Supporting Feingold

by Stephen Elliot

"Do they support the extreme and counterproductive antics of a few, or do they support a lawful program vital to the security of this Nation?"
-- Dick Cheney, Vice President of The United States, Hunter

"Senator Feingold has exposed the soft underbelly of the Democrats' positions on national security issues. Many Democrats took glee in trying to kill the USA PATRIOT Act, and now they're trying to tear down the President over a Terrorist Surveillance Program that makes Americans safer.
While Republicans are working to support our troops and win the War on Terror, Democrats are once again showing the American people what the Democrat party is all about: their message of retreat and defeat on national security speaks volumes at a time we need to be supporting the men and women in our Armed Forces."
-- John Boehner, House Majority Leader, Lobbyist Tool

Democratic Senator Russ Feingold has called on the Senate to censure President Bush for illegally spying on American citizens. Even John McCain agrees that the NSA surveillance program was not legal. But as usual the Republicans are attacking us, pushing us to abandon our own when we're right.

But why would we listen to the Republican Party on anything? Why would we follow the party of have a beer and shoot a man in the face and don't tell anybody about it? The party of Pat Robertson? The party of Weapons Of Mass Destruction? The party of anybody involved in the Plame leak would be forced out of the White House? The party of illegal wiretapping?

Why should Democrats apologize for Russ Feingold? When are the Republicans going to apologize for Jack Abramoff? What about Ralph Reed? When are the Republicans going to repudiate Tom DeLay?

There is no reason to distance ourselves from Russ Feingold and his perfectly legitimate calls for censure. The Republicans should publicly distance themselves from the steady stream of lies coming from their propaganda machine -- people like Rush Limbaugh who is a junkie, Michael Savage who is a racist, or Bill O'Reilly who encourages al-Qaeda to bomb Coit Tower in San Francisco.

These are the voices that represent the right and we don't owe any apology to these people.

We don't have to distance ourselves from one of our own. We're not the party of corruption. We're not the party of bankruptcy and deficit. We're not the party that either through incompetence or malice allowed New Orleans to drown. We're not the party that weakened our nation by bogging down our military in an unwinnable and unjustified war in the Middle East.

That's the Republican Party. It's the Republicans that are responsible for our current mess and they should not be pointing fingers. They should be apologizing. They should be ashamed.