Thursday, April 07, 2005
Clinton or Milosevich?
"Moscow Tom" DeLay chose the war criminal. From Kleiman:
Republicans have got to be pretty nervous at this point. Social Security is going nowhere, they overstepped their bounds on the Schiavo case, they're threatening judges, and now their big cash register is about to be emptied. On the flipside, Democrats are right to be licking their chops-this is the opening they need. I'd like to see "Moscow Tom" around until closer to the '06 elections, but I've waited a long time for this.
|
Kevin Drum offers another good reason to move to expel DeLay right now. Kevin recalls correctly that DeLay was on Milosevich's side against Bill Clinton. He doesn't mention the extraordinary maneuver by which DeLay managed to send an encouraging message to the enemy while our men and women in uniform were in harm's way, by promising Clinton a resolution of support for the air war and then arranging for it to come to the floor and fail. (Of course, DeLay wasn't alone among Republicans, back then, in hating the President more than he hated the mass murderer the President was trying to rein in.)
And now we know, as Kevin points out, that DeLay was doing all of this as the beneficiary of largesse from the Russian security services. Taking an expensive vacation at the expense of the military of a foreign power to support America's enemies probably doesn't amount to treason under the Constitutional definition, but it comes close.
The debate on the motion to consider immediate expulsion should be well worth listening to: once Nancy Pelosi offers it, that is.
Republicans have got to be pretty nervous at this point. Social Security is going nowhere, they overstepped their bounds on the Schiavo case, they're threatening judges, and now their big cash register is about to be emptied. On the flipside, Democrats are right to be licking their chops-this is the opening they need. I'd like to see "Moscow Tom" around until closer to the '06 elections, but I've waited a long time for this.
