Step AWAY from the Kool-Aid, Liddy!
A friend of mine takes the phrase "Keep Your Enemies Closer" to a level that would make me ill. He does forward me the most outrageous things he receives, which means I get something about every day from the GOP. We have both watched with alarm as someone we had both once respected from the GOP has quietly, consistently, lost her mind.
I know that being the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee requires you to be a harsh partisan, but even in the depths of the Clinton impeachment, you didn’t see the DSCC chair jumping all over himself to defend Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, and its subsequent coverup. But we’ve never had a President quite like Dubya either. Thus, Senator Elizabeth Dole, who really has nothing to gain, becomes a frothing-at-the-mouth lap dog for Bush. Really, she’s too damn old to ever be elected President at this point, so her only goal could be to sit in her Senate seat until she dies. Considering she represents North Carolina, the odds are decent she could keep her seat for 2-3 terms before old age forces her out. Yet, she’s acting like someone who thinks she is going to run for the GOP nomination in 2008.
I will now take apart her latest screed to the NRSC faithful.
Dear Friend, (What? No "in Christ"????)
This week, the Senate is convening hearings on the National Security Agency’s terror surveillance program. These hearings will not only tell Americans more about this critical initiative, but will highlight the difference between Republicans and Democrats on issues of security. (Ah, she got the memo from Karl about "post 9-11 Republicans") We will also learn how closely Senate Democrats follow the marching orders of liberal fringe groups like Moveon.org who irrationally oppose the program at the expense of our safety. (IRRATIONALLY OPPOSE! Really, Liddy, when did it become irrational to defend our Bill of Rights? No one is saying that we should let Al Queda call whomever they want in the USA and not intercept it. What we ARE saying is that we have legal ways to do this, and you have to go before a judge and justify yourself in this country. That’s protecting our freedoms AND our safety, you stupid bitch!) I look forward to these hearings, and to finding out just where my Democrat colleagues stand on this important issue. (They stand on the CORRECT side of this issue, as do some of your GOP colleagues who aren’t willing to shred our Constitution to please Bush.)
The terror surveillance program is one of our national security professionals’ most important tools in the battle to keep this nation safe.(Agreed…IF it was legal. IF they could defend the program before a judge, secretly even! But follow the law and the Constitution when you do it.) By intercepting and monitoring telephone conversations between Al Qaeda and their terrorist operatives in the United States, we are preventing attacks on our homeland and keeping Americans out of harm’s way. (Apparently, Liddy takes Dubya at his word. We’ve learned time and again that Bush will lie to this country to suit his purposes. In Buffalo, NY in 2004, he told an audience that nothing had changed because the US Govt still had to get a court order to wire tap. That was a lie. Bush pushed the intelligence community to cook the intel to push us into a war of choice with Iraq. Nothing this President says can be trusted without having proof. Yet, Liddy trusts Dubya when he says he only wants to spy on people talking to Al Queda. Yet, he refuses to have anyone independent look over his shoulder and make sure he’s keeping his word. Why is that, do you think? Could it be he’s spying on much more than people who call Al Queda? You bet your ass. Bush has an enemies list just as Nixon did, and anyone in the progressive community who thinks he is immune is naive. How many people reading this blog are being spied on by the NSA, because under Bush, opposing him is tantamount to supporting Al Queda, so spying on us would be justified, right?) We can’t wait until terrorist plans are in motion to try and thwart them. (Liddy, meet Condi. She introduced a similar image to us in the run-up to Iraq by invoking the "mushroom cloud" that would pop up in the USA if we didn’t conquer Iraq. Again, NO ONE is saying we should wait to be attacked again, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The GOP consistently chooses the wrong way, the unconstitutional way.) We need to know what terrorists want to do before they set out to do it-and the terror surveillance program allows us to do just that. Simply put, this program saves lives.
