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Overreaching
Rich Galen Wednesday November 2, 2005
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Strangers in Versailles. Two lonely people, we were strangers in Versailles. It turned out so riiiiight. For strangers in Versailles.
Done? Good. Thanks.
Yesterday Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid demanded that the Senate go into closed session to demand a report to follow up on a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on what the CIA knew or didn't know in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Invoking Senate Rule 21 he forced a closed session of the US Senate to "demand, on behalf of the American people � why these investigations aren't being conducted."
For the record Rule 21 reads:
On a motion made and seconded to close the doors of the Senate, on the discussion of any business which may, in the opinion of a Senator, require secrecy, the Presiding Officer shall direct the galleries to be cleared; and during the discussion of such motion the doors shall remain closed.
Thus there was no vote needed - majority or otherwise. Reid cooked this up as a publicity stunt and � it worked. It made all the morning papers.
But a stunt is a stunt. It is not policy. Even NBC's top correspondent, Andrea Mitchell said that the Senate Democrats were being "disingenuous" because Senate Democrats had plenty of time - before, during, and since to have raised these questions. And they didn't have the guts do it.
Even more amazing? Newsweek's Howard Fineman agreed with her.
This is part of an organized effort on behalf of Democrats to overcome their extreme distress of last week when US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declined to indict anyone on the original charge of leaking Valerie Plame's name.
Nevertheless the Dems are running all over town telling anyone with a notebook or a tape recorder - including children walking to school with backpacks and grownups walking along K Street with iPods - that this is, or should be, all about WMDs or lack of them.
On Monday, reporters were giddily looking forward to Scooter Libby's trial when, they had convinced themselves, Vice President Dick Cheney would be forced to testify.
In a series of phone calls I was happy to dampen their spirits by making the following points:
1. Fitzgerald said the Libby indictment was about lying, not about WMDs
2. Any trial is going to focus solely on lying, not WMDs
3. If a trial takes place, and if VP Cheney testifies, the questioning is not going to be conducted by Larry King taking questions from reporters
On the Judge Alito front, the Democrats immediately overreached there as well. They circulated a memo claiming, in effect, that as a US Attorney, he went easy on an Italian mafia prosecution.
Chris Matthews, like Andrea Mitchell and Howard Fineman not known as an apologist for Republican causes, immediately reacted with fury, calling the memo a "pretty disgusting document," and saying it was "amazingly bad politics."
Remember the early days of the campaign against now-Chief Justice John Roberts? Remember how the National Abortion Rights Action League ran an ad which was so mean and misleading that it had to be withdrawn within hours?
Same thing's going on here. With the same result. Judge Samuel Alito is going to be confirmed. He is a thoughtful, intelligent, extraordinarily experienced jurist.
If Republicans learned anything in the Monica scandal it was this: Overreaching is seriously punished by voters as soon as they detect it.
Mark November 1, 2005 on your calendar. It will turn out to be the date that the political tide in Washington began to turn.
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On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the real Frank Sinatra lyric, the full quote by Chris Matthews, an unfortunate Mullfoto of the times, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.
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Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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