginning to ask the same damn questions about Bush and the government leaders of the GOP I never hear them respond with a peep.



April 24, 2005
EDITORIAL
Wisps of Life in Congress

We are not optimistic, or naïve, enough to call it a trend yet, but there have been signs that some sensible Republicans are starting to realize that the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, are vastly overreaching any plausible electoral mandate in their quest for one-party control of every aspect of government and their demands for mute party fealty.

The most striking example was in the Senate, where a few Republicans are starting to resist President Bush's latest demand for unquestioning approval of a high-level nominee who is clearly unsuitable for the job he has been given.

Last week, at a tense meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio shocked fellow Republicans by suddenly holding back his endorsement of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador, as evidence mounted of Mr. Bolton's being a bullying ideologue who tried to intimidate intelligence analysts into conforming to his preconceived conclusions on major issues of national security.

It was particularly encouraging that Senator Voinovich was swayed by the arguments of two Democratic senators, Joseph Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. That sort of reasoned, bipartisan debate had become an endangered species in Bill Frist's Senate, where the committees charged with vetting presidential nominees have been turned into rubber-stamp bodies.

After Senator Voinovich forced a delay in the vote on Mr. Bolton, we learned that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had been quietly warning Republican senators that Mr. Bolton had a bad history of dealing with people who disagreed with him. And another Bush appointee, the former ambassador to South Korea, told the committee that Mr. Bolton had, to put it charitably, misled its members in one part of his testimony.

In the House, a member of the pioneer class of the Gingrich revolution, Walter Jones of North Carolina, felt strongly enough about doing the job to which he was elected to join the Democrats' call for an effective bipartisan ethics committee to look into complaints about Mr. DeLay's authoritarian behavior and exploitation of Washington's lobbying industry. "People at home want to know why the ethics committee isn't working," Mr. Jones explained. He poignantly echoed the resolve expressed by Mr. DeLay 10 years ago when power was fresh and he vowed to tell voters when their representatives were "feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special interest groups."

Mr. Bush is still sticking with Mr. Bolton and Mr. DeLay. But Republican concerns undercut his attempt to paint the criticism of both men as partisan. The fast-emerging question for him and the other Republicans is, when they will realize that nothing in the American system provides for the party that wins an election to do whatever it wants, no matter what objections are raised by the minority party or even some of its own members? The point is not lost on American voters: primal party loyalty is no substitute for effective, democratic government.