Yet some head-in-the-sand Democrats don’t seem to see it that way, and even if they do, are so blinded by their dislike for the President that they cannot bring themselves to support the initiative lest it be construed as support for George Bush. (I’ll concede she makes a point here. I despise George Bush and everything he stands for. He is a disaster as President and has harmed my country so much that it will take YEARS to recover. It makes me angry, and I don’t trust him. But if George Bush was doing something legally and in a way that respected checks and balances, I’d support this program. If the Congress could put safeguards in to protect our rights as Americans while protecting us from terrorists, then I’d support a change in the law. It’s not what Bush is doing so much as the way he’s doing it and the excuses he’s using to usurp absolute power in the name of fighting terror.) So they resort to outlandish charges that the
President is breaking the law, that the program is unconstitutional,that it threatens our civil liberties. Taking their cue from their party’s fringe-a fringe, unfortunately, that is taking increased control of the Democrat party every day- (Pot, meet Kettle….Moveon.org meet the Christian Taliban) some have even raised the notion of impeaching the President. (Yes, Liddy, that’s what people do when you have a President systematically, definantly breaking the law and ignoring the Constitutional division of powers.) To dignify these calls would be beneath any serious person, but to ignore them would be dangerous. If Moveon.org and Howard Dean get to call the shots when it comes to our national security, this country is in big trouble. In their ideal world, we would have the ridiculous and unthinkable policy of hanging up when Al Qaeda calls. (Utter and complete rubbish…and yet another Rove-created lie.)
The charge that the President is somehow breaking the law with this program is demonstrably false. (Which is why they haven’t been able to refute the charges…and why the story keeps changing. First, they said Congress told them they wouldn’t support a change in the law. Then they said that Bush didn’t ask Congress because he determined he didn’t need to. Then he said that the 8 people in Congress who are supposed to know were OK with it, despite the release of protest letters from Pelosi and others. False, my ASS!) Previous Presidents have authorized similar programs, (Really? Like the "electronic surveillance" that President Washington used before he was President, as Gonzales said? Or FDR in the middle of WWII??? Please, show us an analogous program.) and the Supreme Court has declared them constitutional. (Please, Liddy, site me some case law…I beg you. And if that’s the case, take this to the Supremes, and they’ll dismiss it with a wave of the hand and a "See our decision in Smith v. President" You don’t name cases, b/c you know they’ll be torn apart by lawyers who know the Constitution.) What’s more, it is widely held that during wartime, the President is granted increased powers in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief. (Ah, yes, the infamous clause that said when war is declared, constitutional protections are suspended until the end of the conflict. Sorry, you stupid whore, it doesn’t work that way.) When it comes to keeping Americans
safe, the President has wide latitude to do what is necessary. That doesn’t mean he’s above the law, but it does mean that he’s above the frivolous attacks of disaffected liberals. (She had me until the last clause. The President does have latitude, and he’s not above the law. The attacks of progressives are not frivolous…the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are deadly serious.)
I understand the special place we all afford to our constitutionally protected rights, (Somehow, I doubt that, Liddy…I really do.) and that because of our love of these rights some Democrats think they can score political points by portraying the terrorist surveillance program as a threat. (Wrong again…some things are above partisan "points". Defending our very Constitution is something we passionately care about. We swear allegiance to the very Constitution that you and Bush are trying to destroy. This is no longer about politics. It’s about freedom.) They misquote our founders and feign indignation that the Administration would act so callously towards our freedoms. (Again, Liddy, please list the misquotes and show how they are misused. You can’t, can you? Our Founders would be on OUR side, not yours. The indignation that you are seeing is not feigned…it’s quite real.) But the reality is that this program protects the very freedoms Democrats allege it curtails. To listen to some partisans, you’d think the NSA had nothing better to do than listen to Aunt Jenny calling her niece to wish her a happy birthday. (Precisely…that and spying on law abiding Americans whose only "crime" is not supporting this President’s illegal actions.) Liberal demagoguery on this issue not only poisons what should be a healthy debate about our national security, but also needlessly injects partisanship where it does not belong. (Oh please, you cry partisanship when it hurts you, and when your party is wrong and you know it’s wrong. But you’ll use terror and fear to demogogue and win elections yourself and call it patriotism. Hypocritical cow.)
This week’s hearings are critical to determining whether this nation will confront terror with our best or with political posturing. The terror surveillance program keeps terror off our shores, and is saving American lives every day. We cannot let the radical left dictate our national security policy. I hope that at the hearings Democrats ignore the directives of their party’s fringe and do what is right to keep America safe.
With my warmest best wishes,
Senator Elizabeth Dole
NRSC Chair
Liddy Dole has drank deeply of the GOP Kool-Aid. I’m not sure she can ever be rehabilitated. The intelligent woman I thought she was has been proven to be a hollow shell, if it was ever real at all.
